by Maxwell Fjeld, The Hechinger Report December 1, 2025
Earning an associate degree alongside my high school diploma was an ambitious goal that turned into a positive high school experience for me. By taking on the responsibilities of a college student, I further prepared myself for life after high school.
I needed to plan out my own days. I needed to keep myself on task. I needed to learn how to monitor and juggle due dates, lecture times and exams while ensuring that my extracurricular activities did not create conflicts.
All of this was life-changing for a rural Minnesota high school student. Dual enrollment through Minnesota’s PSEO program saved me time and money and helped me explore my interests and narrow my focus to business management. After three years of earning dual credits as a high school student, I graduated from community college and was the student speaker at the commencement earlier this year in May — one month before graduating from high school.
As a student earning college credits while still in high school, I gained exposure to different career fields and developed a passion for civic engagement. At the beginning of my senior year, while taking courses at the local community and technical college, I was elected to serve as that school’s first cross-campus student body president.
While most states have dual-enrollment programs, Minnesota’s support for its PSEO students stands out. As policymakers consider legislative and funding initiatives to strengthen dual enrollment in other states, I believe that three features of our program could provide a blueprint for states that want to do more.
First, the college credits I earned are transferable and meet degree requirements.
Second, the PSEO program permitted me to take enough credits each semester to earn my associate degree. While the number of dual-enrollment credits high school students can earn varies by state and program, when strict limitations are set on those numbers, the program can become a barrier to higher education instead of an alternate pathway.
Third, Minnesota’s PSEO program limits the cost burden placed on students. With rising costs and logistical challenges to pursuing higher education credentials, the head start that students can create for themselves via loosened restrictions on dual-enrollment credits can make a real financial impact, especially for students like me from small towns.
Dual-enrollment costs vary significantly from state to state, with some programs charging for tuition, fees, textbooks and other college costs.In Minnesota, those costs are covered by the Department of Education. In addition, if families meet income requirements, the expenses incurred by students for education-related transportation are also covered.
If I did not have state support, I would not have been able to participate in the program. Financial support is a crucial component to being a successful dual-enrollment student. When the barrier of cost is removed, American families benefit, especially students from low-income, rural and farming backgrounds.
Early exposure to college helped me choose my major by taking college classes to experiment — for free. When I first started, I was interested in computer science as a major. After taking a computer science class and then an economics class the following semester, I chose business as my major.
The ability to explore different fields of study was cost-saving and game-changing for me and is an opportunity that could be just as beneficial for other students.
Targeted investments in programs like this have benefited many students, including my father in the 1990s. His dual-enrollment experience allowed him to get a head start on his education and gain valuable life skills at a young age and is a great example of dual enrollment’s potential generational impact.
When dual-enrollment students receive guidance and support, it can be transformational. Early exposure to college introduced me to college-level opportunities. As student government president, I went to Washington, D.C., to attend a national student summit. I was able to meet with congressional office staffers and advocate for today’s students and for federal investment in dual-enrollment programs, explaining my story and raising awareness.
The daily life of high school is draining for some and can be devastating for others. I had many friends who came to believe that the bullying, peer-pressure and culture they experienced in high school would continue in college, so they deemed higher education “not worth it.”
Through dual enrollment, I saw the difference in culture; students who face burnout from daily high school life can refocus and feel good about their futures again.
Congress can help state legislatures by establishing strong dual-enrollment programs nationwide. With adequate government support, dual-enrollment programs can help students from all walks of life and increase college graduation rates. If all states offer access to the same opportunities that I had in high school, our next generation will be better prepared for the workforce and more successful.
Maxwell Fjeld is pursuing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Carlson School of Management after earning an associate degree upon high school graduation through dual enrollment. He is also a student ambassador fellow at Today’s Students Coalition.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/student-voice-i-earned-my-associate-degree-while-still-in-high-school-and-it-changed-my-life/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report November 18, 2025
PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. — As she approached her senior year in high school, the thought of moving on to college was “scary and intimidating” to Milianys Santiago — especially since she would be the first in her family to earn a degree.
Once she began working on her applications this fall, however, she was surprised. “It hasn’t been as stressful as I thought it would be,” she said.
It’s not that Santiago’s anxiety was misplaced: The college admissions process has been so notoriously anxiety inducing that students and their parents plan for it for years and — if social media is any indication — seem to consider an acceptance as among the greatest moments of their lives.
