As a college president, I see the promise of higher education fulfilled every day. Many students at my institution, Whittier College, are the first in their families to attend a university. Some are parents or military veterans who have already served in the workforce and are returning to school to gain new skills, widen their perspectives and improve their job prospects.
These students are the future of our communities. We will rely on them to fill critical roles in health care, education, science, entrepreneurship and public service. They are also the students who stand to lose the most under the proposed fiscal year 2026 federal budget, and those who were already bracing for impact from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts, including to the health care coverage many of them count on.
The drive with which these extraordinary students — both traditionally college-aged and older — pursue their degrees, often while juggling caregiving commitments or other responsibilities, never fails to inspire me.
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We do not yet know the precise contours of the spending provisions Congress will consider once funding from a continuing resolution expires at the end of September. Yet we expect they will take their cues from the president’s proposed budget, which slashes support for students and parents and especially hammers those already struggling to improve their lives by earning a college degree, with cuts to education, health and housing that could take effect as early as October 1.
That budget would mean lowering the maximum Pell Grant award from $7,395 to $5,710, reversing a decade of progress. For the nearly half of Whittier students who received Pell Grants last year, this rollback would profoundly jeopardize their chances of finishing school.
So would the proposal to severely restrict Federal Work-Study, which supports a third of Whittier students according to our most recent internal analysis, and to eliminate the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, which more than 16 percent of our student body relies upon. In addition, this budget would impose a cap on Direct PLUS Loans for Parents, which would impact roughly 60 percent of our parent borrowers. It would also do away with the Direct PLUS Loans for Graduates program.
These programs are lifelines, not just for our students but for students all across the country. They fuel social mobility and prosperity by making education a force for advancement through personal work ethic rather than a way to rack up debt.
If enacted, these proposed cuts would gut the support system that has enabled millions of low-income students to earn a college degree.
Higher education is a bridge. To cross it and achieve their full potential, students from all walks of life must have access to the support and resources colleges provide, whether through partnerships with local high schools or with professional gateway programs in engineering, accounting, business, nursing, physical therapy and more. Yet, to access these invaluable programs, they must be enrolled. How will they reach such heights if they suddenly can’t afford to advance their studies?
The harm I’ve described doesn’t stop with cuts to financial aid, loans and services. Proposed reductions also target research funding for NASA, NIH and the National Science Foundation. One frozen NASA grant has already led to the loss of paid student research fellowships at Whittier, a setback not just in dollars but in momentum for students building real-world skills, networks and résumés.
These research opportunities often enable talented first-generation students to connect their classroom learning to career pathways, opening the door to graduate school, lab technician roles and futures in STEM fields. We’ve seen how federal funding has supported student projects in everything from climate data analysis to environmental health.
Stripping away support for hands-on research undermines the federal government’s own calls for colleges like ours to better prepare students for the workforce by dismantling the very mechanisms that make such preparation possible.
It’s particularly disheartening that these changes will disproportionately hurt those students who are working the hardest to achieve their objectives, who have done everything right and have the most to lose from this lack of investment in the future.
The preservation and strengthening of Pell, Work-Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity grants and federal loan programs is not a partisan issue. It is a moral and economic imperative for a nation that has long been proud to be a land of opportunity.
Let’s build a system for strivers that opens doors instead of slamming them shut.
Let’s recommit to higher education as a public good. Today’s students are willing to work hard to deserve our continuing belief in them.
Kristine E. Dillon is the president of Whittier College in California.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
PITTSBURGH — Saisri Akondi had already started a company in her native India when she came to Carnegie Mellon University to get a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, business and design.
Before she graduated, she had co-founded another: D.Sole, for which Akondi, who is 28, used the skills she’d learned to create a high-tech insole that can help detect foot complications from diabetes, which results in 6.8 million amputations a year.
D.Sole is among technology companies in Pittsburgh that collectively employ a quarter of the local workforce at wages much higher than those in the city’s traditional steel and other metals industries. That’s according to the business development nonprofit the Pittsburgh Technology Council, which says these companies pay out an annual $27.5 billion in salaries alone.
A “significant portion” of Pittsburgh’s transformation into a tech hub has been driven by international students like Akondi, said Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, a coalition of civic groups and government agencies promoting innovation businesses.
The Pittsburgh Innovation District along Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, near the campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
“Next Happens Here,” reads the sign above the entrance to the co-working space where Luther works and technology companies are incubated, in an area near Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh dubbed the Pittsburgh Innovation District. The neighborhood is filled with people of various ethnicities speaking a variety of languages over lunch and coffee.
What might happen next to the international students and graduates who have helped fuel this tech economy has become an anxiety-inducing subject of those conversations, as the second presidential administration of Donald Trump brings visa crackdowns, funding cuts and other attacks on higher education — including here, in a state that voted for Trump.
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Inside the bubble of the universities and the tech sector, “there’s so much support you get,” Akondi observed, in a gleaming conference room at Carnegie Mellon. “But there still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”
Much of the ongoing conversation about international students has focused on undergraduates and their importance to university revenues and enrollment. Many of these students — especially in graduate schools — fill a less visible role in the economy, however. They conduct research that can lead to commercial applications, have skills employers need and start a surprising number of their own companies in the United States.
Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, at one of the organization’s co-working spaces. One reason tech companies have come to Pittsburgh “is because of those non-native-born workers,” Luther says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
“The high-tech engineering and computer science activities that are central to regional economic development today are hugely dependent on these students,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies technology and innovation. “If you go into a lab, it will be full of non-American people doing the crucial research work that leads to intellectual property, technology partnerships and startups.”
Some 143 U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more were started by people who came to the country as international students, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that conducts research on immigration and trade. These companies have an average of 860 employees each and include SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
Whether or not they invent new products or found businesses of their own, international graduates are “a vital source” of workers for U.S.-based tech companies, the National Science Foundation reported last year in an annual survey on the state of American science and engineering.
Dave Mawhinney, founding executive director of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, with Saisri Akondi, an international graduate and co-founder of the startup D.Sole. “There still is a part of the population that asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” says Akondi. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
It’s supply and demand, said Dave Mawhinney, a professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon and founding executive director of its Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, which helps many of that school’s students do research that can lead to products and startups. “And the demand for people with those skills exceeds the supply.”
That’s in part because comparatively few Americans are going into fields including science, technology, engineering and math. Even before the pandemic disrupted their educations, only 20 percent ofcollege-bound American high school students were prepared for college-level courses in these subjects. U.S. students scored lower in math than their counterparts in 21 of the 37 participating nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on an international assessment test in 2022, the most recent year for which the outcomes are available.
One result is that international students make up more than a third of master’s and doctoral degree recipients in science and engineering at American universities. Two-thirds of U.S. university graduate students and more than half of workers in AI and AI-related fields are foreign born, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
“A real point of strength, and a reason our robotics companies especially have been able to grow their head counts, is because of those non-native-born workers,” said Luther, in Pittsburgh. “Those companies are here specifically because of that talent.”
International students are more than just contributors to this city’s success in tech. “They have been drivers” of it, Mawhinney said, in his workspace overlooking the studio where the iconic children’s television program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was taped.
Jake Mohin, director of solution engineering at a company that uses AI to predict how chemicals will synthesize, uses a co-working space at InnovatePGH in Pittsburgh’s Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
“Every year, 3,000 of the smartest people in the world come here, and a large proportion of those are international,” he said of Carnegie Mellon’s graduate students. “Some of them go into the research laboratories and work on new ideas, and some come having ideas already. You have fantastic students who are here to help you build your company or to be entrepreneurs themselves.”
Boosters of the city’s tech-driven turnaround say what’s been happening in Pittsburgh is largely unappreciated elsewhere. It followed the effective collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, when unemployment hit 18 percent.
In 2006, Google opened a small office at Carnegie Mellon to take advantage of the faculty and student expertise in computer science and other fields there and at neighboring higher education institutions; the company later moved to a nearby former Nabisco factory and expanded its Pittsburgh workforce to 800 employees. Apple, software and AI giant SAP and other tech firms followed.
“It was the talent that brought them here, and so much of that talent is international,” said Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
Sixty-one percent of the master’s and doctoral students at Carnegie Mellon come from abroad, according to the university. So do 23 percent of those at Pitt, an analysis of federal data shows.
The city has become a world center for self-driving car technology. Uber opened an advanced research center here. The autonomous vehicle company Motional — a joint venture between Hyundai and the auto parts supplier Aptiv — moved in. So did the Ford- and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI, which eventually dissolved, but whose founders went on to create the Pittsburgh-based self-driving truck developer Stack AV. The Ford subsidiary Latitude AI and the autonomous flight company Near Earth Autonomy also are headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Among other tech firms with homes here: Duolingo, which has 830 employees and is worth an estimated $22 billion. It was co-founded by a professor at Carnegie Mellon and a graduate of the university who both came to the United States as international students, from Guatemala and Switzerland, respectively.
InnovatePGH tracks 654 startups that are smaller than those big conglomerates but together employ an estimated 25,000 workers. Unemployment in Pittsburgh (3.5 percent in April) is below the national average (3.9 percent). Now Pitt and others are developing Hazelwood Green, which includes a former steel mill that closed in 1999, into a new district housing life sciences, robotics and other technology companies.
In a series of webinars about starting businesses, offered jointly to students at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, the most popular installment is about how to found a startup on a student visa, said Rhonda Schuldt, director of Pitt’s Big Idea Center, in a storefront on Forbes Avenue in the Innovation District.
One of the co-working spaces operated by InnovatePHG in the Pittsburgh Innovation District. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
Some international undergraduates continue into graduate school or take jobs with companies that sponsor them so they can keep working on their ideas, Schuldt said.
“They want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” she said.
There are clear worries that this momentum could come to a halt if the supply of international students continues a slowdown that began even before the new Trump term, thanks to visa processing delays and competition from other countries.
The number of international graduate students dropped in the fall by 2 percent, before the presidential election, according to the Institute of International Education. Further declines are expected following the government’s pause on student visa interviews, publicity surrounding visa revocations and arrests and cuts to federal research funding.
