RIVER FOREST, Illinois — Cuando Jacqueline Quintero empezó a explorar opciones para ir a la universidad cuando se graduara de secundaria, se dio cuenta de algo que muchas parecían tener en común.
“No me gusta decirlo, pero todo el mundo parecía tan blanco”, dijo Quintero, cuyos padres llegaron a Estados Unidos desde México. “Simplemente no sentía que yo pertenecía allí”.
Hasta que fue a una recepción para estudiantes admitidos en la Dominican University, cerca de donde creció en los suburbios del oeste de Chicago. Entre las cosas que la hicieron decidirse casi de inmediato a ir allí: Se proporcionaba información a las familias tanto en inglés como en español.
“Por fin mis padres pudieron hacer preguntas” en su lengua materna, dice Quintero, que ahora cursa el penúltimo año de la carrera de Derecho. “Estaba acostumbrada a traducirles toda mi vida. Me puse a llorar, literalmente”.
Este aparentemente pequeño detalle es uno de los muchos que han ayudado a impulsar la matrícula de Dominican en casi un 25 por ciento desde 2021, un período durante el cual las instituciones comparables han luchado por atraer estudiantes y cuando el número de jóvenes de 18 años está a punto de comenzar un largo declive.
Esto se debe a que la universidad ha aprovechado un grupo de clientes potenciales que está creciendo: Los graduados hispanos como Quintero.
Históricamente, a las universidades y escuelas superiores no les ha ido bien a la hora de reclutar estudiantes hispanos. Ahora su propio éxito puede depender en gran medida de ello.
“La demografía de nuestro país está cambiando, y la enseñanza superior tiene que adaptarse”, afirma Glena Temple, presidenta de Dominican.
O, como dijo Quintero, sonriendo: “Ahora nos necesitan”.
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Jacqueline Quintero, hija de inmigrantes mexicanos, estudia en la Dominican University y tiene previsto estudiar Derecho. “Ahora nos necesitan”, dice refiriéndose a las universidades que reclutan estudiantes hispanos como ella. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Mientras que se prevé que en 2041 las cifras de graduados en enseñanza secundaria blancos, negros y asiáticos disminuyan en un 26%, un 22% y un 10%, respectivamente, se prevé que el número de graduados hispanos en enseñanza secundaria durante ese periodo aumente un 16%, según la Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, que realiza el seguimiento de estos datos.
Según el Centro Nacional de Estadísticas Educativas, casi 1 de cada 3 alumnos desde preescolar hasta 12º curso es hispano. Esta cifra es superior a la de menos de 1 de cada 4 de hace una década. La proporción de alumnos hispanos en las escuelas públicas es aún mayor en algunos estados, como California (56%), Texas (53%) y Florida (38%).
Esto hace que estos jóvenes – a menudo hijos o nietos de inmigrantes, o inmigrantes ellos mismos – adquieran una nueva importancia para las universidades, que históricamente no han conseguido atraer a tantos estudiantes hispanos como a gente de otros orígenes raciales.
Sin embargo, en un momento en que la educación superior necesita que aumente, la proporción de estudiantes hispanos que van a la universidad ha ido disminuyendo. Invertir esa tendencia es todo un reto, por muchas razones – el elevado costo, la necesidad de encontrar un trabajo inmediatamente después de la secundaria, el hecho de que muchos proceden de familias sin experiencia universitaria a las que pedir consejo – agravadas por los ataques cada vez más agresivos a los programas de diversidad de los campus, que podrían dificultar aún más la captación y el apoyo a estos estudiantes.
En el pasado, según Deborah Santiago, directora ejecutiva de la organización de defensa de los hispanos Excelencia in Education, las instituciones de enseñanza superior “podían alcanzar sus cifras [de matriculación] sin implicar a esta población. Eso ya no es así”.
Ese gran número de estudiantes hispanos que se acercan a la edad universitaria “es para lo que tenemos que prepararnos como instituciones de enseñanza superior y para satisfacer las necesidades de nuestras comunidades”, afirma Greg Mosier, presidente del Kansas City Kansas Community College, que ahora se anuncia en periódicos en español y en la radio en español.