It’s that getting into college is in fact becoming easier, with admissions offices trying to lure more applicants from a declining pool of 18-year-olds. They’re creating one-click applications, waiving application fees, offering admission to high school seniors who haven’t even applied and recruiting students after the traditional May 1 cutoff.
The most dramatic change is in the odds of being admitted. Elite universities such as Harvard and CalTech take as few as 1 applicant in 33, but they are the exception. Colleges overall now accept about 6 in 10 students who apply, federal data show. That’s up from about 5 out of 10 a decade ago, the American Enterprise Institute calculates.
“The reality is, the overwhelming majority of universities are struggling to put butts in seats. And they need to do everything that they can to make it easier for students and their families,” said Kevin Krebs, founder of the college admission consulting firm HelloCollege.
This has never been as true as now, when the number of high school graduates entering higher education is about to begin a projected 15-year drop, starting with the class now being recruited. That’s on top of a 13 percent decline over the last 15 years.
Santiago, who lives in Hamilton, New Jersey, was waiting for a tour to start at Pace University as a video on repeat showed exuberant students and drone footage of the leafy, 200-acre grounds about 30 miles north of New York City, where the university also has a campus.
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Pace was one of 130 New York state colleges and universities that during October waived their application fees of from $50 to $90 per student, per school. That’s just one of the ways it’s trying to make admissions easier.
“That was a little eye-opening, when we received that letter,” Sueane Goodreau of Ithaca, New York, said about the free application offer as she waited for a tour of Pace’s campus with her high school senior son, Will. Compared to when her older daughter applied to college just three years ago, said Goodreau, “it does feel a little more receptive.”
There was an even bigger incentive offered by Pace: Prospects such as Santiago and Goodreau who visit are promised an additional $1,000 a year of financial aid if they enroll. Applicants who come to visit a campus are twice as likely to enroll as those who don’t, research has found.
The students’ names awaited them on a welcome sign at the reception desk in the office where tours depart. “You Belong Here,” pronounced another placard, on an easel in the waiting area. There was a QR code they could scan if they wanted to chat one-on-one with an admissions officer — who, in earlier times at many schools, were often unapproachable.
“I feel like I’m already a student here,” Santiago quipped.
The reason the university encourages that feeling? It’s simple, said Andre Cordon, dean of admission, in the distinctive pink Choate House at the center of the campus: “We want more students to apply. We don’t want to put up hurdles.”
So many hurdles previously stood along the route to college admission, it’s become a part of popular culture. “Everyone thinks we’re sadists — that we like saying no,” noted Tina Fey in her role as a Princeton admissions officer in the 2013 movie “Admission.”
Perceptions such as those are hard to change. Not only do young Americans aged 18 to 29 believe it isn’t any easier to get into college than it was for people in their parents’ generation, 45 percent of them think it’s harder, a Pew Research Center survey found. More than three-quarters say the admissions process is complex, and more than half that it’s more stressful than anything else they’ve done during their time in elementary, middle or high school, according to a separate survey, by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC.
“People have that notion that all campuses are in the same category as MIT, Harvard, Stanford” with their impossibly low acceptance rates, said Cordon. (Pace took 76 percent of its applicants last year, university statistics show.) And “teenagers are still teenagers. There’s anxiety no matter what. They overthink things, and they overthink the admissions process.”
There’s also still a lot of genuine emotion in the process, he said. For many parents, “It’s a pride thing. It’s a status thing. It’s showing off. Or from the student’s side, it’s, ‘I want to make my parents proud.’ ”
In the new world of university admissions, however, that no longer necessarily even requires filling out an application.
“Congratulations! You’ve been admitted,” a new California State University website tells prospective students, before they enter a single piece of information about themselves.
Several systems now allow students to apply to several public universities and colleges with a single application, avoiding the time-consuming process of completing different forms, writing essays, collecting letters of recommendation or paying fees.
Through Illinois’s new One Click College Admit, for instance, high school students can have their transcripts provided instantly to 10 of the state’s 12 four-year public universities and all of its community colleges and get back a guaranteed offer of admission to at least one, depending on their grades.
“Especially first-generation students, they don’t have that knowledge of how to apply to college,” said José Garcia, spokesman for the Illinois Board of Higher Education. “That’s among the people we’re trying to reach — those who might be intimidated by the name of an institution or not feel confident in their academic abilities or their grades.”