Rhonda Schuldt, director of the Big Idea Center at the University of Pittsburgh. International students “want to stay in Pittsburgh and build businesses here,” Schuldt says. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
It’s too early to know what will happen this fall. But D. Sole co-founder Saisri Akondi has heard from friends who planned to come to the United States that they can’t get visas. “Most of these students wanted to start companies,” she said.
“I would be lying if I said nothing has changed,” said Akondi, who has been accepted into a master’s degree program in business administration at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business under her existing student visa, though she said her company will stay in Pittsburgh. “The fear has increased.”
This could affect whether tech companies continue to come to Pittsburgh, said Russo, at least unless and until more Americans are better prepared for and recruited into tech-related graduate programs. That’s something universities have not yet begun to do, since the unanticipated threat to their international students erupted only in March, and that would likely take years.
Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. If the number of international students declines, “Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” she asks. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
“Who’s going to do the research? Who’s going to be in these teams?” asked Russo. “We’re hurting ourselves deeply.”
The impact could transcend the research and development ecosystem. “I think we’ll see almost immediate ramifications in Pittsburgh in terms of higher-skilled, higher-wage companies hiring here,” said Sean Luther, at InnovatePGH. “And that affects the grocery shops, the barbershops, the real estate.”
There are other, more nuanced impacts.
Mike Madden, left, vice president of InnovatePGH and director of the Pittsburgh Innovation District, talks with University of Pittsburgh graduate student Jayden Serenari in one of InnovatePGH’s co-working spaces. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report
“Whether we like it or not, it’s a global world. It’s a global economy. The problems that these students want to solve are global problems,” Schuldt said. “And one of the things that is really important in solving the world’s problems is to have a robust mix of countries, of cultures — that opportunity to learn how others see the world. That is one of the most valuable things students tell us they get here.”
Pittsburgh is a prime example of a place whose economy is vulnerable to a decline in the number of international students, said Brookings’ Muro. But it’s not unique.
“These scholars become entrepreneurs. They’re adding to the U.S. economy new ideas and new companies,” he said. Without them, “the economy would be smaller. Research wouldn’t get done. Journal articles wouldn’t be written. Patents wouldn’t be filed. Fewer startups would occur.”
The United States, said Muro, “has cleaned up by being the absolute central place for this. The system has been incredibly beneficial to the United States. The hottest technologies are inordinately reliant on these excellent minds from around the world. And their being here is critical to American leadership.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected]orjpm.82 on Signal.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
ELYRIA, Ohio —Nolan Norman had no idea what microelectronic manufacturing entailed when his adviser at Midview High suggested he take the school’s new class on it last year.
Yet once he started fusing metal to circuit boards, he says he was hooked. “When I was little, I thought that wizards made these things,” the 18-year-old joked of the electronics he’s now able to assemble. Despite long “hating” the idea of college, he was motivated to enroll in the microelectronic manufacturing bachelor’s degree program at nearby Lorain County Community College this fall. He’s spent the summer working in a job in the field that gives him both college credit and pays $18 an hour. Said Norman: “Now I’m seeing the path to get to be one of these wizards.”
Norman’s path wasn’t accidental: Two years ago, Lorain County Community College partnered with Midview High to create the course, one of several ways the college is trying to recruit and train more young people for jobs in manufacturing.
Nationally, more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs are going unfilled, many of them in advanced manufacturing, which requires the sort of high-tech skills and postsecondary credentials that Norman is working toward. President Donald Trump is leveraging tariffs in part, he has said, to grow manufacturing jobs in the United States, including those that involve machinery or robotics and training after high school.
Nolan Norman, 18, an incoming freshman at Lorain County Community College, observes a circuit board under a microscope on Aug. 6 in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Yet as it is, colleges have struggled to add and revise their training based on employer input and prepare students for tomorrow’s jobs, not just today’s. In the area surrounding Lorain County Community College, officials estimate that they’d have to teach four times the number of students to meet today’s unfilled manufacturing jobs.
Gogebic Community College, in rural Michigan, suspended its 22-year-old manufacturing technology program this spring because of low enrollment. “We could not get people into it,” registrar Karen Ball said, speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the institution. “The needs in manufacturing are evolving so quickly, that to stay on top of it is too difficult.”
And then there is the history of manufacturing in communities like Norman’s, where so many factories moved to other countries in recent decades. The manufacturing workforce in the Great Lakes region shrunk by 35 percent between 2000 and 2010, a loss of 1.6 million jobs. But nationwide manufacturing has seen some recovery since then, rising from 11.5 million manufacturing jobs in 2010 to 12.9 million today, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group.
“If your family experienced tumultuous layoffs in steel or automotives, they may see manufacturing as a risky pathway rather than a solid pathway,” said Marisa White, vice president for enrollment management and student services at Lorain County Community College. “Individuals are like, ‘I don’t want my kids to go into something like that.’”
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White and other Lorain officials, though, have been slowly making strides in adding more students in recent years — and in trying to keep up with the needs of companies.
Printed circuit boards before components are attached in a lab at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
In addition to partnering with Midview High, staff from the college set up tables at food banks and Boys and Girls Clubs where they answer questions about its manufacturing degree and certificate programs, and even partner with a nearby manufacturing nonprofit that uses holograms and a robot dog to get the attention of high school students. That is paying off, officials say. The college now produces 120 graduates each year in advanced manufacturing — a category that includes industrial engineering tech, mechanical engineering tech, welding, automation and microelectronics — compared to 43, a decade ago.
It has also cultivated a large network of local employers and a system to do market research before launching certificate programs. In some cases, it partners with companies that pay for employees to get training at Lorain college. In a classroom on a recent Wednesday, one of those electrician apprentices, Tyler Tector, 25, had rigged a series of plastic tubes to a small air pump. He hoped it would generate enough suction to keep its grip on his lab partner’s smartphone, which dangled precariously in the air (and already had a cracked screen from some previous misadventure).
The assignment was part of a class in practical applications of fluid power. Tector’s employer, Ford Motor Co., was sending him and a small group of other apprentice electricians to take this class once a week, so they could better work with the growing number of robots at the local engine plant.
Nick Wade, an electrical apprentice for Ford Motor Co., works on a circuitry exercise during professor Brian Iselin’s practical applications of fluid power course at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
“Robots are the best co-workers,” joked Tector, who added that he’s not worried about bots putting him out of a job because so many humans are needed to fix them. “They do exactly what you tell them to do. They don’t ask questions. They don’t yell and complain.” They are finicky though, he added. If anything in a robot’s area gets bumped out of place even a fraction of an inch, that could throw the machine off and require reprogramming.
So many employers told college officials they need technicians with basic knowledge across a range of trades that the college is starting a new associate degree program in the fall called Multicraft Industrial Maintenance that will include lessons like the one Tector is doing but in a condensed format.
“Because of the high-tech nature of things, employers don’t want students siloed into trades anymore,” said Brian Iselin, an assistant professor in manufacturing who is leading the effort.
Johnny Vanderford, who leads the college’s microelectronic manufacturing degree program, often spends part of his lunch break scouring LinkedIn for the latest job postings by local employers to see what skills they are looking for. His program’s model involves finding every student a paid internship, and students can take classes two days a week or in the evening to have the rest of the time free for paid work in the field.
Professor Brian Iselin teaches a course to employees of Ford’s Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Vanderford pointed to a PowerPoint slide showing more than 90 manufacturing companies in the area he said the college has worked with: “We basically tailor our curriculum to meet their workforce needs.” In some cases that means wedging into a class syllabus training on some specialized machine that might be used at only a handful of employers.
Rather than simply having advisory committees with a few large companies that meet occasionally, today Lorain and many other colleges follow a model that involves frequent discussions with company leaders, instructors directly participating in those meetings and a greater focus on the skills employers need.
“Those relationships take time,” said Shalin Jyotishi, managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at the think tank New America. He says that it is hard for other community colleges to replicate best practices from Lorain because they are labor-intensive to enact.
Employers also have a tendency to change their plans. For instance, when Tesla pledged to build an electrical vehicle plant in Flint, Michigan, the local Mott Community College started an EV program, said Jyotishi. But the plant never came. “The college still has a Tesla sign,” he said.
The numbers no longer add up at Gogebic Community College, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
When the college suspended its program in manufacturing technology in May, it had just three students.
As with many programs at the college, a single employee was charged with administering and teaching. Doing all that plus staying on top of nearby companies’ workforce needs was “unsustainable,” said Ball, the registrar.
The few small manufacturers in the area all say they have different needs, rather than one clear set of skills, she said, noting that “you can’t be a generalist in manufacturing.” Even when the college does identify a needed skill to teach, it takes at least six months to a year to get the program approved by college leaders and the accreditor. By then, companies might need something different.
And the pay offered by small manufacturers is often low, despite an expectation of training beyond a high school diploma, said Ball.
The Richard Desich SMART Center at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, houses the microelectronic manufacturing systems program, which teaches students about the manufacture of semiconductors. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Nationwide, automation has reduced the earning power for many manufacturing jobs, said Jyotishi of New America. “For a long time manufacturing was the bedrock of the middle class,” said Jyotishi. “That wage premium for manufacturing has actually gone away.”
And there’s a danger that as colleges aim to please employers, they will create programs that are too narrow, argues Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. (Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Columbia’s Teachers College.) “You don’t want specific skills training — you don’t want to just train students to work in a fab,” he said, referring to a facility where microchips and other electronics are produced. “Whenever schools buy a lot of specific equipment for training, I worry a lot. What students really need are broader skills.”
Even Lorain doesn’t always find the right fit. During the pandemic, the college started what it calls fast-track programs, which typically run 16 weeks, across a range of professional fields (not just manufacturing). But because of mixed success attracting students, officials recently slimmed the list from 60 to 13, said Tracy Green, vice president of strategic and institutional development at Lorain County Community College. And the college recently started winding down a program in industrial safety because of a lack of student interest, even though there are still a large number of job postings by local companies for jobs with those skills, said Iselin.