“A medida que los baby boomers se jubilan, la población joven es mucho menor y tiene que sostener a una población de más edad”, afirma Michael Collins, vicepresidente del Centro para la Equidad Económica Racial de la organización sin fines de lucro Jobs for the Future.
El Centro para la Liberación Cultural de la Dominican University, cerca de Chicago. La sala es un lugar de estudio, conversación y encuentro para estudiantes de todas las procedencias. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
A menos que las universidades construyan redes más amplias, dijo Collins – incluyendo la ayuda para que más hispanoamericanos puedan acceder a empleos mejor pagados – “nuestra calidad de vida será menor. Es un panorama bastante desolador”.
Incluso los más pequeños esfuerzos por matricular y apoyar a los estudiantes hispanos se complican aún más con la retirada de los programas de diversidad y las ayudas económicas a los estudiantes indocumentados, muchos de ellos hispanos.
Aunque la base jurídica de esa decisión ha sido ampliamente cuestionada, tiene en vilo a las instituciones de enseñanza superior. Incluso muchos colegios y universidades que los activistas elogiaron por impulsar la matriculación de hispanos no quisieron hablar de ello.
Algunos expertos dicen que la mayoría de los programas para reclutar y apoyar a los estudiantes hispanos no se verían afectados por las campañas anti DEI, ya que se ofrecen a cualquiera que los necesite. “Estas cosas funcionan para todos los estudiantes”, dijo Anne-Marie Núñez, directora ejecutiva del Instituto para el Éxito de los Estudiantes Hispanos de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso.
La proporción de graduados de secundaria hispanos que van directamente a la universidad es inferior a la de sus compañeros blancos, y está disminuyendo: del 70% al 58% entre 2012 y 2022. Ese es el último periodo para el que se dispone de cifras del Centro Nacional de Estadísticas Educativas. Los estudiantes hispanos que se matriculan en la universidad también la abandonan en mayor proporción.
Hay razones económicas y culturales para ello.
Según la Oficina del Censo, el ingreso medio anual de las familias hispanas es más de un 25% inferior al de las familias blancas, lo que significa que la universidad puede parecer fuera de su alcance. El Center for Law and Social Policy ha calculado que más de tres cuartas partes de los estudiantes hispanos que acuden incluso a colegios comunitarios de bajo coste tienen necesidades financieras no cubiertas.
Esto empuja a muchos directamente al mercado laboral. Muchos estudiantes universitarios hispanos trabajan al menos a tiempo parcial mientras estudian, algo que, según las investigaciones, reduce la probabilidad de graduarse.
Cuando Eddie Rivera terminó la secundaria en Carolina del Norte, “la universidad no era realmente una opción. Mi consejero no me ayudó. Sólo seguí lo que mi cultura hispana nos dice, que es ir a trabajar”.
Cuando Eddie Rivera terminó la secundaria en Carolina del Norte, “sólo seguí lo que mi cultura hispana nos dice, que es ir a trabajar”. Animado por sus compañeros, acabó matriculándose en la Dominican University. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Rivera, que tiene el estatus DACA, o Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia, trabajó en una residencia de ancianos, en un parque de trampolines cubierto y en un hospital durante la pandemia, donde sus colegas le animaron a ir a la universidad. Con la ayuda de un programa de becas para estudiantes indocumentados, también terminó en Dominican, donde a sus 28 años es estudiante de tercer año y se especializa en relaciones internacionales y diplomacia, con planes de obtener una maestría en política exterior y seguridad nacional.
Dominican, una pequeña universidad católica que data de 1922 y que antes se llamaba Rosary College, tiene una historia de educación de hijos de inmigrantes, del norte y centro de Europa, inicialmente.
Hoy, de las farolas del campus de 30 acres cuelgan pancartas con fotos de antiguos alumnos hispanos de éxito, y una banda de mariachis dirige las celebraciones del Día de los Muertos.