Several of these programs have been advocated for public institutions by governors and legislatures worried about a continued supply of college-educated workers in their states as the proportion of high school graduates going on to get degrees declines.
“Basically we need to have a bigger pipeline,” said David Troutman, deputy commissioner for academic affairs at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. “We have to do everything we can to open that door to all students, not just a few. So we have to make sure we’re making the process as painless as we can.”
Now private colleges are jumping aboard the direct-admission bandwagon. More than 210 have arranged through the Common App — an online application used by about 1,100 institutions nationwide — to extend offers of direct admission for the coming academic year to students who filed the Common App but have not applied. That’s almost twice as many as signed on last year, when Common App says 119 institutions in 35 states made more than 733,000 unsolicited offers.
It’s still early to definitively know the effect of this on whether students ultimately enroll. In Idaho, which in 2015 became the first state to try direct admission, enrollment of first-time undergraduates at participating public universities rose 11 percent.
Direct admission by itself does not resolve the other reasons students forgo college, however, said James Murphy, director of postsecondary policy at the nonprofit Education Reform Now, which advocates for more access to and diversity in higher education.
“It’s the furthest thing from a panacea,” Murphy said. “How do we know? Because colleges embraced it so quickly. Any reform taken up so quickly by colleges is likely to have more benefit to colleges than to students.”
While direct admission might help colleges get closer to enrollment targets, for example, he said, “it works best when it’s paired with financial aid and other resources that actually make it easier” to pay.
Waiving application fees has driven increases in applications, some research has shown. During the month that fees were waived last fall in New York state, a quarter of a million students applied to the public State University of New York, up 41 percent from the same period the year before, according to the state’s Higher Education Services Corporation, or HESC.
While college applications may not seem expensive, at around $50 each, many students “aren’t just paying one application fee. They can be paying multiple fees,” which add up, said Angela Liotta, HESC’s director of communication.
Universities and colleges are trying other ways to ease the process. More than 2,000 continue to make submitting the results of SAT and ACT scores optional, for instance, something many started doing during the pandemic. More have extended their deadlines or recruited after the traditional May 1 cutoff, when incoming classes were previously considered locked in.
Students are noticing. One way is through the massive amount of marketing materials they’re getting, begging them to apply. The median high school student gets more than 100 letters and emails from colleges and universities each month, a survey by the education technology company CollegeVine found — an old-style approach that CollegeVine found turns out for this generation to be generally ineffective.
Will Goodreau, who was visiting Pace, for instance, got “so many emails and texts,” he said, laughing. “I must have given somebody my number for something.”
All of these things appear to be slowly changing students’ perception of admission. In that NACAC survey, fewer of those who had already gone through the process — while they still found it challenging — considered it as challenging as students who hadn’t started yet.
There could be more changes ahead. A lawsuit was filed in August against 32 colleges and universities that practice so-called early decision, under which students who apply before the usual admission period are more likely to get in, but are obligated to enroll. The practice, which the lawsuit seeks to end, helps colleges fill their classes, but prevents students from shopping around for better offers of financial aid.
Whatever happens, students and their parents should know that “they’re actually the ones in control of this process,” said Krebs, of HelloCollege. “The reality is that at a lot of schools, if you have the grades, you’re going to get in.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-ease-the-dreaded-admissions-process-as-the-supply-of-applicants-declines/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report November 5, 2025
After he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Drew Wesson hopes to begin a career in strategic communication, a field with higher-than-average job growth and earnings.
One year into his time at the university, Wesson became more strategic about this goal. Like nearly 1 in 3 of his classmates, he declared a second major to better stand out in an unpredictable labor market.
It’s part of a trend that’s spreading nationwide, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data, as students fret about getting jobs in an economy that some fear is shifting faster than a traditional college education can keep up.
“There’s kind of a fear of graduating and going out into the job market,” said Wesson, a sophomore from Minneapolis who is double-majoring in international security and journalism. “And having more skills and more knowledge and more majors gives you a competitive edge.”
The number of students at UW-Madison who double-major has grown by 25 percent over the last decade, the data show. But double-majoring is also on the rise at private, nonprofit colleges across the country, and at other public institutions, including the University of California, San Diego, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Nearly 5.4 million credentials — degrees or certificates — were earned by the 4.8 million college and university graduates in 2023-24, the most recent year for which the figure is available. That means about 12 percent left school with more than one, compared to 6 percent ten years earlier. Academic minors don’t count as a credential and aren’t tracked..