One provision in Trump’s new “one big, beautiful bill” promises a boost to manufacturing education, however. For the first time, the law will allow low-income students to use federal Pell Grants for short-term certificate programs, in what is known as Workforce Pell. It’s a change many community college leaders have been calling for for years as they have created more short-term programs in response to demand by students and employers who want to quickly gain new skills in fast-changing areas, including manufacturing. But that program won’t be up and running until the 2026-27 academic year.
The promise of a big new employer moving to town can galvanize student interest in manufacturing.
In Ohio, the talk for years has been a $28 billion Intel chip manufacturing plant under construction in Columbus. The facility is expected to bring some 3,000 jobs to the area, and the company has committed $50 million to workforce education in the state, including $2 million to Lorain County Community College, which it used to buy new classroom equipment, support student scholarships, and pay for program development and instructor training.
Chris Dukles, 36, an electrician apprentice for Ford Motor Co., takes notes during a course taught by Brian Iselin at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
The top graduates in Lorain County Community College’s microelectronic manufacturing program each year typically get internships at Intel’s closest existing plant, which is in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. It’s a motivator to work hard in their classes, some students say.
Lia Douglas, a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain, scored one of those slots and headed to Arizona last summer. The experience, though, was sobering.
“My plan really was to make a good impression with my internship, get a job maybe in Arizona even if it was for a year or two, and then try to move back to Ohio when they have an Ohio plant,” she said.
But one day last July, all the employees were unexpectedly summoned to an all-hands call where the company announced a wave of layoffs and reductions in some benefits that had interested Douglas, including a sabbatical program. This year, Intel announced that the opening of the Ohio plant has been delayed until 2030.
“I learned I had a little too much faith in a company and the promises of a company,” she said. “And it reminded me that at the end of the day, the company has to make money.”
She’s still glad she chose Lorain’s program, which has landed her several local internships and opened her eyes to the many small and mid-sized manufacturers in the area.
Lia Douglas is a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
And she has been hooked on a career in making things ever since she was in middle school and a family friend taught her a bit of welding. Her hero was Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show “MythBusters,” who she even got to meet at a comic book convention in Cleveland.
Douglas complains that students are told in high school that they either have to choose a trade for hands-on work or an academic track to prepare for a career behind a desk that might involve design and project management. She says that as manufacturing changes, there’s plenty of room to do both. In fact, she says, when a group of doctoral students from Kent State University recently visited the college’s clean room, she was amused to see them struggle with some of the tools the students routinely use in the microelectronic manufacturing program.
“It takes as much brainpower to figure out what is the right tool for the right process as getting a Ph.D.,” she said.
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
La joven de 18 años de Houston iba a comenzar clases este otoño en la Universidad de Texas en Tyler, donde le habían concedido una beca de 10.000 dólares al año. Esperaba que eso le permitiera alcanzar su sueño: un doctorado en Química, seguido de una carrera como profesora o investigadora.
“Y entonces se produjo el cambio en la matrícula estatal, y fue entonces cuando supe con certeza que tenía que dar un giro”, dijo Ximena. (The Hechinger Report se refiere a ella solo por su nombre de pila porque ella teme represalias por su situación migratoria).
Aunque Ximena pasó sus primeros años en el norte de México, la mayoría de sus recuerdos son de después de mudarse a Estados Unidos con su padre. Ha asistido a escuelas en Estados Unidos desde el jardín de infancia y, para ella, el 12.º grado consistió principalmente en explicar conceptos avanzados de química a sus compañeros de clase y dirigir laboratorios como asistente de enseñanza.
Pero en junio, los sueños de Ximena se vieron truncados cuando la oficina del fiscal general de Texas y la administración Trump colaboraron para poner fin a las disposiciones de una ley estatal que ofrecía a miles de estudiantes indocumentados como ella tasas de matrícula más bajas en las universidades públicas de Texas. Los funcionarios estatales y federales argumentaron con éxito ante los tribunales que la política vigente desde hacía mucho tiempo discriminaba a los ciudadanos estadounidenses de otros estados que pagaban una tasa más alta. Ese razonamiento se ha replicado ahora en demandas similares contra Kentucky, Oklahoma y Minnesota, como parte de una ofensiva más amplia contra el acceso de los inmigrantes a la educación pública.
En la UT Tyler, la matrícula y las tasas estatales para el próximo año académico ascienden a un total de 9.736 dólares, frente a los más de 25.000 dólares que pagan los estudiantes de fuera del estado. Ximena y su familia no podían permitirse el elevado coste de la matrícula, por lo que la joven se retiró. En su lugar, se matriculó en el Houston Community College, donde los costos para los estudiantes de fuera del estado son de 227 dólares por hora semestral, casi tres veces más que la tarifa para los residentes en el distrito. La escuela solo ofrece clases básicas de química de nivel universitario, por lo que, para prepararse para un doctorado o para trabajar en investigaciones especializadas, Ximena seguirá necesitando encontrar la manera de pagar una universidad de cuatro años en el futuro.
Su difícil situación es precisamente lo que los legisladores estatales de ambos partidos políticos esperaban evitar cuando aprobaron la Texas Dream Act o Ley de Sueños de Texas, una ley de 2001 que no solo abrió las puertas de la educación superior a los estudiantes indocumentados, sino que también tenía por objeto reforzar la economía y la mano de obra de Texas a largo plazo. Con esa ley, Texas se convirtió en el primero de más de dos docenas de estados en aplicar la matrícula estatal a los estudiantes indocumentados, y durante casi 24 años, esta política histórica se mantuvo intacta. Los legisladores conservadores propusieron repetidamente su derogación, pero a pesar de los años de control de un solo partido en la legislatura estatal, no hubo suficientes republicanos que apoyaran la derogación, incluso esta primavera, días antes de que la oficina del fiscal general de Texas y el Departamento de Justicia federal decidieran ponerle fin.
Ahora, a medida que se acerca el semestre de otoño, los estudiantes inmigrantes están sopesando si darse de baja de sus cursos o esperar a que se aclare cómo les afecta el acuerdo de consentimiento firmado por el estado y el Departamento de Justicia. Los defensores de los inmigrantes temen que las universidades de Texas estén excluyendo a posibles alumnos que se encuentran en situación legal y siguen reuniendo los requisitos para pagar la matrícula estatal a pesar de la sentencia judicial, incluidos los beneficiarios del programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA), los solicitantes de asilo y los que tienen Estatus de Protección Temporal o TPS, porque el personal de la universidad carece de conocimientos sobre inmigración y no ha recibido directrices claras sobre quién debe pagar exactamente la matrícula más alta.
En el Austin Community College, que presta servicio a un área tan grande como el estado de Connecticut, los miembros del consejo de administración no están seguros de cómo aplicar correctamente la sentencia judicial. Mientras esperan respuestas, hasta ahora han decidido no enviar cartas a sus estudiantes solicitándoles información confidencial para determinar las tasas de matrícula.
Una valla publicitaria que promociona el Austin Community College en español se encuentra en una autopista que conduce a Lockhart, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Hechinger Report
“Esta confusión perjudicará inevitablemente a los estudiantes, porque lo que vemos es que, ante la falta de información y la presencia del miedo y la ansiedad, los estudiantes optarán por no continuar con la educación superior o se esconderán en las sombras y se sentirán como miembros marginados de la comunidad”, afirmó Manuel González, vicepresidente del consejo de administración del ACC.
Por su parte, los expertos en políticas públicas advierten de que la mano de obra de Texas podría verse afectada, ya que los jóvenes con talento, muchos de los cuales han cursado toda su educación en el sistema de escuelas públicas del estado, ya no podrán permitirse los títulos de asociado y licenciatura que les permitirían seguir carreras que ayudarían a impulsar sus economías locales. En virtud de la Ley Texas Dream, los beneficiarios estaban obligados a comprometerse a solicitar la residencia permanente legal lo antes posible, lo que les daba la oportunidad de mantener puestos de trabajo relacionados con sus títulos. Sin la condición de residentes, es probable que sigan trabajando, pero en empleos peor remunerados y menos visibles.
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“Es una visión muy cortoplacista en lo que respecta al bienestar del estado de Texas”, afirmó Barbara Hines, antigua profesora de Derecho que ayudó a los legisladores a redactar la Ley Texas Dream.
A principios de siglo, casi dos décadas después de que los niños indocumentados obtuvieran el derecho a asistir a la escuela pública en Estados Unidos, los estudiantes inmigrantes y sus defensores seguían frustrados porque la universidad seguía estando fuera de su alcance.
Para el mayor general retirado de la Guardia Nacional del Ejército Rick Noriega, un demócrata que en ese momento formaba parte de la Legislatura de Texas, esa realidad le tocó de cerca cuando se enteró de que un joven trabajador de su distrito quería matricularse en el community college local para estudiar mecánica aeronáutica, pero no podía permitirse pagar la matrícula fuera del estado.
Noriega llamó a la oficina del rector de la escuela, que pudo proporcionar fondos para que el estudiante se inscribiera. Pero esa experiencia le llevó a preguntarse: ¿cuántos niños más de su distrito se enfrentaban a las mismas barreras para acceder a la educación superior?
Así que colaboró con un sociólogo para encuestar a los estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias locales sobre el problema, que resultó ser muy frecuente. Y el distrito de Noriega no era una excepción. En un estado que durante mucho tiempo ha tenido una de las mayores poblaciones de inmigrantes no autorizados del país, los políticos de todos los partidos conocían a electores, amigos o familiares afectados y querían ayudar. Una vez que Noriega decidió proponer la legislación, un republicano, Fred Hill, pidió ser coautor del proyecto de ley.
Para los defensores de la Ley Texas Dream, el mejor argumento a favor de la matrícula estatal para los estudiantes indocumentados era de carácter económico. Después de que el estado ya hubiera invertido en estos estudiantes durante la educación pública K-12, tenía sentido seguir desarrollándolos para que, con el tiempo, pudieran ayudar a satisfacer las necesidades de mano de obra de Texas.