Las visitas a la institución se realizan en inglés y español, se ofrece a los estudiantes trabajo en el campus y el personal ayuda a familias enteras a superar crisis sanitarias, de vivienda y financieras. Dominican añadió un campus satélite en otoño en el barrio mexicano-americano de Pilsen, en Chicago, que ofrece titulaciones de dos años orientadas al empleo. Todos los estudiantes de la universidad reciben ayuda financiera, según datos federales.
“Todos los días me encuentro con un miembro del personal o un profesor que me pregunta qué me pasa en la vida y cómo pueden ayudarme”, dice Aldo Cervantes, estudiante de tercer año de Negocios con especialización en Contabilidad, que quiere dedicarse a la banca o a los recursos humanos.
También hay una Academia Familiar para que los padres, abuelos, hermanos y primos de los estudiantes conozcan los recursos de la universidad; como incentivo, las familias que acudan a cinco sesiones obtienen créditos para que su estudiante realice un curso de verano sin costo alguno.
Un armario de ropa en la Dominican University para estudiantes que necesitan trajes de negocios para entrevistas de trabajo. Uno de los factores que frenan la matriculación de hispanos en la universidad es la menor renta media de los hogares. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
“Cuando observamos a la población latina que va a la universidad, no se trata de una elección individual”, afirma Gabe Lara, Vicepresidente de Éxito y Compromiso Estudiantil, utilizando el término preferido por la universidad para referirse a las personas de ascendencia latinoamericana. “Es una elección familiar”.
Estas y otras medidas han contribuido a más que duplicar la proporción de estudiantes hispanos en los últimos 10 años, hasta casi el 70% de los 2.570 estudiantes de Dominican, según cifras facilitadas por la universidad.
Genaro Balcazar dirige las estrategias de matriculación y marketing como director de operaciones de la universidad, tiene una forma pragmátuca de ver la situación.
“Atendemos las necesidades de los alumnos no por quiénes son”, dijo Balcázar, “sino porque necesitan la ayuda”.
Este artículo sobre la enseñanza superior y el reclutamiento de alumnos hispanos fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro centrada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín. Escucha nuestro podcast sobre educación.
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.
Something has been happening on college campuses that’s as surprising as it is dramatic: The number of women enrolled has overtaken the number of men.
Women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gaps keep getting wider. And men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys get lower grades than girls, on average, in elementary and middle schools. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary actions. They’re less likely to graduate from high school. And more men than women go into the skilled trades, instead of getting college degrees.
Among the results: Universities and colleges now tip the scales for men in admission to try to keep the genders even.
But as things keep falling out of balance, there are impacts on the financial success for men and on economic growth for everybody.
We’ll hear from men and women students about what that’s like right now, and from colleges about what they’re trying to do about it.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza …
[Jon] …and I’m Jon Marcus.
[sound of referee] Climbers ready? Contestants ready? One, two, go!
[Jon] This is the sound of one of the most unusual extracurricular activities at the University of Montana: running up a fallen tree with careful footwork, and neatly sawing off the end of it.
[sound of club member] So really what we’re trying to do is keep the tradition of antique logger sports alive by bringing in new generations to doing activities that they did hundreds of years ago. I mean, we’re using cross-cut saws that they used to cut down giant redwoods.
[Jon] That might seem like a throwback, but the University of Montana Woodsmen team has an important new purpose. Promoting programs such as forestry has become part of the university’s new strategy to attract an increasingly important type of student.
[Kelly Nolin] There are definitely some efforts that are happening at the institution to help men find their community and to find a space.
[Jon] That’s Kelly Nolin. She’s director of admissions at the University of Montana.
[Kelly Nolin] Our gender split is about 42 percent male, 56 percent female. So it’s definitely widening, and it’s clearly a concern for a variety of reasons. And so that’s why we decided to look into opportunities to recruit more male students.