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“Students are feeling a sort of spiraling lack of control in a very dynamic labor market,” said Rachel Slama, associate director of Cornell University’s Future of Learning Lab, which studies how technology and other innovations are changing education. “They’re probably clinging to the one thing that’s in their control, which is the majors they choose. And they think that more is more.”
They may be right, according to one of the few studies of this topic, by scholars at St. Lawrence University and Vanderbilt Law School. Students who have one major in business and a second in science, technology, engineering or math, it found, earn more than if they majored in only one of those disciplines, the 2016 study found.
Graduates who double-major are also 56 percent less likely to be laid off, have their pay cut or suffer other negative effects in economic downturns, according to another study, released last year by researchers at Ohio State and four other universities. These outcomes show “the importance of diverse skill sets,” the researchers concluded. If there’s a drop in demand for the skills associated with one major, “a double major can pursue a job related to the unaffected major.”
At Wisconsin, nearly 6 in 10 students in computer science who pick a second major choose the lucrative discipline of data science; the number of jobs in data science is projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to increase 34 percent over about the next 10 years, at salaries that are nearly twice the national average.
The unemployment rate among new bachelor’s degree recipients is now higher than for workers overall, and at its highest level since 2014, not including the pandemic years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s partly because artificial intelligence and other factors are transforming what employers need.
Nearly half of recent graduates feel underqualified to apply for even entry-level jobs, a survey by the education technology company Cengage Group finds. Only 30 percent say they have full-time jobs related to the fields that they studied.
Meanwhile, colleges and universities — traditionally slow to transform what and how they teach — are encouraging students to combine majors as a faster way to keep up with changes in the labor market, said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor at UW-Madison who studies the economics of education and the value of credentials in the workforce.
“Institutions are thinking strategically about how to align their degree programs with industry, and it might be by pairing two things they already have,” Odle said.
There are other reasons for the rising popularity of double majors. At UW-Madison, for example, one factor propelling the growth is that there are no minors, noted Taylor Odle, an assistant professor there who studies the economics of education and the value of credentials in the workforce..
Double-majoring isn’t easy. It typically means earning more than the usual minimum number of credits required to graduate, on top of extracurricular and other obligations. Wesson, at UW-Madison, for instance, is an officer of student government, a reporter and photographer for the campus newspaper and an honors student.
Some separate majors have overlapping requirements. Even if they don’t, most universities and colleges charge the same tuition per semester no matter how many courses undergraduates take. So unless a second major extends the number of semesters a student needs to complete required courses,or forces him or her to take additional classes in the summers, double-majoring doesn’t typically cost more or take longer.
Meanwhile, more students are arriving at college having already knocked off credits by taking dual-enrollment and Advanced Placement classes in high school.
About 2.5 million high school students participate in dual enrollment, according to an analysis of federal data by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)
This means they have room in their schedules in college for second majors, said Kelle Parsons, who focuses on higher education as a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research.
For some students, double-majoring makes more sense than changing majors altogether. About 30 percent of students change their majors at least once, and 10 percent two or more times, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Adding a second major is less drastic than dropping a first one and starting again from scratch, said Patrick Denice, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario.
“If you add a [second] major, you hedge your bets against a changing labor market without losing those credits and that coursework you’ve already earned” toward the first one, said Denice, who has studied why students at U.S. universities pick and change their majors.
There’s yet another reason students are increasingly double-majoring. Even as they crowd into specialties associated with career opportunities, such as business and health-related disciplines — which together now account for nearly 1 in 3 undergraduate fields of study — some are adding second majors for which they simply have a passion.
“They’re trying to satisfy their parents, who want them to be employed,” said J. Wesley Null, vice provost for undergraduate education and academic affairs at Baylor University, where there were more than twice as many double majors last year than there were in 2014. “But they’re also interested in a lot of interdisciplinary kinds of things. They’ll combine biology with Sanskrit or Chinese. These really bright students have a lot of diverse interests.”
At the University of Chicago, where the number of double majors has also more than doubled, “I see students committing to one career but wanting to have more breadth,” said Melina Hale, dean of the college. “They’re going and exploring all of these other majors and finding one they love.”
Double-majoring is also “a great way for students to demonstrate that they know how to think in different ways,” said Hale, herself a biologist who has collaborated with engineers. “If you’re going into a job in finance and have a deep background in history, you’re bringing different ways of approaching problems.”
