We’re looking forward to covering US higher education this fall, whether it’s college closings. strikes, protests on and off campus, or stealing the rival school’s mascot. We encourage folks to have good clean fun. And by all means do it all peacefully.
P.S. Download this image and post it in dorms and around campuses!
Key points:
Exam scores always seem to go up. Whether it’s the SAT when applying for college or an AP score to earn college credit, competitive scores seem to be creeping up. While faculty are invaluable, students who recently completed classes or exams offer insight that bridges the gap between the curriculum and the exam. I believe students who recently excelled in a course should be allowed and encouraged to serve as teaching assistants in high school.
Often, poor preparation contributes to students’ disappointing exam performance. This could be from not understanding content, being unfamiliar with the layout, or preparing the wrong material. Many times, in courses at all levels, educators emphasize information that will not show up on a standardized test or, in some cases, in their own material. This is a massive issue in many schools, as every professor has their own pet project they like to prioritize. For example, a microbiology professor in a medical school may have an entire lecture on a rare microbe because they research it, but nothing about it will be tested on the national board exams, or even their course final exams. This was a common theme in high school, with history teachers loving to share niche facts, or in college, when physics professors loved to ask trick questions. By including these things in your teaching, is it really benefiting the pupil? Are students even being tested correctly over the material if, say, 10 percent of your exam questions are on information that is superfluous?
Universities can get around this issue by employing teaching assistants (TAs) to help with some of the confusion. Largely, their responsibilities are grading papers, presenting the occasional lecture, and holding office hours. The lesser-known benefit of having and speaking with TAs is the ability to tell you how to prioritize your studying. These are often older students who have been previously successful in the course, and as a result, they can give a student a much better idea of what will be included on an exam than the professor.
When I was a TA as an undergrad, we were required to hold exam prep sessions the week of a big test. During these sessions, students answered practice questions about concepts similar to what would show up on the exam. All the students who showed up to my sessions performed extremely well on the tests, and they performed well because they were prepared for the exam and knew the concepts being tested. As a result, they would finish the course with a much higher grade because they knew what they should be studying. It is much more effective to give a student a practice question that uses similar concepts to what will be on their exam than it is for a professor to give a list of topics that are covered on a test. For example, studying for a math test is more impactful when answering 50 practice questions versus a teacher handing you a list of general concepts to study, such as: “Be able to manipulate inequalities and understand the order of operations.”
Universities seem to know that professors might not provide the best advice, or at the least, they have used TAs as a decent solution to the problem. It is my opinion that having this style of assistance in high school would be beneficial to student outcomes. Having, say, a senior help in a junior-level class may work wonders. Teachers would have a decrease in their responsibilities based on what they trust their TA to do. They could help grade, run review sessions, and make and provide exam prep materials. In essence, all the unseen work in teaching that great teachers do could be done more efficiently with a TA. Every student has had an amazing teacher who provides an excellent study guide that is almost identical to the test, making them confident going into test day. In my experience, those guides are not completed for a grade or a course outcome, and effectively become extra work for the educator, all to help the students who are willing to use them effectively. Having a TA would ease that burden–it would encourage students to consider teaching as a profession in a time when there is a shortage of educators.
There are many ways to teach and learn, but by far the best way to be prepared for a test is by talking to someone who has recently taken it. Universities understand that courses are easier for students when they can talk to someone who has taken it. It is my opinion that high schools would be able to adopt this practice and reduce teacher workload while increasing the student outcomes.
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The key to a great news story is a great interview. But all your work getting that interview will be wasted if you don’t have great notes.
When I first started out as a journalist, people didn’t always record their interviews. I rarely used a recorder. I found that it did something to my brain. Part of my brain would be worried that the recording wasn’t working.
When I became an editor, I found that I could tell when a reporter had used a recorder. The quotes in the story were often too long or too flat — they lacked something, maybe emotion or emphasis.
When you interview someone without taping it, you have to listen carefully. There isn’t any backup. And because it is difficult to take down everything someone says word for word, your brain works with your ears and your hand to take down what is most important – the essential facts and details, the emotion, the surprising things someone says.