[Jon] What Nolan says she’s trying to solve is a really big problem that most people don’t know is even happening: The proportion of men who are going to college is falling way behind the proportion of women who are going.
Nationwide, women now outnumber men by about 60 percent to 40 percent, and that gap keeps getting wider. Far more young women than young men who graduate from high school are going to college, and men who do enroll are also more likely to drop out.
We’ll tell you how this might actually be creating an advantage for men in the admissions process, and even how it affects even the dating scene on campuses — which, let’s face it, is a big part of college to a lot of students.
Take it from Amber Turner. She’s a freshman at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida, which is now more than 70 percent women.
[Amber Turner] It’s a lot more women than men and the men usually have a lot more options, whereas the women have disgusting options because there aren’t many of them. I have a boyfriend, personally, but I saw with my friends that it’s kind of like nobody here for them.
[Jon] But fewer men in college has really serious implications for not only colleges that need to fill seats — or, for that matter, students frustrated by the dating pool. It affects the prospects of financial success for men, and of economic growth for everybody.
This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report — a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report …
[Kirk] … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you.
Today on the podcast: ‘The Missing Men.’
[Kirk] This season, we’ve been talking about the demographic cliff. That’s the decline that’s starting in the number of 18-year-olds, and how it will affect colleges and the economy.
Now here’s a related milestone you might not have heard about. The number of college-educated women in the workforce has for the first time overtaken the number college-educated men. That’s because more women than men have been going to college.
There are a lot of reasons for this. Boys in elementary and middle school get lower grades than girls. They’re more likely to be held back or face disciplinary action. And they’re less likely to graduate from high school. Jon, you and I have talked to high school senior boys about all of this.
[Jon] Right, Kirk, and a lot of them were worried that they don’t have the confidence to tackle college.
[Abdukadir Abdullahi] I feel like there’s more distractions for guys to get, like, the best grades because every school, like, the guy is always the class clown, and stuff like that.
[Jon] That’s Abdukadir Abdullahi. He’s the son of a single father and just didn’t see himself in college. Neither did Pedro Hidalgo, even though he actually wanted to go.
[Pedro Hidalgo] College was something I always wanted to reach and I always wanted to be accepted to, but I never had that belief within myself that I could do it.
[Jon] Men are more likely than women to go into the skilled trades, which is faster and cheaper than paying for what seems to them to be an endless and expensive stretch of time in college. That’s what Abdullahi was planning to do.
[Kirk] Back when you thought college wasn’t for you, what was the alternative? You were planning to just go straight to work or join the military or did you have an alternative plan?
[Abdukadir Abdullahi] I was going to, like, be a plumber or something like that, like where you could have to go to school, but you could make a decent amount of money.
[Kirk] In the end, he and the rest of these guys did end up going to college. But a lot of other high school boys feel like they need to get jobs right away, especially if they come from families that need help with their finances.
Here’s Hidalgo’s classmate, Debrin Adon. His parents immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic.
[Debrin Adon] I’m not going to speak for every man, but at least for young men like my classmates and I, we’re more focused on like money, you know? Like, getting money — getting that paycheck.
[Kirk] That’s right. So a lot of them get jobs right out of high school and then they buy a car and maybe get married and by that point, it’s almost certain that they’ll never go to college.
This is Kellie Becker. She’s the college counselor at the school where Abdullahi went.
[Kellie Becker] A lot of young men are working. They’re working for their families. Like, they’re the man of the house. They are providing their entire family with one paycheck and they get a little taste of that where they, some of them, have to do it or some of them want to do it because they’re getting that money.
[Kirk] These are just a few of the reasons we’ve ended up here. Fifty years ago, the gender divide was exactly the reverse, and there were far more men than women in college. Since then, there’s been a lot of work to encourage women to get degrees. But much less of that kind of thing is targeted at men. Women also disproportionately work in fields that require degrees, such as social work and teaching. And we’ve already heard how boys don’t do as well as girls in lower grades, how young men feel responsible for helping their families right out of high school and how many of them go into the trades. The decline is even steeper for Black men. Their numbers went way down during the pandemic. Even at historically Black colleges, Black men now make up only about a quarter of the students.