This way of thinking is pushing still another trend: More students nationwide are earning certificates, which they can get in a matter of months and alongside their degrees, in subjects such as business management. Seventeen percent of bachelor’s degree recipients also finished college with at least one certificate in 2023-24, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports.
Known as “stackable credentials,” these kinds of certificates “have been talked about for a long time,” said Ryan Lufkin, vice president of global academic strategy at the educational technology company Instructure. “And now there’s really demand for them.”
That’s because — like double-majoring and minoring — they make applicants stand out to employers, said Odle, at UW-Madison.
Students, he said, “are trying to emphasize their attractiveness in the labor market. They’re trying to cover their bases.”
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.
This story about double majors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/students-worried-about-getting-jobs-extra-majors/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
For the first time in more than a decade, confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities is rising. Forty-two percent of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent last year.
It’s a welcome shift, but it’s certainly not time for institutions to take a victory lap.
For years, persistent concerns about rising tuition, student debt and an uncertain job market have led many to question whether college was still worth the cost. Headlines have routinely spotlighted graduates who are underemployed, overwhelmed or unsure how to translate their degrees into careers.
With the rapid rise of AI reshaping entry-level hiring, those doubts are only going to intensify. Politicians, pundits and anxious parents are already asking: Why aren’t students better prepared for the real world?
But the conversation is broken, and the framing is far too simplistic. The real question isn’t whether college prepares students for careers. It’s how. And the “how” is more complex, personal and misunderstood than most people realize.
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What’s missing from this conversation is a clearer understanding of where career preparation actually happens. It’s not confined to the classroom or the career center. It unfolds in the everyday often overlooked experiences that shape how students learn, lead and build confidence.
While earning a degree is important, it’s not enough. Students need a better map for navigating college. They need to know from day one that half the value of their experience will come from what they do outside the classroom.
To rebuild America’s trust, colleges must point beyond course catalogs and job placement rates. They need to understand how students actually spend their time in college. And they need to understand what those experiences teach them.
Ask someone thriving in their career which part of college most shaped their success, and their answer might surprise you. (I had this experience recently at a dinner with a dozen impressive philanthropic, tech and advocacy leaders.) You might expect them to name a major, a key class or an internship. But they’re more likely to mention running the student newspaper, leading a sorority, conducting undergraduate research, serving in student government or joining the debate team.
Such activities aren’t extracurriculars. They are career-curriculars. They’re the proving grounds where students build real-world skills, grow professional networks and gain confidence to navigate complexity. But most people don’t discuss these experiences until they’re asked about them.
Over time, institutions have created a false divide. The classroom is seen as the domain of learning, and career services is seen as the domain of workforce preparation. But this overlooks an important part of the undergraduate experience: everything in between.
The vast middle of campus life — clubs, competitions, mentorship, leadership roles, part-time jobs and collaborative projects — is where learning becomes doing. It’s where students take risks, test ideas and develop the communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills that employers need.
This oversight has made career services a stand-in for something much bigger. Career services should serve as an essential safety net for students who didn’t or couldn’t fully engage in campus life, but not as the launchpad we often imagine it to be.
We also need to confront a harder truth: Many students enter college assuming success after college is a given. Students are often told that going to college leads to success. They are rarely told, however, what that journey actually requires. They believe knowledge will be poured into them and that jobs will magically appear once the diploma is in hand. And for good reason, we’ve told them as much.
But college isn’t a vending machine. You can’t insert tuition and expect a job to roll out. Instead, it’s a platform, a laboratory and a proving ground. It requires students to extract value through effort, initiative and exploration, especially outside the classroom.
The credential matters, but it’s not the whole story. A degree can open doors, but it won’t define a career. It’s the skills students build, the relationships they form and the challenges they take on along the way to graduation that shape their future.
As more college leaders rightfully focus on the college-to-career transition, colleges must broadcast that while career services plays a helpful role, students themselves are the primary drivers of their future. But to be clear, colleges bear a grave responsibility here. It’s on us to reinforce the idea that learning occurs everywhere on campus, that the most powerful career preparation comes from doing, not just studying. It’s also on us to address college affordability, so that students have the time to participate in campus life, and to ensure that on-campus jobs are meaningful learning experiences.
Higher education can’t afford public confidence to dip again. The value of college isn’t missing. We’re just not looking in the right place.