If you have recorded that same interview, you won’t be doing that. You know you have a backup. And when you go back and listen to the recording, something is different. The statements all flatten out and you end up putting in the story what sounds most explanatory or most impressive. In other words, you can’t tell what was most interesting when you were sitting there or on the phone.
These days it is standard practice to record interviews, if for no other reason than we need the audio for podcasts or audio clips.
But for a great story and to be a great storyteller you should master the art of notetaking. When doing an interview forget that the recorder is on. Imagine it isn’t working (and it might not be working!) So here are some tips for taking notes:
First, don’t try to take down every word. Instead, listen for what is important.
“Quotes can be short,” said News Decoder Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner.
Don’t try to write everything down word for word. It’s OK to paraphrase. Put quote marks only around actual quotes. If you didn’t put quote marks around something in your notes DON’T put the quote marks in your story.
Second, create your own system of shorthand.
Shorthand is a system of writing in a code that allows you to take down words fast and accurately. There are some standard ways of doing that and courses to teach you how. It was developed for stenographers. Before recorders came along, offices employed people to take down dictation. The boss would dictate letters and reports to their secretaries who would then type them up. But you can create your own system of shorthand.
For example, instead of writing down the person’s name every time they start talking (when you are talking to multiple people at the same time) use their initials. You can also lv out the vwls of common wrds.
U can write in text message 4mat b/c that also wrks. I am not a fast writer so I came up with my own system early on in my career. I put ?? when I’m not sure what the person said but I don’t want to interrupt them. I put ** when I want to go back to it to follow up. I circle words or underline them when I sense it is important.
For something outrageous I write !!
Writing down words and ideas cements them in your mind.
Finally, use a pen and paper. There are a number of reasons to do this. If you are interviewing someone in person and you try to take your notes on a laptop or tablet, your head will be down half the time and you can’t circle stuff easily.
Second, there is some science behind the notion that we retain information better when we write things down hand to paper.
As a journalist, I was a messy note taker. That piece of paper in the photo image at the top of the story is an actual page of notes I once took. If I had time before I had to submit my article I would take the effort to type my notes onto a Word or Google Doc. Later I fell in love with spreadsheeting and would type my notes into a Google Spreadsheet, which would allow me to match up information with information from other interviews and sort them. This became handy when I was doing a story that involved a lot of interviews and complicated information.
When going to interviews I sometimes forgot a notepad and would have to grab paper anyway I could. I’ve taken notes in the margins of flyers and brochures and on the backside of stuff I got in the mail.
But the best practice is to always keep a notepad on you, just as photographers always keep a camera on them.
Finally, when you are ready to start writing, write from your notes first before going to the recording. Use the recording to make sure you got your quotes right and that you paraphrased what the person said correctly. Trust that your brain and your ears and your hand will have taken down the best information and the most engaging quotes.
1. Why take notes if you are recording an interview?
2. What is the difference between quoting someone and paraphrasing something they said?
3. How good a notetaker are you?
A couple of years ago, I got into a heated argument with a white male lab mate about whether racial and gender inequities still existed in science. He argued that, having both made it to our Stanford cancer biology lab for graduate school, the two of us, a white man and a Black woman, were functionally equal, and that attempts to distinguish us in future grant and fellowship applications were unfair. When I explained, among many differences, the unequal labor I took on by running a pipeline program for underrepresented aspiring physician-scientists, he replied, “If you gave a fuck about your academic career, you would stop doing that stuff.”
His attitude is not unique; it represents a backlash against baby steps made toward any form of equity that was also reflected in the 2023 Supreme Court decision to overturn affirmative action. But in recent months, as attacks on diversity equity, and inclusion have unfolded with shocking fervor from the highest office in the country, I have been confronted with terrifying questions: Was my lab mate right? Has DEI work become antithetical to advancement in science?
Science, as a seemingly objective craft, has historically not cared about the self. Science does not care if you couldn’t spend free time in the lab because you had to work to support your family. Science does not care that the property taxes in the low-income area where you attended high school couldn’t fund a microscope to get you excited about biology. Science does not care that I’ve never once gotten to take a science class taught by a Black woman.