“Habíamos gastado todo ese dinero en estos jóvenes, y ellos habían hecho todo lo que les pedimos —en muchos casos, eran superestrellas, los mejores de su promoción y cosas por el estilo— y luego se topaban con este obstáculo, que era la educación superior, cuyo costo era prohibitivo”, dijo Noriega.
La legislación fue aprobada fácilmente por la Cámara de Representantes de Texas, que en ese momento estaba controlada por los demócratas, pero el Senado, liderado por los republicanos, se mostró menos complaciente.
“Ni siquiera pude conseguir una audiencia. Me dijeron rotundamente: “No, esto no va a salir adelante””, afirmó Leticia Van de Putte, la entonces senadora estatal que patrocinó la legislación en su cámara.
Las nubes cubren el cielo detrás de la torre de la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Para persuadir a sus colegas republicanos, añadió varias restricciones, entre ellas la de exigir a los estudiantes indocumentados que vivieran en Texas durante tres años antes de terminar la escuela secundaria o recibir un GED. (Se estimó que tres años era el tiempo medio que tardaría una familia en pagar suficientes impuestos estatales para compensar la diferencia entre la matrícula estatal y la matrícula fuera del estado). También incluyó la cláusula que obligaba a los estudiantes indocumentados que accedían a la matrícula estatal a firmar una declaración jurada en la que se comprometían a solicitar la tarjeta de residencia tan pronto como pudieran.
Van de Putte también recurrió a los grupos empresariales de Texas para insistir en los argumentos económicos a favor del proyecto de ley. Y convenció a la comunidad empresarial para que pagara los autobuses que llevarían a pastores evangélicos conservadores latinos de Dallas, San Antonio, Houston y otras zonas del estado a Austin, para que pudieran llamar a las puertas en apoyo de la legislación y rezar con los senadores republicanos y su personal.
Después de eso, la Ley Texas Dream fue aprobada por abrumadora mayoría en el Senado estatal en mayo de 2001, y el entonces gobernador Rick Perry, republicano, la promulgó como ley al mes siguiente.
Sin embargo, en 2007, incluso cuando los defensores de los derechos de los inmigrantes, los grupos religiosos y las asociaciones empresariales formaron una coalición para defender a los inmigrantes contra las políticas estatales perjudiciales, la legislatura de Texas comenzó a presentar una serie de propuestas generalmente contrarias a los inmigrantes. En 2010, las encuestas sugerían que los tejanos se oponían de manera abrumadora a que los estudiantes indocumentados pagaran las tasas de matrícula estatales.
En 2012, un nuevo grupo de políticos de derecha fue elegido para ocupar cargos públicos, muchos de ellos opuestos filosóficamente a la ley y muy críticos al respecto. La defensa de la política por parte de Perry se volvió en su contra durante las primarias presidenciales republicanas de 2012, cuando su campaña fue objeto de críticas después de que, durante un debate, dijera a los oponentes de la igualdad en las matrículas: “No creo que tengan corazón”.
Aún así, ninguno de los muchos proyectos de ley presentados a lo largo de los años para derogar la Ley Texas Dream tuvo éxito. E incluso el gobernador Greg Abbott, un republicano partidario de la línea dura en materia de inmigración, se mostró en ocasiones ambiguo sobre la política, y su portavoz afirmó en 2013 que Abbott creía que “el objetivo” de la matrícula estatal independientemente del estatus migratorio era “noble”.
Los observadores legislativos afirman que algunos republicanos del estado siguen apoyando la política. “Es una cuestión bipartidista. Hay republicanos que apoyan la matrícula estatal”, afirmó Luis Figueroa, director de asuntos legislativos de la organización sin fines de lucro Every Texan, dedicada a la investigación y la defensa de políticas públicas. “Pero no pueden decirlo públicamente”.
Mientras tanto, a medida que el tema se volvía más controvertido políticamente en Texas, la Texas Dream Act acabó amplificando un debate más amplio que finalmente condujo a la creación del DACA, el programa de la era Obama que ha dado a algunos inmigrantes indocumentados acceso a protecciones contra la deportación y permisos de trabajo.
Incluso antes del DACA, muchos inmigrantes trabajaban, y los que siguen sin papeles a menudo siguen haciéndolo, ya sea como contratistas independientes para empleadores que hacen la vista gorda ante su estatus migratorio o creando sus propios negocios. Un estudio de mayo de 2020 reveló que los residentes no autorizados constituyen el 8,2 % de la población activa del estado y que, por cada dólar gastado en servicios públicos para ellos, el estado de Texas recuperaba 1,21 dólares en ingresos.
Pero sin el permiso legal inmediato para trabajar, los graduados universitarios indocumentados que se habían beneficiado de la Ley Dream de Texas se vieron limitados a pesar de sus títulos. A medida que la lucha por la equidad en las matrículas se extendía a otros estados, también lo hacía la lucha por una solución legal que apoyara a los estudiantes beneficiados.
Cuando estos jóvenes, cariñosamente apodados “soñadores o dreamers”, pasaron a primer plano para defenderse más públicamente, su difícil situación despertó simpatía. En 2017, el mismo año en que Trump comenzó su primer mandato, las encuestas dieron un giro y mostraron que la mayoría de los tejanos apoyaba las matrículas estatales para los estudiantes indocumentados. Más recientemente, las investigaciones han indicado una y otra vez que los estadounidenses apoyan una vía para que los residentes indocumentados traídos a Estados Unidos cuando eran niños obtengan la residencia legal.
Pero los argumentos en contra de la matrícula estatal, independientemente del estatus migratorio, también ganaron popularidad: los críticos sostenían que la política es injusta para los ciudadanos estadounidenses de otros estados que tienen que pagar tasas más altas, o que los estudiantes indocumentados están ocupando plazas en escuelas competitivas que podrían ser ocupadas por estadounidenses.
El Departamento de Justicia se apoyó en una retórica similar en la demanda que acabó con la igualdad en las matrículas en Texas, alegando que la ley estatal queda invalidada por la legislación federal de 1996 que prohíbe a los inmigrantes indocumentados acceder a la matrícula estatal basada en la residencia. Ese argumento se ha convertido en un modelo, ya que la administración Trump ha presentado demandas para desmantelar las políticas de matrícula estatal de otros estados para los residentes indocumentados.
En Kentucky, el fiscal general del estado, el republicano Russell Coleman, ha seguido los pasos de Texas y ha recomendado que el consejo estatal que supervisa la educación superior retire su normativa que permite el acceso a la matrícula estatal en lugar de luchar por defenderla en los tribunales.
Al mismo tiempo, la administración Trump ha encontrado otras formas de recortar las oportunidades de educación superior para los estudiantes indocumentados, revocando una política que les había ayudado a participar en programas de formación profesional, técnica y para adultos, e investigando a las universidades por ofrecerles becas.
En Texas, el repentino cambio de política con respecto a las matrículas estatales está causando caos. Las dos universidades más grandes del estado, Texas A&M y la Universidad de Texas, están utilizando diferentes directrices para decidir qué estudiantes deben pagar las tasas fuera del estado.
“Creo que las universidades son las que se encuentran en esta situación realmente difícil”, dijo Figueroa. “No son expertos en inmigración. Han recibido muy poca orientación sobre cómo interpretar el decreto de consentimiento”.
En medio de tanta confusión, Figueroa predijo que es probable que surjan futuras demandas. Los estudiantes y organizaciones afectados ya han presentado mociones ante los tribunales para defender tardíamente la Ley Texas Dream contra el Departamento de Justicia.
Mientras tanto, los jóvenes estudiantes se enfrentan a decisiones difíciles. Una estudiante, que pidió permanecer en el anonimato debido a su condición de inmigrante indocumentada, estaba leyendo las noticias en su teléfono antes de acostarse cuando vio un titular sobre el resultado del caso judicial del Departamento de Justicia.
“Me eché a llorar porque, como alguien que ha luchado por salir adelante en sus estudios, ahora que estoy en la educación superior, ha sido una bendición”, dijo. “Así que lo primero que pensé fue: “¿Qué voy a hacer ahora? ¿Hacia dónde va mi futuro? ¿Los planes que tenía para mí tendrán que detenerse por completo?””.
La joven, que vive en San Antonio desde que tenía 9 meses, se había matriculado en seis cursos para el otoño en la Universidad Texas A&M-San Antonio y no estaba segura de si abandonarlos. Sería su último semestre antes de obtener sus títulos en psicología y sociología, pero no podía imaginar pagar la matrícula fuera del estado.
“Estoy en el limbo”, dijo, como “muchos estudiantes en este momento”.
Comunícate con la editora Caroline Preston al 212-870-8965 o [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
After a three-year pause prompted by the pandemic, the clock on student loan repayments suddenly started ticking again in September 2023, and forbearance ended last September. For millions of borrowers like Shauntee Russell, the resumption of payments marked a harsh return to financial reality.
Russell, a single mother of three from Chicago, had received $127,000 in student loan forgiveness through the SAVE program, and had experienced profound relief at having that $632 monthly payment lifted from her shoulders. SAVE exemplified both the transformative power of debt relief and the urgent need to continue this fight — but now SAVE has been suspended.
Such setbacks cannot be the end of our story, as I document in my forthcoming book. The resumption of loan payments, while painful, must serve as a rallying cry rather than a surrender. We stand at a critical juncture. The Supreme Court’s devastating blow to former President Biden’s initial forgiveness plan and the ongoing legal challenges to programs like SAVE have left 45 million borrowers in a state of financial limbo. The fundamental inequities of our higher education system have never been more apparent.
Black students graduate with nearly 50 percent more debt than their white counterparts, while women hold roughly two-thirds of all outstanding student debt — a staggering $1.5 trillion that continues to grow. These aren’t just statistics; they represent systemic barriers that prevent entire communities from achieving economic mobility.