Bridget Burns is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a nationally recognized consortium of 19 public research universities driving student success innovation for nearly 600,000 students.
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.
SALEM, Va. — On a hot and humid August morning in this southwestern Virginia town, football training camp is in full swing at Roanoke College. Players cheer as a receiver makes a leaping one-handed catch, and linemen sweat through blocking drills. Practice hums along like a well-oiled machine — yet this is the first day this team has practiced, ever.
In fact, it’s the first day of practice for a Roanoke College varsity football team since 1942, when the college dropped football in the midst of World War II.
Roanoke is one of about a dozen schools that have added football programs in the last two years, with several more set to do so in 2026. They hope that having a team will increase enrollment, especially of men, whose ranks in college have been falling. Yet research consistently finds that while enrollment may spike initially, adding football does not produce long-term enrollment gains, or if it does, it is only for a few years.
Roanoke’s president, Frank Shushok Jr., nonetheless believes that bringing back football – and the various spirit-raising activities that go with it — will attract more students, especially men. The small liberal arts college lost nearly 300 students between 2019 and 2022, and things were likely to get worse; the country’s population of 18-year-olds is about to decline and colleges everywhere are competing for students from a smaller pool.
“Do I think adding sports strategically is helping the college maintain its enrollment base? It absolutely has for us,” said Shushok. “And it has in a time when men in particular aren’t going to college.”
Women outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent at four-year colleges nationwide. Roanoke is a part of this trend. In 2019, the college had 1,125 women students and 817 men.
This fall, Roanoke will have 1,738 students altogether, about half men and half women. But the incoming freshman class is more than 55 percent male.
Sophomore linebacker Ethan Mapstone (26) jogs to the sideline at the end of a drill. Mapstone said he hadn’t planned to play college football until Roanoke head coach Bryan Stinespring recruited him. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report
“The goal was that football would, in a couple of years, bring in at least an additional hundred students to the college,” said Curtis Campbell, Roanoke’s athletic director, as he observed the first day of practice. “We’ve got 97 kids out there on the field. So we’re already at the goal.”
That number was 91 players as the season began, on Sept. 6 — and the Maroons won their first game, 23-7, over Virginia University of Lynchburg, on what Shushok called “a brilliant day full of community spirit and pride.”
“Our students were out in force, side by side with community members spanning the generations,” he said via email. “In a time when we all need more to celebrate and opportunities to gather, it is easy to say our first football game since 1942 was both historic and invigorating.”
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In the NCAA’s Division III, where Roanoke teams compete, athletic scholarships are not permitted. Athletes pay tuition or receive financial aid in the same way as other students, so adding football players will add revenue. For a small college, this can be significant.
Shushok said it’s not just about enrollment, though: He wants a livelier campus with more school spirit. Along with football, he started a marching band and a competitive cheerleading team.
“It plays to something that’s really important to 18- to 22-year-olds right now, which is a sense of belonging and spirit and excitement,” said Shushok, who came to Roanoke after being vice president of student affairs at Virginia Tech. Its Division I football team plays in a 65,000-seat stadium where fans jump up and down in unison to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as the players take the field.
The Maroons play in the local high school stadium — it seats 7,157 — and pay the city of Salem $2,850 per game in rent. The college raised $1.3 million from alumni and corporate sponsors to get the team up and running.
Roanoke College players gather on the sidelines during practice. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report
Despite the research showing limited enrollment gains from adding football, colleges keep doing it. About a dozen have added or relaunched football programs in the last two years, including New England College in New Hampshire and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Several more plan to add football in 2026, including Chicago State University and Azusa Pacific University in California.
Calvin University in Michigan recently added football even though the student body was already half men, half women. The school wanted to broaden its overall appeal, Calvin Provost Noah Toly said, citing “school spirit, tradition, leadership development,” as well as the increased enrollment and “strengthened pipelines with feeder schools.”
“What you see is basically a one-year spike in male enrollment around guys who come to that school to help be part of starting up a team, but then that effect fades out over the next couple of years,” said Welch Suggs, an associate professor there and the lead author of that study. It found early modest enrollment spikes at colleges that added football compared to peers that didn’t and “statistically indistinguishable” differences after the first two years.
”What happens is that you have a substitution effect going on,” Suggs said. “There’s a population of students that really want to go to a football school; the football culture and everything with it really attracts some students. And there are others who really do not care one way or the other. And so I think what happens is that you are simply recruiting from different pools.”