Such experiences, and many, many more, contribute to the leaky pipeline, a reference to how individuals with marginalized identities become underrepresented in STEM due to retention problems on the path from early science education to tenured professorships. The gaps are chasmic. A couple years ago, Science published the demographics of principal investigators receiving at least three National Institutes of Health grants, so-called super-PIs. Among the nearly 4,000 of these super-PIs, white men unsurprisingly dominated, accounting for 73.4 percent, while there was a grand total of 12 Black women in this category.
Pipeline programs—initiatives aimed at supporting individuals from underrepresented groups—are meant to patch the leaks. They are rooted in the understanding that minorities are important to science, not just for representation’s sake, but because diverse perspectives counteract a scientific enterprise that, because scientists are human, has historically perpetuated racial, gender and other social inequities. Such programs range from early-stage programs like BioBus, a mobile laboratory in New York City that exposes K–12 students to biology, to higher-level pipeline programs like the one I run at Stanford, which provide targeted early-career support to aspiring scientists from diverse and marginalized backgrounds.
These programs work. Participants in the McNair Scholars Program, a federally funded pipeline program aimed at increasing Ph.D. attainment among first-generation, low-income and otherwise underrepresented students, are almost six times more likely to enroll in graduate school than their nonparticipant counterparts. These programs are designed to see the student’s full self, and they recognize the extra labor minorities and women disproportionately take on, like mentoring trainees or running their own pipeline programs.
Sadly, in deference to state laws and the current presidential administration’s attacks, more than 300 public and private universities have dismantled at least some of their DEI efforts. In February, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, killed its Inclusive Excellence Program, an eight-year-old, $60 million initiative that supported programming at universities to draw more underrepresented groups into STEM. As Science reported at the time, all evidence of the program disappeared from the Howard Hughes webpage. Shortly thereafter, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting science, technology and (previously) equality, canceled the second year of its Science Diversity Leadership Awards, even though, as The Guardian reported, the process of selecting new awardees was already underway.
Researchers and academics have held rallies to stand up for science and have proposed bills for state-funded scientific research institutes, but many have remained silent on DEI. Meanwhile, after a pause to screen for DEI language, the NIH has resumed grant approvals (albeit not at its normal pace), and private organizations like Chan Zuckerberg continue to fund “uncontroversial” science. But science will never be whole without the inclusion of trainees from underrepresented backgrounds, who broaden and improve scientific questions and practice in service of a diverse human population. And without pipeline programs, the gaps will grow.
That is why I am calling on academics to stand up not just for science but also for DEI. Stand up against the leaky pipeline. Universities and private research institutes must reinstate language on diversity, equity and inclusion, particularly for pipeline programs. Faculty, students and community members should contact the heads of local universities and private organizations like Howard Hughes and Chan Zuckerberg, demanding reinstatement of diversity language and programs. Labs and research groups should adopt diversity statements reaffirming this commitment.
Given the financial jeopardy federal policy has imposed on pipeline programs, states should also step in. Sixteen state attorneys general recently sued the National Science Foundation for, among other things, reneging on its long-established, congressionally mandated commitment to building a STEM workforce that draws from underrepresented groups; states can take their advocacy further by filling funding gaps. Individuals and private organizations can donate either directly to nonprofits like BioBus or to universities with funds earmarked for pipeline programs.
Many minority students who have done DEI advocacy worry they can no longer discuss their work when applying for fellowships or faculty positions. To counteract this, universities and research organizations should proactively ask applicants about their leadership and advocacy work, to signal that these are the kinds of employees they want. And scientists who are not from underrepresented groups should leverage their privilege—volunteer for mentorship programs, serve on graduate admissions committees to fight for diversity, advise young scientists from underrepresented backgrounds.
Show my lab mate that he was wrong. Caring and succeeding are not mutually exclusive.
On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I started thinking about generative AI.
I was thinking about generative AI because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead.
She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.