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The students I interviewed while reporting on this crisis reveal the human cost of inaction. They include Maria Sanchez, a nursing student in St. Louis who skips meals to save money and can only access textbooks through library loans.
Then there is Robert Carroll, who gave up his dorm room in Cleveland and now alternates between friends’ couches just to stay in school.
These students represent the millions who are working multiple jobs, sacrificing basic needs and seeing their dreams deferred under the weight of financial pressure.
Yet what strikes me most is their resilience and determination. Despite these overwhelming obstacles, these students persist, driven by the same belief that motivated civil rights leaders like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — that education is the pathway to economic empowerment and social justice.
The current political landscape, with Donald J. Trump’s return to the presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, presents unprecedented challenges. Plans to dismantle key borrower protections and efforts to eliminate the Department of Education signal a dark period ahead for student debt relief.
But history teaches us that progress often comes through sustained grassroots organizing and innovative policy solutions at multiple levels of government and society.
Universities must step up with institutional relief programs, as my own institution, Trinity Washington University, did when it settled $1.8 million in student balances during the pandemic.
The Black church, which has long understood the connection between education and liberation, continues to provide crucial support through scholarship programs. Organizations like the United Negro College Fund, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education remain vital pillars in making higher education accessible.
Still, individual, institutional and state efforts, while necessary, are not sufficient. We need comprehensive federal action that treats student debt as what it truly is: a civil rights issue and a moral imperative. The magnitude of the crisis — it affects Americans across every congressional district — creates unique opportunities for bipartisan coalition building.
Smart advocates are already reframing the narrative by replacing partisan talking points with economic arguments that resonate across ideological lines: workforce development, entrepreneurship and American competitiveness on the world stage.
When student debt prevents nurses from serving rural communities, teachers from working in underserved schools and young entrepreneurs from starting businesses, it becomes an economic drag that affects everyone.
The path to federal action may require creative approaches — perhaps through tax policy, regulatory changes or targeted relief for specific professions — but the political mathematics of 45 million impacted voters ultimately makes comprehensive action not just morally necessary, but politically inevitable.
Student debt relief is not about handouts — it’s about honoring the promise that education should be a ladder up, not an anchor weighing down entire generations; it’s about ensuring that Shauntee Russell’s relief becomes the norm, not the exception. The fight is far from over.
The young activists I met at the March on Washington 60th anniversary understood something profound: Their debt is not their fault, but their fight is their responsibility. They carry forward the legacy of those who came before them who believed that access to education should not depend on one’s family wealth, and that crushing debt should not be the price of pursuing knowledge.
The arc of history still bends toward justice — but in this era of political resistance, we must be prepared to bend it ourselves through sustained organizing, innovative policy solutions and an unwavering commitment to the principle that education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the wealthy.
The resumption of payments is not the end of this story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter in our fight for educational equity and economic justice. And this chapter, like those before it, will be written by the voices of the millions who refuse to let debt define their destiny.
Jamal Watson is a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at Trinity Washington University and an editor at Diverse Issues In Higher Education.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
MOREHEAD, Ky. — The summer after ninth grade, Zoey Griffith found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a dorm on the Morehead State University campus.
There, she’d spend the months before her sophomore year taking classes in core subjects including math and biology and electives like oil painting.
For Griffith, it was an opportunity, but a scary one. “It was a big deal for me to live on campus at the age of 14,” she said. Morehead State is about an hour from her hometown of Maysville. “I was nervous, and I remember that I cried the first time that my dad left me on move-in day.”
Her mother became a parent as a teenager and urged her daughter to avoid the same experience. Griffith’s father works as a mechanic, and he frowns upon the idea of higher education, she said.
And so college back then seemed a distant and unlikely idea.
But Griffith’s stepsister had introduced her to a federal program called Upward Bound. It places high school students in college dorms during the summer, where they can take classes and participate in workshops on preparing for the SAT and financial literacy. During the school year, students get tutoring and work on what are called individual success plans.
Upward Bound students test the robots they built in their robotics class – evaluating for programming and mechanical issues. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs
It’s part of a group of federal programs, known as TRIO, aimed at helping low-income and first-generation students earn a college degree, often becoming the first in their families to do so.
So, thanks to that advice from her stepsister, Kirsty Beckett, who’s now 27 and pursuing a doctorate in psychology, Griffith signed up and found herself in that summer program at Morehead State. Now, Griffith is enrolled at Maysville Community and Technical College, with plans to become an ultrasound technician.
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TRIO, once a group of three programs — giving it a name that stuck — is now the umbrella over eight some dating back to 1965. Together, they serve roughly 870,000 students nationwide a year.
It has worked with millions of students and has bipartisan support in Congress. Some in this part of the Appalachian region of Kentucky, and across the country, worry about students who won’t get the same assistance if President Donald Trump ends federal spending on the program.
Students Zoey Griffith, left, and Aniyah Caldwell, right, say the Upward Bound program has been life-changing for them. Upward Bound is one of eight federal programs under the TRIO umbrella. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report
A White House budget proposal would eliminate spending on TRIO. The document says “access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means” and puts the onus on colleges to recruit and support students.
Advocates note that the programs, which cost roughly $1.2 billion each year, have a proven track record. Students in Upward Bound, for example, are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than other students from some of the nation’s poorest households, according to the Council for Opportunity in Education. COE is a nonprofit that represents TRIO programs nationwide and advocates for expanded opportunities for first-generation, low-income students.
For the high school class of 2022, 74 percent of Upward Bound students enrolled immediately in college — compared with only 56 percent of high school graduates in the bottom income quartile.
Upward Bound is for high school students, like Griffith. Another TRIO program, Talent Search, helps middle and high school students, without the residential component. One called Student Support Services (SSS) provides tutoring, advising and other assistance to at-risk college students. Another program prepares students for graduate school and doctoral degrees, and yet another trains TRIO staff.
A 2019 study found that after four years of college, students in SSS were 48 percent more likely to complete an associate’s degree or certificate, or transfer to a four-year institution, than a comparable group of students with similar backgrounds and similar levels of high school achievement who were not in the program.
“TRIO has been around for 60 years,” said Kimberly Jones, the president of COE. “We’ve produced millions of college graduates. We know it works.”
Yet Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the White House refer to the programs as a “relic of the past.”
Jones countered that census data shows that “students from the poorest families still earn college degrees at rates far below that of students from the highest-income families,” demonstrating continued need for TRIO.
McMahon is challenging that and pushing for further study of those TRIO success rates. In 2020, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that even though the Education Department collects data on TRIO participants, “the agency has gaps in its evidence on program effectiveness.” The GAO criticized the Education Department for having “outdated” studies on some TRIO programs, and no studies at all for others. Since then, the department has expanded its evaluations of TRIO.
East Main Street in Morehead, Kentucky, just outside of Morehead State’s campus. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report
During a Senate subcommittee hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged “there is some effectiveness of the programs, in many circumstances.”
Still, she said there is not enough research to justify TRIO’s total cost. “That’s a real drawback in these programs,” McMahon said.
Now, she is asking lawmakers to eliminate TRIO spending after this year and has already canceled some previously approved TRIO grants.
“What are we supposed to do, especially here in eastern Kentucky?” asked David Green, a former Upward Bound participant who is now marketing director for a pair of Kentucky hospitals.
Green lives in a region that has some of the nation’s highest rates of unemployment, cancer and opioid addiction. “I mean, these people have big hearts, they want to grow,” he added. Cutting these programs amounts to “stifling us even more than we’re already stifled.”
Green described his experience with TRIO at Morehead State in the mid-1980s as “one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
He grew up in a home without running water in Maysville, a city of about 8,000 people. It was on a TRIO trip to Washington, D.C., he recalled, that he stayed in a hotel for the first time. Green remembers bringing two suitcases so he could pack a pillow, sheets and comforter — unaware the hotel room would have its own.
He met students from other towns and with different backgrounds. Some became lifelong friends. Green learned table manners, the kind of thing often required in business settings. After college, he was so grateful for TRIO that he became one of its tutors, working with the next generation of students.
TRIO’s all-encompassing nature makes it unique among college access programs, said Tom Stritikus, the president of Occidental College, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles. He was previously president of Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts school in Colorado with a large Native American student population. At both institutions, Stritikus said, he witnessed the effectiveness of TRIO’s methods, which he described as a “soup to nuts” menu of services for at-risk students trying to be the first in their families to earn degrees.
After participating in the Upward Bound program, David Green has had a successful career, becoming a community leader in his hometown of Maysville, Kentucky. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report
Jones, of the Council for Opportunity in Education, said she is cautiously optimistic that Congress will continue funding TRIO, despite the Trump administration’s request. The programs serve students in all 50 states. According to the COE, about 34 percent are white, 32 percent are Black, 23 percent are Hispanic, 5 percent are Asian, and 3 percent are Native American. TRIO’s guidelines require that a majority of participants come from families making less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four living in the contiguous United States, that’s a max of $48,225 a year.
In May, Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, called TRIO “one of the most effective programs in the federal government,” which, he said, is supported by “many, many members of Congress.”
In June, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia and a former TRIO employee, spoke about its importance to her state. TRIO helps “a student that really needs the extra push, the camaraderie, the community,” she said. “I’ve gone to their graduations, and been their speaker, and it’s really quite delightful to see how far they’ve come, in a short period of time.”
TRIO survived, with its funding intact, when the Senate appropriations committee approved its budget last month. The House is expected to take up its version of the annual appropriations bill for education in early September. Both chambers ultimately have to agree on federal spending, a process that could drag on until December, leaving TRIO’s fate in Congress uncertain.
While lawmakers debate its future, the Trump administration could also delay or halt TRIO funding on its own. Earlier this year, the administration took the unprecedented step of unilaterally canceling about 20 previously approved new and continuing TRIO grants.
At Morehead State, leaders say the university — and the region it serves — need the boost it receives from TRIO: While roughly 38 percent of American adults have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, in Kentucky, that figure is only 16 percent. And, locally, it’s 7 percent, according to Summer Fawn Bryant, the director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at the university.