Today, college leaders value any pool that includes men. Most prefer the campus population to be balanced between the sexes, and, considering the low number of male high school graduates going to college at all (39 percent in the last Pew survey), many worry about too few men being prepared for the future workforce.
“ I don’t know that we have done a good job of articulating the value, and of programming to the particular needs that some of our young men are bringing in this moment,” Shushok said. “I think it’s pretty obvious, if you read the literature out there, that a lot of men are feeling undervalued and perhaps unseen in our culture.”
Roanoke College President Frank Shushok Jr. in his office. Shushok said he brought football back to Roanoke to boost enrollment and create a livelier campus. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report
Shushok said that Roanoke’s enrollment-building strategy was not centered on athletics. The college has also forged partnerships with local community colleges, guaranteeing students admission after they complete their associate degree, and has added nine new majors in 2024, including cannabis studies. Shushok pointed out that while freshman enrollment is down slightly this year, the community college program has produced a big increase in transfer students, from 65 in fall of 2024 to 91 this fall.
About 55 percent of Roanoke’s students come from Virginia, but 75 of the football team’s 91 players are Virginians. The head coach, Bryan Stinespring, a 61-year-old Virginia native, knows that recruiting territory, having worked on the coaching staffs at several Virginia universities in his career.
When Stinespring took over as head coach in 2023, hoping to inspire existing students and potential applicants to join his new team, there was no locker room, no shoulder pads or tackling dummies, no uniforms.
“The first set of recruits that came on campus, we ran down to Dick’s, got a football, went to the bookstore, got a sweatshirt,” said Stinespring, referring to a local Dick’s Sporting Goods store. “These kids came on campus and they had to believe in the vision that we had.”
Students bought into that vision; 61 of them joined a club team last fall, which played four exhibition games in preparation for this year. The community bought in, too; 9,200 fans showed up to the first club game, about 2,000 of them perched on a grassy hill overlooking the end zone.
Linebackers Connor Cox (40) and Austin Fisher (20) look on from the sidelines. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report
Before Ethan Mapstone, a sophomore, committed to Roanoke, he was on the verge of giving up football, having sustained several injuries in high school. Then Stinespring called.
“I could hear by the tone of his voice how serious he meant everything he was saying,” said Mapstone, a 6-foot-1-inch linebacker from Virginia Beach. “I was on a visit a week later, committed two weeks later.”
To him, the football leaders at Roanoke seemed to be “a bunch of people on a mission ready to make something happen, and I think that’s what drove me in.”
KJ Bratton, a junior wide receiver and transfer student from the University of Virginia, said he was drawn to Roanoke not because of football but because of the focus on individual attention in small classes. “You definitely get that one-on-one attention with your teacher, that definitely helps you in the long run,” said Bratton.
Jaden Davis, a sophomore wide receiver who was an honor roll student in high school, said, “ The staff, they care about all the students. They’ll pull you aside, they know you personally, they’ll send you emails, invite you to office hours, and they just work with you to do the best you can.”
Not everyone was on board with football returning to the college when the plan was first announced. Some faculty and administrators were concerned football would change the campus culture, said Campbell, the athletic director.
Sophomore wide receiver Jaden Davis poses for a photograph before the first practice of the season. Davis said the individual attention he could get from professors is what attracted him to Roanoke. Credit: Miles MacClure for The Hechinger Report
“There were just stereotypes about football players,” he said. “You know, they’re not smart, they’re troublemakers. They’re gonna do this and they’re gonna do that, be disruptive.”
But the stereotypes turned out to be unwarranted,he said.When the club team started, he said, “I got so many compliments last year from faculty and staff and campus security about how respectful and polite and nice our students were, how they behaved in the classroom, sitting in the front row and just being role models.”
Payton Rigney, a junior who helps out with the football team, concurred. “All the professors like them because they say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, ma’am,’” she said.
Like most Division III athletes, the Roanoke players know that they have little chance of making football a professional career. Mapstone said there are other reasons to embrace the sport.
“It’s a great blessing to be able to do what we do,” he said. “There’s many people that I speak to who are older and, and they reminisce about the times that they had to play football, and it’s very limited time.
“And even though there’s not a future for it, I love it. It’s a Thursday, my only problem in the world is that there’s dew on my shoes.”
Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at (212) 678-4078 or [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.
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.
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.