If you haven’t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I was not entirely sure I could or should keep peddling.
But I made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I’d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.
I believe those French riders might’ve said something about “cheating” by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you’re valuing about the experience.
If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we’ve traveled to, and if—as happened to me a different day—you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.
Having the “best” vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I actively wished for the boost an e-bike could’ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.
I think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I don’t regret it.
Like I said, it’s a matter of balance and values.
The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn’t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.
But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us.
I was thinking of generative AI because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation.
You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn’t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.
You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.
You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.
Because I don’t bike all that often at home, my primary “training” for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I was well prepared. And I was, but well prepared doesn’t mean you aren’t going to face some very challenging moments.
There were several times—like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period—where I would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.
I’m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn’t have been necessary or even desirable, when I would’ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it’s available, why not use it?
This would have signaled a shift in the values I initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I was glad to not have the temptation.
I like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren’t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I often know that I’ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I take—the fewer the better, because it means I was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.
As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I’ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.
For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what’s important in a given experience, but if that’s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.
For writing especially, it’s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost.
Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.
Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn’t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them.
But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.
Academic researchers are worried that the government’s plans to stop investing in the development of messenger RNA vaccines, a technology university scientists first used to help develop the COVID-19 vaccines, will undermine the United States’ standing as a global leader in biomedical research and development.
As promising as mRNA technology may be for treating a range of maladies, including numerous types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, its role in developing the COVID vaccine has thrust it into a political crossfire, fueled by the Trump administration’s smoldering criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic.
Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., director of the Department of Health and Human Services, who frequently cites misinformation about vaccines and other public health issues, announced that the department is winding down mRNA vaccine research under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and canceling $500 million worth of contracts and grants with numerous biotech companies and Emory University in Atlanta.
“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy, a lawyer by training, said in a statement, claiming that “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”
Jeff Coller, director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, whose own graduate student helped develop Moderna’s COVID vaccine, said that “mRNA technology is incredibly misunderstood by the public and many of our politicians.”
Despite that, “the science has always been consistently clear about the powerful medical benefits of the mRNA platform,” he said. “It’s saved millions of lives, is incredibly safe, has huge potential and will revolutionize medicine in the next 100 years. Yet, we’re ceding American leadership in this technology.”
The half-a-billion-dollar cut comes at the same time that the Trump administration has withdrawn support for federally funded scientific research that doesn’t align with its ideological views, including projects focused on vaccine hesitancy, LGBTQ+ health and climate change.
According to a report from STAT News, the 181-page document Kennedy cited as his evidence that mRNA vaccines aren’t safe or effective references disputed studies written by other skeptics of COVID mitigation protocols, including stay-at-home orders and vaccines.
Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who criticized the NIH’s pandemic guidance in 2020, has also publicly defended the decision on Fox News, Steven Bannon’s podcast War Room and in an opinion article he published in The Washington Post Tuesday.
In his op-ed, Bhattacharya acknowledged that mRNA is a “promising technology” that “may yet deliver breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer,” but that “as a vaccine intended for broad public use, especially during a public health emergency, the platform has failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not manage public trust in the coronavirus vaccines, largely because it chose a strategy of mandates rather than a risk-based approach and did not properly acknowledge Americans’ growing concerns regarding safety and effectiveness,” he wrote.
The vast majority of scientists agree that the mRNA-based COVID vaccine—which was created in record time as a result of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, launched in 2020—is generally safe and effective.
“I’m concerned about [the cut] weakening our country and putting us at a disadvantage,” said an mRNA researcher who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. “The promise of mRNA is almost limitless, and I’d like to see those advances being made in this country. But currently it seems those advances are more likely to come from Europe and Asia. I’m also worried about the impact this could have on our economy—this is a growing field of industry.”
Coller, of Johns Hopkins, said Kennedy’s decision to withdraw funding for mRNA vaccine research has more than financial implications.
“It was a political shot across the bow of the entire research community, both in industry and academia,” Coller said. “What it says is that the government doesn’t want to support this technology and is going to make sure it doesn’t happen. If you’re an academic thinking about starting a new program in mRNA medicines, don’t waste your time.”