[Michael Sinclair] Money is one of the main factors. A lot of our young men are looking for opportunities to earn a living, but they need the money now.
[Kirk] That’s Michael Sinclair. He’s an associate professor at Morgan State University, and he points out that this becomes a vicious cycle.
[Michael Sinclair] There’s a statement that my father once told me: You can’t be what you can’t see. And if you’re not seeing Black men on college campuses, a lot of young people don’t think that that’s for them.
[Kirk] This mismatch between men and women is starting to create an odd divide on many college campuses.
[Jon] Exactly, Kirk. I visited another big university, the University of Vermont. It’s already 64 percent female. I went to the student union, where Melinda Wetzel told me what it was like to be a woman student there.
[Melinda Wetzel] Oh, yeah, I do have one small class that there is only one guy. I do undergraduate research and when I’m in the medical building, I feel like I hardly ever see men. I feel I’m walking around and it’s just, like, a bunch of ladies.
[Jon] This extends to areas on campus you might not expect.
[Melinda Wetzel] I was at the gym the other day and, like, if you think about going to a gym, you think of, like, oh, no, like, there’s going to be a lot of scary guys there. I looked around and I actually pointed out to my friend, like, ‘Whoa, look at all the girls here. This is great.’
[Jon] Now, some men on campus also think it’s great that there are more women.
[Pete Azan] So in our class we have, like, 83 girls and like 30 guys. They told us that like the first day of school. So we were all shocked.
[Jon] Pete Azan is studying dental medicine down at Nova Southeastern. More women than men are going into dentistry these days, too — not only there, but nationwide. He’s okay with that, though.
[Pete Azan] I love it. I go to class every day the happiest man, because I get to be around beautiful women all day.
[Jon] And however you might feel about that, there’s another potential advantage for men to this little-noticed trend:
[Kirk] To keep the gender mix more evenly balanced, a lot of universities are making it easier for men to get in. That’s become especially important as they start to topple over that demographic cliff that’s coming, in the number of students of any gender.
Sourav Guha used to work in university admissions. He saw how men got an edge so colleges could keep the genders balanced. Now Guha is executive director of the Consortium on Higher Achievement and Success. It supports students who are already enrolled in college.
[Sourav Guha] I’d put it this way: There were a lot of high school girls who, in terms of credentials, looked as good as or better than some of the boys we admitted, but the girls ended up either wait-listed or rejected. It’s not that the students we were taking were not qualified or capable of being there, but certainly they had credentials, like, maybe a lower GPA, sort of different classes, different levels of high school achievement.
[Kirk] So listen to what he’s saying there, Jon. At some schools, the odds that men will get in are now better than the odds that women will.
[Jon] Right, Kirk. And it’s absolutely true. We looked it up. A lot of prestigious universities are accepting more of their male applicants than their female applicants. Boston University, Brown, Vanderbilt, the University of Chicago, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California — all of them took at least slightly more male than female applicants.
[Kirk] Now, that might keep the genders balanced for a while at those selective colleges and universities, even if it is at the expense of women who apply to them. But the problem isn’t going away, and some experts are warning that the repercussions are significant.
[Jon] Right, Kirk. Richard Reeves researched this phenomenon of men not going to college and became so alarmed about it that he founded an organization to study and address it, the American Institute for Boys and Men.
[Richard Reeves] Now, there are lots of good organizations ringing the alarm bells when there are gaps facing women and girls, and that is great, and they do a great job of it. But it hasn’t really been anyone’s job to wake up every day and ring the alarm bell around declining male enrollment in colleges.
[Jon] Reeves says this should matter to everyone.
[Richard Reeves] We’re leaving too much male talent on the table as a result of the failure of our education system to serve men as well as women. And as a result, those men are not doing as well in the economy as they could. That’s bad for the economy. It’s also bad for the women that they will end up with. And so this is, in the end, bad for everybody.