Summer Fawn Bryant, center, is director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at Morehead State University in Kentucky. She stands with former TRIO students Alexandria Daniel, left, and Blake Thayer, right. Credit: Photo courtesy of Summer Fawn Bryant
TRIO works to counter the stigma of attending college that still exists in parts of eastern Kentucky, Bryant said. A student from a humble background who is considering college, she said, might be scolded with the phrase: Don’t get above your raisin’.
“A parent may say it,” Bryant said. “A teacher may say it.”
She added that she’s seen time and again how these programs can turn around the lives of young students facing adversity.
Students like Beth Cockrell, an Upward Bound alum from Pineville, Ky., who said her mom struggled with parenting. “Upward Bound stepped in as that kind of co-parent and helped me decide what my major was going to be.”
Cockrell went on to earn three degrees at Morehead State and has worked as a teacher for the past 19 years. She now works with students at her alma mater and teaches third grade at Conkwright Elementary School, about an hour away.
In a few years, 17-year-old Upward Bound student Isaac Bocook plans to join the teaching ranks too — as a middle school social studies teacher. Bocook said he was indecisive about what to study after high school, but he finally figured it out after attending a career fair at Morehead State’s historic Button Auditorium.
Upward Bound students visit the Great Lake Science Center in Cleveland for the end-of-summer educational trip. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs
Bocook lives in Lewis County, with just under 13,000 residents and a single public high school. At Morehead State’s TRIO program, Bocook met teenagers from across the entire region, which he said improved his social skills. TRIO also helped him with all kinds of paperwork on the pathway to adulthood. Filling out financial aid forms. Writing scholarship applications. Crafting a resume.
“I’m just truly grateful to have TRIO, as sort of like a hand to hold,” Bocook said.
His need for guidance is similar to what students at Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky, experience, said Lori Keeton, the school guidance counselor. The challenge facing these first-generation students, she said, is that “you just simply don’t know what you don’t know.”
As the sole counselor for 550 students, Keeton doesn’t have time to help each student navigate the complex college-application process and said she worries that some of her students will apply to fewer colleges, or no colleges at all, if TRIO disappears.
TRIO’s Talent Search program serves about 100 students at her high school, and roughly another dozen are part of Upward Bound. Each program has a dedicated counselor who visits regularly to guide and assist students.
Sherry Adkins, an eastern Kentucky native who attended TRIO more than 50 years ago and went on to become a registered nurse, said efforts to cut TRIO spending ignore the long-term benefits. “Do you want all of these people that are disadvantaged to continue like that? Where they’re taking money from society? Or do you want to help prepare us to become successful people who pay lots of taxes?”
As Washington considers TRIO’s future, program directors like Bryant, at Morehead State, press forward. She has preserved a text message a former student sent her two years ago to remind her of what’s at stake.
After finishing college, the student was attending a conference on child abuse when a presenter showed a slide that included the quote: “Every child who winds up doing well has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.”
“Forever thankful,” the student texted Bryant, “that you were that supportive adult for me.”
Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, securely on Signal at NirviShah.14 or via email at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The 18-year-old from Houston was going to start college in the fall at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she had been awarded $10,000 a year in scholarships. That, she hoped, would set her up for her dream: a Ph.D. in chemistry, followed by a career as a professor or researcher.
“And then the change to in-state tuition happened, and that’s when I knew for sure that I had to pivot,” said Ximena, who was born in Mexico but attended schools stateside since kindergarten. (The Hechinger Report is referring to her by only her first name because she fears retaliation for her immigration status.)
In June, the Texas attorney general’s office and the Trump administration worked together to end the provisions in a state law that had offered thousands of undocumented students like her lower in-state tuition rates at Texas public colleges. State and federal officials successfully argued in court that the long-standing policy discriminated against U.S. citizens from other states who paid a higher rate. That rationale has now been replicated in similar lawsuits against Kentucky, Oklahoma and Minnesota — part of a broader offensive against immigrants’ access to public education.
At UT Tyler, in-state tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year total $9,736, compared to more than $25,000 for out-of-state students. Ximena and her family couldn’t afford the higher tuition bill, so she withdrew. Instead, she enrolled at Houston Community College, where out-of-state costs are $227 per semester hour, nearly three times the in-district rate. The school offers only basic college-level chemistry classes, so to set herself up for a doctorate or original research, Ximena will still need to find a way to pay for a four-year university down the line.
Her predicament is exactly what state lawmakers from both political parties had hoped to avoid when they passed the Texas Dream Act, 2001 legislation that not only opened doors to higher education for undocumented students but was also meant to bolster Texas’s economy and its workforce long-term. With that law, Texas became the first of more than two dozen states to implement in-state tuition for undocumented students, and for nearly 24 years, the landmark policy remained intact. Conservative lawmakers repeatedly proposed to repeal it, but despite years of single-party control in the state legislature, not enough Republicans embraced repeal even as recently as this spring, days before the Texas attorney general’s office and the federal Department of Justice moved to end it.
Now, as the fall semester approaches, immigrant students are weighing whether to disenroll from their courses or await clarity on how the consent agreement entered into by the state and DOJ affects them.
Immigration advocates are worried that Texas colleges and universities are boxing out potential attendees who are lawfully present and still qualify for in-state tuition despite the court ruling — including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, asylum applicants and Temporary Protected Status holders — because university personnel lack immigration expertise and haven’t been given clear guidelines on exactly who needs to pay the higher tuition rate.
At Austin Community College, which serves an area as large as Connecticut, members of the board of trustees are unsure how to accurately implement the ruling. As they await answers, they’ve so far decided against sending letters asking their students for sensitive information in order to determine tuition rates.
“This confusion will inevitably harm students because what we find is that in the absence of information and in the presence of fear and anxiety, students will opt to not continue higher education,” said Manuel Gonzalez, vice chair of the ACC board of trustees.
A billboard promoting Austin Community College in Spanish sits on a highway that leads to Lockhart, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Hechinger Report
Policy experts, meanwhile, warn that Texas’s workforce could suffer as talented young people, many of whom have spent their entire education in the state’s public school system, will no longer be able to afford the associate’s and bachelor’s degrees that would allow them to pursue careers that would help propel their local economies. Under the Texas Dream Act, beneficiaries were required to commit to applying for lawful permanent residence as soon as possible, giving them the opportunity to hold down jobs related to their degrees. Without resident status, it’s likely they’ll still work — just more in lower-paying, under-the-radar jobs.
“It’s so short-sighted in terms of the welfare of the state of Texas,”said Barbara Hines, a former law school professor who helped legislators craft the Texas Dream Act.
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For retired Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Rick Noriega, a Democrat who served in the Texas Legislature at the time, that reality hit close to home when he learned of a young yard worker in his district who wanted to enroll at the local community college for aviation mechanics but couldn’t afford out-of-state tuition.
Noriega called the school chancellor’s office, which was able to provide funding for the student to attend. But that experience led him to wonder: How many more kids in his district were running up against the same barriers to higher education?
So he worked with a sociologist to poll students at local high schools about the problem, which turned out to be widespread. And Noriega’s district wasn’t an outlier. In a state that has long had one of the nation’s largest unauthorized immigrant populations, politicians across the partisan divide knew affected constituents, friends or family members and wanted to help. Once Noriega decided to propose legislation, a Republican, Fred Hill, asked to serve as a joint author on the bill.
To proponents of the Texas Dream Act, the best argument in support of in-state tuition for undocumented students was an economic one. After the state had already invested in these students during K-12 public schooling, it made sense to continue developing them so they could eventually help meet Texas’ workforce needs.
“We’d spent all this money on these kids, and they’d done everything that we asked them to do — in many instances superstars and valedictorians and the like — and then they hit this wall, which was higher education that was cost prohibitive,” said Noriega.
The legislation easily passed the Texas House of Representatives, which was Democratic-controlled at the time, but the Republican-led Senate was less accommodating.
“I couldn’t even get a hearing,’” said Leticia Van de Putte, the then-state senator who sponsored the legislation in her chamber.
To persuade her Republican colleagues, she added several restrictions, including requiring undocumented students to live in Texas for three years before finishing high school or receiving a GED. (Three years was estimated as the average time it would take a family to pay enough in state taxes to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition.) She also included the clause mandating that undocumented students who accessed in-state tuition sign an affidavit pledging to pursue green cards as soon as they were able.
Van de Putte also turned to Texas business groups to hammer home the economic case for the bill. And she convinced the business community to pay for buses to bring Latino evangelical conservative pastors from Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and other areas of the state to Austin, so they could knock on doors in support of the legislation and pray with Republican senators and their staff.
After that, the Texas Dream Act overwhelmingly passed the state Senate in May 2001, and then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, signed it into law the following month.
Yet by 2007, even as immigrant rights advocates, faith-based groups and business associations formed a coalition to defend immigrants against harmful state policies, the Texas legislature was starting to introduce a wave of generally anti-immigrant proposals. In 2010, polling suggested Texans overwhelmingly opposed allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates.
By 2012, a new slew of right-wing politicians was elected to office, many philosophically opposed to the law — and loud about it. Perry’s defense of the policy had come back to haunt him during the 2012 Republican presidential primary, when his campaign was dogged by criticism after he told opponents of tuition equity during a debate, “I don’t think you have a heart.”
Still, none of the many bills introduced over the years to repeal the Texas Dream Act were successful. And even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican border hawk, at times equivocated on the policy, with his spokesperson saying in 2013 that Abbott believed “the objective” of in-state tuition regardless of immigration status was “noble.”
Legislative observers say that some Republicans in the state continue to support the policy. “It’s a bipartisan issue. There are Republicans in support of in-state tuition,” said Luis Figueroa, senior director of legislative affairs at the public policy research and advocacy nonprofit Every Texan. “They cannot publicly state it.”