And now it will be even easier for political whims to drive the government’s scientific research priorities. Last week, Trump issued an executive order that will put political appointees—rather than subject-matter experts—in charge of federal grant-making decisions.
Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said that while Kennedy’s decision won’t end all of the nation’s mRNA research, “the indication that a certain technology or scientific area won’t be pursued regardless of the progress made so far is worrisome as a concept.”
That’s in part because “when we unilaterally close the door on a specific type of research or technology, we don’t know what would have come from that,” she said. “It’s not to say that every research project using every technology and scientific tool will necessarily lead to a cure or breakthrough, but the initial funding of these projects shows that there was promise that made it worth exploring.”
Both Kennedy and Bhattacharya have said the government will continue to support research on other uses of mRNA technology unrelated to infectious disease vaccines. But experts say separating those research areas isn’t so simple.
“They’re all interconnected,” said Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “If you take away funding in the infectious disease space and innovation doesn’t happen there, it’s also not happening in other spaces where mRNA technology is used.”
That will create a “huge problem for researchers,” he added, “because a lot of fields are using this technology, and if it’s not moving forward, it closes doors.”
The judge denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to block the anti-DEI law.
Just_Super/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Ruling in part that professors lack First Amendment protections in the classroom, a federal judge denied an effort from college faculty and students in Alabama to block a 2024 state law that banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs as well as the teaching of so-called divisive concepts.
The plaintiffs, who include students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and professors at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, argued in court filings and at hearings that the legislation known as Senate Bill 129 amounted to state-sponsored censorship and infringed on their rights under the First and 14th Amendments. The professors alleged that they had to cancel class projects or events and faced other questions about their classroom conduct from administrators because of the law. They’ve also changed course material as a result.
R. David Proctor, chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, found that while the professors and the Alabama NAACP had standing to sue, they weren’t likely to succeed at this time. For instance, he ruled that the professors aren’t protected by the First Amendment because their “in-class instruction constitutes government speech.”
Furthermore, Proctor wrote, based on other rulings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, “when there is a dispute about what is taught in the classroom, the university’s interests outweigh those of a professor, and the professor’s interest in academic freedom and free speech do not displace the university’s interest inside the classroom.”
The plaintiffs said Proctor’s ruling was disappointing.
“I feel incredibly dismayed that SB 129 is allowed to continue going into the new school year,” said Sydney Testman, one of the students who sued, in a statement. “As a senior at University of Alabama at Birmingham, I’ve seen firsthand how SB 129 has transformed my college campus for the worst. Voices have been silenced, opportunities have been revoked, and meaningful community engagement has faded. This decision undermines the need for students to properly feel a sense of belonging and inclusion on campus.”
Ever since 15 private colleges and universities teamed up to launch the Common App 50 years ago, the college admissions form has shifted practices and technology to meet the changing needs of institutions and students.
For instance, the latest iteration of the application, which opened Aug. 1 for the 2026–27 academic year, has what the organization calls a “refreshed look” and a new question that allows students to share their experiences with working at a paid job or taking care of their siblings. Common App, the nonprofit that runs the portal, piloted the Responsibilities and Circumstances question over the last three years, which showed in part “the importance of giving students space—beyond the personal essay—to share how these factors have shaped their high school experience,” the organization wrote in its innovation guide.
Common App is continuing to build out its Direct Admissions program, in which eligible students get an admissions offer before they actually apply. In its second year, 119 institutions have participated in the initiative and more than 700,000 students received offers.
Nearly 1.5 million first-time applicants completed the Common App in the 2024–25 cycle, submitting more than 10 million applications, according to a report released this week. That included just over 571,000 first-generation students—a 14 percent increase compared to the previous cycle. The Common App is aiming to continue to increase the number of applicants who are first-generation and from low- or middle-income households as it seeks to close equity gaps.
For this current cycle, more than 1,100 institutions are participating in the Common App, which includes 10 community colleges—yet another change for the organization aimed at ensuring students know about the available opportunities.