Meanwhile, as the topic became more politically charged in Texas, the Texas Dream Act ended up amplifying a larger conversation that eventually led to the creation of DACA, the Obama-era program that has given some undocumented immigrants access to deportation protections and work permits.
Even before DACA, many immigrants worked, and those who remain undocumented often still do, either as independent contractors for employers that turn a blind eye to their immigration status or by starting their own businesses. A study from May 2020 found that unauthorized residents make up 8.2 percent of the state’s workforce, and for every dollar spent toward public services for them, the state of Texas recouped $1.21 in revenue.
But without the immediate legal permission to work, undocumented college graduates who had benefited from the Texas Dream Act found themselves limited despite their degrees. As the fight for tuition equity spread to other states, so did the fight for a legal solution to support the students it benefited.
When these young people — affectionately dubbed Dreamers — took center stage to more publicly advocate for themselves, their plight proved sympathetic. By 2017, the same year Trump began his first term, polling had flipped to show a plurality of Texans in support of in-state tuition for undocumented students. More recently, research has indicated time and time again that Americans support a pathway to legal status for undocumented residents brought to the U.S. as children.
But arguments against in-state tuition regardless of immigration status also grew in popularity: Critics contended that the policy is unfair to U.S. citizens from other states who have to pay higher rates, or that undocumented students are taking spots at competitive schools that could be filled by documented Americans.
The DOJ leaned on similar rhetoric in the lawsuit that killed tuition equity in Texas, saying the state law is superseded by 1996 federal legislation banning undocumented immigrants from getting in-state tuition based on residency. That argument has become a template as the Trump administration has sued to dismantle other states’ in-state tuition policies for undocumented residents.
In Kentucky, state Attorney General Russell Coleman, a Republican, has followed in Texas’ footsteps, recommending that the state council overseeing higher education withdraw its regulation allowing for access to in-state tuition instead of fighting to defend it in court.
At the same time, the Trump administration has found other ways to cut back on higher education opportunities for undocumented students, rescinding a policy that had helped them participate in career, technical and adult education programs and investigating universities for offering them scholarships.
Back in Texas, the sudden policy change regarding in-state tuition is causing chaos. Even the state’s two largest universities, Texas A&M and the University of Texas, are using different guidelines to decide which students must pay out-of-state rates.
Clouds fill the sky behind the tower at the University of Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images
“Universities, I think, are the ones that are put in this really difficult position,” Figueroa said. “They are not immigration experts. They’ve received very little guidance about how to interpret the consent decree.”
Amid so much confusion, Figueroa predicted, future lawsuits will likely crop up. Already, affected students and organizations have filed motions in court seeking to belatedly defend the Texas Dream Act against the DOJ.
In the meantime, young scholars are facing difficult choices. One student, who asked to remain anonymous because of her undocumented immigration status, was scrolling through the news on her phone before bed when she saw a headline about the outcome of the DOJ court case.
“I burst in tears because, you know, as someone who’s been fighting to get ahead in their education, right now that I’m in higher education, it’s been a complete blessing,” she said. “So the first thing that I just thought of is ‘What am I going to do now? Where is my future heading?’ The plans that I have had going for me, are they going to have to come to a complete halt?’”
The young woman, who has lived in San Antonio since she was 9 months old, had enrolled in six courses for the fall at Texas A&M-San Antonio and wasn’t sure whether to drop them. It would be her final semester before earning her psychology and sociology degrees, but she couldn’t fathom paying for out-of-state tuition.
“I’m in the unknown,” she said, like “many students in this moment.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Paulina Cossette spent six years getting a doctoral degree with the goal of becoming a university professor. But it wasn’t long before she gave up on that path.
With higher education under political assault, and opportunities as well as job security diminished by enrollment declines, Cossette felt burnt out and disillusioned. So she quit her hard-won job as an assistant professor of American government at a small private college in Maryland and used the skills she’d learned to go into business for herself as a freelance copy editor.
Now Cossette is hearing from other newly minted Ph.D.s and tenured faculty who want out — so many, she’s expanded her business to help them leave academia, as she did.
Seemingly relentless attacks and funding cuts since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term have been “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Cossette, who left higher education on the eve of the pandemic, in 2019. “I’m hearing from a lot more people that it’s too much.”
An exodus appears to be under way of Ph.D.s and faculty generally, who are leaving academia in the face of political, financial and enrollment crises. It’s a trend federal data and other sources show began even before Trump returned to the White House.
Nearly 70 percent of people receiving doctorates were already leaving higher education for industry, government and other sectors, not including those without job offers or who opted to continue their studies, according to the most recent available figures from the National Science Foundation — up from fewer than 50 percent decades ago.
As for faculty, more than a third of provosts reported higher-than-usual turnover last year, in a survey by Hanover Research and the industry publication Inside Higher Ed. That was before the turmoil of this late winter and spring.
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“People who can get out will get out,” said L. Maren Wood, director and CEO of the Center for Graduate Career Success, which works with doctoral and other graduate students at 69 colleges and universities to provide career help.
If the spree of general job-switching that followed Covid was dubbed “the Great Resignation,” Wood said, what she’s seeing now in higher education is “the Great Defection.”
Getting a Ph.D. is a traditional pipeline to an academic career. Now some of the brightest candidates — who have spent years doing cutting-edge research in their fields to prepare for faculty jobs — are leaving higher education or signing on with universities abroad, Wood said.
“It’s going to affect the quality of a student’s experience if they don’t get to study with those leading minds, who are going into private industry or to other countries,” she said.
“What’s the joke about those who can’t do, teach? You don’t want to be in a situation where the only people left in your classrooms are the ones who can’t do anything else.”
Parents sending children to college in the fall should know that they’ll be taking classes “with a faculty member who is worried about his or her research funding and who doesn’t have the help of graduate student teaching assistants. And that’s really going to impact the quality of your student’s experience,” said Julia Kent, a vice president at the Council of Graduate Schools, who conducts research about Ph.D. career pathways.
“The quality of undergraduate education is at stake here,” Kent said.
Even Ph.D.s who want to work in academia are being thwarted.
During the Great Recession and the pandemic — two recent periods when there were few available faculty jobs — doctoral candidates could continue their studies until things got better, Wood said. This time, the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding have stripped many of that option.
“This is way worse” than those earlier crises, she said. “Doctoral students are in panic mode.”
The same deep federal cuts mean doctoral candidates in science, technology, engineering, math and other fields can’t complete the research they need to be eligible for what few academic jobs do become available.
“You’re basically knee-capping that younger generation, which undermines the intergenerational dynamism that takes place in higher education. And that trickles down into the classroom,” said Isaac Kamola, an associate professor of political science at Trinity College and head of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom at the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP.
Doctoral candidates early in their programs are questioning whether they should stay, said Wood. That could reduce the supply of future faculty. So will the fact that some universities have reduced the number of new Ph.D. candidates they will accept or have rescinded admission offers, citing federal budget cuts. Fewer prospective candidates are likely to apply, said Timothy Burke, a professor of history at Swarthmore College who has written about this topic.
“Our graduating students right now are thinking differently about what it means to start a doctorate,” Burke said.
Meanwhile, he said, “all the things that were dismaying to many faculty of long standing just feel worse. People who would have been totally content to stay put, whose prospects were good, who had good positions, who were more or less happy — now they’re thinking hard about whether there’s a future in this.”
That means undergraduates could experience fewer available classroom professors and teaching and graduate assistants or the “only tenuous presence of faculty who are thinking hard about going somewhere else,” he said. “There are going to be programs that are going to be shut. There are going to be departments running on fumes.”
The route to a university faculty job has always been hard. Finishing a doctoral degree takes a median of nearly six years, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — nearly seven in the arts and humanities.
Doctoral students who manage to finish their programs have always had to fight for faculty positions, even before institutions announced cutbacks and hiring freezes.
Universities enroll far more doctoral candidates, to provide cheap labor as teaching and research assistants, than they will ever hire. The number of doctoral degrees awarded rose from 163,827 in 2010 to an estimated 207,000 this year, the National Center for Education Statistics says — a 26 percent increase, during a period in which the number of full-time faculty positions went up at less than half that rate.
With colleges and universities under stress, still more doctoral candidates now face the prospect of spending years “training for a career that isn’t actually available,” said Ashley Ruba, a Ph.D. who left higher education to work at Meta, where she builds virtual reality systems.
“If you told someone going to law school that they couldn’t get a job as a lawyer, I don’t think they’d do it,” said Ruba, who is also the founder of a career-coaching service for fellow Ph.D.s called After Academia.
People already in faculty jobs appear equally on edge. More than 1 in 3 said in a recent survey that they have less academic freedom than in the past; half said they worry about online harassment.And faculty salaries have been stagnant. Pay declined for the three years starting with the pandemic, when adjusted for inflation, the AAUP reports, and has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
People with Ph.D.s can earn more outside academia — an average of 37 percent more, one study found. Employers value skills including active learning, critical thinking, problem-solving and resilience, which is “everything you learn in a doctoral program,” Ruba said.
The proportion of faculty considering leaving their jobs who are looking for work outside of academia has spiked. Before the pandemic, it was between 1 and 8 percent each year. Since then, it has been between 11 and 16 percent, according to R. Todd Benson, executive director and principal investigator at the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, or COACHE. The figure comes from surveys conducted at 54 major universities and colleges.
A Facebook group of dissatisfied academics, called The Professor Is Out, has swelled to nearly 35,000 members. It was started by Karen Kelsky, a former anthropology professor who previously helped people get jobs in academia and now coaches them on how to leave it.
“It’s difficult to overcome the stereotype of a university professor, which is that they’re coddled, they’re overprivileged, they’re arrogant and just enjoying total job security that nobody else has,” said Kelsky, who also wrote “The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job,” a second edition of which is due out this fall.
Today, “they are overworked. They’re grossly underpaid. They are being called the enemy. And they’re bailing on academia,” she said.