As the organization marks its 50th anniversary, CEO Jenny Rickard sat down with Inside Higher Ed to talk about how the Common App has changed over the years and what’s next. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: How has the founding and the history of Common App influenced the organization today?
Jenny Rickard has led Common App since 2016.
A: The thing about Common App that is unique is how its mission actually has not changed over the 50 years of history. It still is an organization that is governed by our members. The mission has always been to simplify the admission process to enable more students to gain access to higher education. So the idea of trying to simplify the college application process by collaborating and working with all the different stakeholders in the admission process—that include students, applicants, school counselors and, obviously, admission officers—is how we go about developing this application, and it’s critically important that we listen to all of those different constituencies. Over the 50 years of Common App, what has changed is technology and the demand for higher education has continued to grow over that time. Just as the times have changed, we’ve expanded the types of institutions that we serve. As a result of that, the students and the different high schools or secondary schools that we’re able to reach.
Q: As the demographics of who is attending college have changed, Common App has made an effort to adjust to that, such as working to better serve financially independent students. So what are the biggest demographic shifts happening now and that you see coming in the applicant pool over the next few years? And how are you looking to accommodate and invest in those changes?
A: I think one of the main challenges over the past 50 years has actually been reaching different socioeconomic groups. So our moon shot that we launched to close our gap in the income bands of students using Common App shined a light on the access challenges that higher ed has faced. And some of the initiatives that we have launched are to address that gap—70 percent of the students using Common App to apply to college are from above the national median income and 30 percent are below. And that’s something that has been pretty constant in the college admissions space. We’re working through some of the initiatives that we’ve launched to reach out to more low- and middle-income students who may not think that college is something that’s possible for them, to let them know it is possible and you can go to college, and colleges would love to see you there.
So it’s trying to go beyond addressing some of what I’d call the logistical barriers that students face to apply to college and get to some of the social and economic barriers that students face in applying to college. The main theme of what we’re trying to accomplish these days is expanding access to students who have felt that higher education may not be attainable for them.
Q: One of those initiatives is direct admissions. Why is that something you wanted to invest in and how’s the program going?
A: There are students who won’t even create a Common App account because they fear that rejection. And so one of the things that we’re working on is, how do we give students the positive reinforcement that you are going to be able to find a college? There are colleges that would love to enroll you. That can then inspire them to not only perhaps apply to some of the colleges that are reaching out to them, but also maybe think more broadly about where they might want to go to school and understand that they have some agency in this process.
How we went about doing our direct admission work was inspired by the state of Idaho that had launched a program to let high school students know about the state institutions that they could get into. And we looked at that and thought, “Wow, what could Common App do nationally to help students in states that may not have a direct admission program, but also be able to expose them to the 1,100 colleges and universities that are members of this nonprofit membership association?”
We did three different pilots to email students. We worked on the language and tried to understand from the student perspective what they were experiencing. We worked with our member colleges to understand the process from their vantage point as well as school counselors to see what might work best for their students and how to support them in this effort. And after the three pilots, we decided we could scale it and also enhance the technology so that we went beyond an email notification.
Once they’re in Common App, they can now have a dashboard to see which schools would already admit them if they just continued in the process with those institutions. Every year, we make enhancements to the process as we learn from all the different stakeholders about which aspects are supporting students the best and which are supporting the institutions the best.
Q: And the number of institutions participating in the direct admissions program is going to increase to more than 200 this fall, correct?
A: I found it overwhelming, in a really great way, that we reached out to over 700,000 individual students with direct admission offers last year. Thinking about the scale that we have and being able to provide that positive reinforcement to help encourage students to continue in the admission process and be able to attain higher education is really exciting.
Q: Certain elements of the admissions process are under scrutiny, such as concerns about standardized tests. I recently wrote about a report led by a Common App researcher that found letters of reference for some minority groups tend to skew shorter. What do you make of those debates and how do you think college admissions will change over the next several years?