“Every time I talk to a tenured professor, they tell me how miserable they are and how desperate they are to get out,” said Kelsky. “And there’s no way this isn’t having real-life, tangible impacts on the quality of education students are getting.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected]orjpm.82 on Signal.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
As the spring semester got under way in January at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, a dozen military veterans waited for their GI Bill student benefit checks to show up.
Then they waited, and waited some more, until the money finally arrived — in April.
By that time, three had left.
Getting GI Bill benefits from the Veterans Administration, which student veterans use to pay for their tuition, textbooks and housing, already took weeks. Since federal government staffing cuts since President Donald Trump took office, it’s been taking at least three times longer, said Jeff Deickman, assistant director for veteran and military affairs at the student veteran center on that campus.
Deickman’s counterparts at other colleges say the VA’s paperwork often has errors, causing further delays. They say some student veterans are dropping out.
“I can spend, on bad days, three hours on the phone with the VA,” said Deickman, himself a 20-year Army veteran and a doctoral student. “They’ll only answer questions about one student at a time, so I have to hang up and start over again.”
The start of the new administration brought big personnel cuts to both the VA and the U.S. Department of Education, which manages some student aid for veterans. Now, advocacy groups and universities and colleges that enroll large numbers of veterans are bracing for the planned layoffs and departures of nearly 30,000 VA employees and additional cuts at the Department of Education.
Many are also concerned about the potential for reduced scrutiny of the for-profit college sector, which critics contend has taken advantage of veterans’ tuition payments without providing the promised educational benefits.
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Veterans who are just starting to feel the effects of federal cuts, and organizations that support them, worry things will only get worse, said Barmak Nassirian, vice president for higher education policy at the advocacy group Veterans Education Success. The nonprofit has been getting calls from students anxious about confusing information they’re receiving from federal agencies, he said, and it’s been hard to get answers from the government.
“Part of the challenge of wrapping our arms around this is the opaqueness of the whole thing. We’re sort of feeling our way around the impact,” Nassirian said.
“The whole process” has become a mess, said one 33-year-old Navy vet in Colorado, who used a more colorful term common in the military and asked that his name not be disclosed for fear of reprisal. “It’s making a lot of us anxious.”
Social media lays bare that anxiety — and frustration. In posts, veterans complain about stalled benefits and mistakes.
“I just wish I could speak to someone who could help but all of the reps seem to be unable to assist and simply tell me to reapply, which I have 4x, just for another denial,” wrote one on Reddit, about attempts to have a student loan forgiven.
“Complete nightmare,” another Reddit poster wrote about the same process. “Delays, errors, and employees that don’t know anything. No one knows anything right now.”
Federal law guarantees that disabled vets’ student loans will be forgiven, for instance, but veterans with total permanent disabilities have reported that their applications for their loans to be discharged were denied. One said the Department of Education followed up with a letter saying the denial was a mistake, but the agency hasn’t explained how to correct it.
The Education Department did not respond to an interview request. The VA declined to answer even general questions about benefit delays unless provided with the names of veterans and colleges that reported problems.
Such cuts threaten to “disrupt access to veterans’ education benefits, just as even more veterans and service members may be turning to higher education and career training,” top officials at the American Council on Education, or ACE — the nation’s largest association of colleges and universities — wrote in June.
That’s on top of existing frustrations. Veterans already struggle to get the benefits they’ve earned, college administrators and students say.
Many colleges and even some prominent veterans’ advocacy groups didn’t want to talk about this. Student Veterans of America, one of the largest advocacy groups for veteran students, did not respond to repeated interview requests. Ten of the colleges and universities that boast large veteran enrollments — including San Diego State, Georgia State, Angelo State, Arizona State and Syracuse — also did not respond or declined to answer questions.
Veterans and advocates are concerned that ongoing Education Department cuts will erode oversight of education institutions that take GI Bill benefits but leave veterans with little in return — primarily for-profit colleges that were found guilty of, and have been punished repeatedly for, defrauding students. In some cases, those colleges suddenly closed before students could finish their degrees, but kept their tuition while leaving them with useless credits or credentials.
Veterans are already twice as likely as other students to attend for-profit colleges, according to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute.
While it might take years until the effects of weakened scrutiny are fully visible, Nassirian said, it already appears that staffing cuts at the divisions within the Education Department that kept an eye on for-profit colleges have led those schools to start targeting veterans again.
“Without a doubt it is now easier for schools that want to push the envelope to get away with it,” he said. “When you have fewer cops on the beat you’re going to see higher crime. And we’re still just a nanosecond into this new environment.”
Veterans can lose their GI Bill benefits even when a college defrauds them.
The risk is particularly high for low-income veterans and those from diverse backgrounds, said Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America. Those student veterans are less likely to have parents who have experience with higher education, Church said, making them more vulnerable to fraud.
But the most immediate problems with staffing cuts are payment delays and paperwork errors, student veterans and their advisers said.
At Pikes Peak State College, a community college in Colorado Springs, some veterans still hadn’t received their GI Bill benefits as the semester wound down in May, said Paul DeCecco, the college’s director of military and veteran programs. Because of trouble reaching counselors at the VA, others were never able to enroll in the first place, DeCecco said.
“Counselors are just overwhelmed and not able to respond to students in a timely manner,” he said. “Students are missing semesters as a result.”
In the military city of San Diego, where thousands of former and current service members go to college, student veterans at Miramar College this year waited months to hear about VA work-study contracts. Previously approved within days, those contracts allow students to get paid for veteran-related jobs while attending school, said LaChaune DuHart, the school’s director of veterans affairs and military education.
Other veterans went weeks without textbooks because of delayed VA payments, DuHart said.
“A lot of students can’t afford to lose those benefits,” she said, describing the “rage” many student veterans expressed over the long wait times this year. “A lot of times it’s that emotional reaction that causes these students not to come back to an institution,” she said.
Colleges routinely see student veterans quit because of benefit delays, numerous experts and administrators said, something that has gotten worse this year. Several recounted stories of veterans without degrees choosing to look for work rather than continue their education because of frustration with the VA — even though studies show that graduating from college can dramatically increase future earnings.
Those who stayed have faced the added stress of waiting for their benefits, or not being able to get their questions answered.
“We always tell them to be prepared for delays,” said Phillip Morris, an associate professor of education research and leadership at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who studies student veterans. “But if you can’t pay your rent because your benefits are not flowing the way you’re expecting them to, that’s increasing anxiety and stress that translates to the classroom.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
After graduating from Knox College in Illinois with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Martinez-Calderon’s plans were upended by the pandemic. She hadn’t planned on becoming a teacher but found an opportunity to tutor remotely for the year after college.
Tutoring helped her build confidence and develop instructional skills, and today she’s a middle school teacher in the Washoe County School District in Nevada.
Tutoring can be a powerful training ground for future educators, providing hands-on experience, confidence and a bridge into the classroom. And what might begin as a temporary opportunity can become a career path at a time when teachers are needed more than ever: A recent report noted that nearlyone in five K-12 teachers plan to leave teaching or are unsure if they’ll stay.
Turnover remains a crisis in many districts, one that can be solved by a ready-made pipeline of young future educators with instructional experience and relationship-building skills they’ve gained from tutoring.
How school districts think about tutoring should evolve. Rather than seeing it as a short-term response to pandemic-interrupted learning, they should view it as part of the fabric of school design and future educator development. This requires including tutoring in strategic plans, forming community partnerships and creating a structure to sustain programs that cultivate tutors for careers in education. To fund these programs and pay tutors, districts can redirect Title I funds, use federal work-study and create apprenticeship programs.
Starting as a tutor allows aspiring educators to build core teaching skills in a supportive, lower-stakes environment. Tutors learn to navigate student relationships and adapt lessons to individual needs. Without having to manage an entire classroom, they can practice asking questions that get students thinking and selecting problems to help students learn. This early practice eases the transition into teaching.
Tutors from Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2012, often bring fresh energy to the profession. As digital natives, they are reimagining how to engage and inspire students, leverage technology and foster creativity and new approaches to learning.
They are alsothe most ethnically and racially diverse generation yet: Many come from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the teaching force; over half of undergraduates identify as first-generation college students. Their engagement broadens the prospects for a more diverse teacher pipeline.
Gen Z’s emphasis on flexibility and remote opportunities is one of the most significant workforce changes since the pandemic. They value mental health, stability and mission-driven work. Part-time, hybrid and wellness benefits help recruit young talent.
At our nonprofit, recruiters hear from education candidates that Gen Z appreciates the chance to try out industries, and that tutoring provides them with a window into the world of teaching.
Public schools could better meet the evolving needs of young professionals entering education by reimagining tutor roles to include hybrid options, mental health supports and collaborative teaching pathways for professional growth. For instance, a tutor might start off working in a part-time online tutoring role, but after interacting with students virtually and gaining more experience, they may be more excited to take on a full-time teaching role on-site.
For school districts, tutoring programs can serve as effective recruitment pipelines. By offering recent graduates a low-barrier entry point into education — one that doesn’t require immediate certification — districts can spark interest in teaching among candidates who may not have previously considered it.
When tutors step into teaching roles, they bring valuable continuity — familiarity with the students and insight into progress and school culture. This seamless transition supports both student learning and district staffing needs.
The idea that tutoring should be built into future educator pipelines is spreading. For example, since the launch of its Ignite Fellowship in 2020, Teach for America says that 550 of its former tutors have become full-time teachers. The program has proven to be especially effective at drawing in nontraditional candidates — those who may not have initially envisioned themselves in the classroom. In Washington, D.C., the school district launched a tutor-to-teacher apprenticeship program after success with high-impact tutoring. In Texas, teacher residents are required to work as tutors and in other support roles while co-teaching with a mentor.
By offering flexible, purpose-driven opportunities, districts can attract Gen Z professionals and give them a meaningful entry point into teaching. And tutoring programs can become more than academic support — they can serve as strategic talent pipelines that strengthen the future of the teaching workforce.
Alan Safran is co-founder, CEO and chair of the board ofSaga Education; Halley Bowman is senior director of academics.
This story about tutoring was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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