A: As technology changes and institutions look at their own way of doing their admission processes, we will continue to work with our members to understand what they are experiencing and what they are wanting in order to enroll the classes of students that they want and who will thrive on their campuses. We have a common platform, but there is also flexibility by institutional type, as well as a section for colleges to have their own questions beyond what’s on the common form. That format has provided the flexibility for us to be able to have a very diverse group of members, and also in welcoming associate’s degree–granting community colleges to the platform.
We’ve been constantly evolving as the higher education environment has evolved, as technology has evolved. When you look back at Common App 50 years ago, its technology inspiration was the photocopier, and the idea was a really great idea of admissions deans seeing that they were asking some similar questions, maybe they could streamline this process for students. And then floppy disks came along, and admissions officers and college counselors said, “We need to move into this floppy disk area.” And they quickly pivoted when the internet came out, and in 1998 launched the first online application. So we will continue to evolve. Obviously, with artificial intelligence, we’re looking into how this can assist in the process.
Q: Common App has reams of data about students’ applications, and the organization has worked to make that information more easily available. What do you see as Common App’s role in the world of higher ed research?
A: We were very grateful to the Gates Foundation who, over five years ago, awarded us a grant to create a data warehouse so that we could share nationally about trends in the college application process and help shine a light on areas where there are differences across institutions and across students. So you pointed to that research about how recommendations for some populations of students aren’t as strong as others. What does that mean? And is that a reflection of the students? Is it a reflection of the secondary schools that they might attend?
Because when you think about the great diversity of colleges, the diversity of secondary schools is that much more, and the opportunities that students have [are] so different, and being able to really highlight what that means from a student access perspective is critically important for all of us to try to make sure that students have the same level of opportunities.
So investing in that data warehouse—and that investment from the Gates Foundation—is something that has really transformed us, not just only from the research reports that we’re able to do but also during COVID, we were able to see right away that first-generation college students’ applications had really dropped off. And we were able to alert all of our members that COVID was really having an impact on first-generation college students and [look into] what we could all do to try to mitigate that negative impact.
It also has been important for us to be able to understand how students are persisting within the Common App, and to help us enhance the system to try to ensure that students are not only able to start an application but to complete the application. And we’ve been able to collaborate with organizations like the National Student Clearinghouse to see if students are persisting in college. We have been able to add the texture that the admission application provides to the clearinghouse data to understand more about student behavior, not only in Common App but also in college.
I see that as all critical in terms of informing our broad community about the kinds of changes we might need to make or things that we might want to stop doing because it’s not helping the situation. The data has really just shined a light on a number of the challenges in the admission process and informed us about ways that we might be able to mitigate those challenges. Direct admission is one of those.
Gov. Braun has appointed the entire board at Indiana University.
Anna Moneymaker/Staff/Getty Images North America
This article has been updated to reflect changes to WFYI’s original reporting
Indiana governor Mike Braun said that Indiana University’s Board of Trustees should “take action” if allegations that President Pamela Whitten plagiarized her doctoral dissertation are true, WFYI reported.
Braun’s comments this week came in response to reporter questions about the plagiarism allegations. A report earlier this year found parts of her dissertation, published in 1996, appeared to plagiarize other academic research. IU officials brushed off that report, telling media outlets that the university investigated the plagiarism allegations in the summer of 2024 and determined the claims had no merit. But last week, a local newspaper reported new findings that indicate Whitten copied other research.
Braun, a Republican, said at a press event that he expects the board “to get on that right away,” responding to the hypothetical about the Whitten allegations. He didn’t specify how the trustees should look into the charges.
IU’s board is entirely appointed by Braun, following a change to how trustees are selected earlier this year. Previously, the governor appointed six members while three others were elected by alumni. But a provision in Indiana’s latest budget bill now gives the governor full power over who serves on the board, which he quickly exercised, selecting new trustees in June and July.
IU did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
The plagiarism allegations add further controversy to Whitten’s time at Indiana. Whitten, who has been president since 2021, has been accused of retaliating against a professor for criticizing her and stifling academic freedom, while also imposing broad restrictions on campus speech. Indiana has also tried to prevent professors who took buyouts from criticizing the university.
IU faculty voted no confidence in Whitten last year following a string of controversies.