[Jon] Colleges are trying lots of things to appeal to men. The University of Vermont has started running an entrepreneurship competition for high school students. It’s open to anyone, but more boys than girls have entered. That’s what the university expected, based on focus groups that showed that men liked entrepreneurship programs. The grand prize is a full-tuition scholarship.
Like a lot of schools, Vermont is also using its athletic programs to attract men.
Now, you’d think more women getting college degrees would be translating into higher pay and more promotions. But while there may be more of them in college, the degrees they tend to get are often in lower-paying fields. Men still outnumber women in disciplines such as engineering and business, which have a bigger payoff.
Sourav Guha explains.
[Sourav Guha] If you look at the top two fields for women, it’s still nursing and teaching. You know, for men, it’s software development. So women are going to college and the economic returns they’re getting from college are not the same that men are getting.
[Kirk] But Richard Reeves says men who don’t get degrees at all will generally be worse off.
[Richard Reeves] One of the myths that is really important to nail here is the idea that, well, men don’t need college degrees because there are lots of jobs — well-paid, good jobs that men can go and do even if they don’t have higher educations. That is not true anymore.
[Kirk] However they’re approaching it, and for whatever reasons, colleges are laser-focused on this issue. As we’ve been saying all this season, they need all the students they can get right now.
[Jon] Yeah, Kirk, and Reeves is worried about a new reason men are finding to not go to college: politics.
[Kirk] Right. As colleges continue to be targets in the culture wars, Reeves says some men consider them not only woke, but anti-male.
[Richard Reeves] I’m worried that not only does higher education seem like it’s more female and coded a bit more female, but also coded left, progressive and maybe even somewhat intolerant toward men, and particularly perhaps conservative men from, say, rural areas, right? I think if you want to find someone who’s pretty skeptical about higher education, it may well be a conservative white guy living in a rural area. And turns out that is one of the groups that we’re really seeing a big decline in enrollment.
[Jon] This concern isn’t lost on colleges. We already heard from University of Montana admissions director Kelly Nolin. Among the ways her university has tried to win back men is by inviting conservative speakers such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
[Charlie Kirk] And I’m going to make a case, and I don’t know if it’ll be persuasive to do, why I think DEI is unbiblical. …
[Kelly Nolin] And regardless of how you feel about his political views, it was an important moment for people in our state to see that as a liberal arts college, we were willing and able to bring a conservative person to campus, but also somebody who appeals to a lot of men. And so just sharing those different perspectives, trying to break some of the stereotypes of how people in our state or maybe outside of our state view us, that’s some of work that we’re doing right now.
[Jon] That’s on top of pushing its forestry school and that Woodsmen Club and other things, based on what it learned from focus groups of male students.
[Kelly Nolin] They really felt, in their experience, that we needed to focus more on the attractive nature of our location. So some of the activities that are available to students very easily — things like fly-fishing, hiking, skiing, hunting — those were important to these students. And they weren’t things that we were really highlighting in our brochures.
[Jon] Kirk, you and I got to go to the University of Montana on assignment, and it is a really beautiful natural setting, although, as I recall, I beat you to the top of Mount Sentinel when we hiked it.
[Kirk] I was taking in the scenery, Jon. But, yes, those are the kinds of things the university is now using to market itself to men.
[Kelly Nolin] We sent an email with a link to our wild sustenance class, which is a class about hunting that really focuses on not just the mechanics of hunting, but the conservation purpose behind hunting that could appeal to a wide range of people from a wide variety of political affiliations.
[Kirk] Yeah, Jon, and just as an aside, that email had an unexpected effect.
[Kelly Nolin] I will tell you that somebody saw that ad and they came to visit. And when they were asked why they were looking at the University of Montana for college — they were from Virginia — they said they wanted to come someplace where they had rugged men.
[Kirk] She’s laughing because that person was a woman.
[Jon] Right. But colleges are taking this deadly seriously. As we’ll continue to discuss this season, they are facing down that demographic cliff and every student counts.
This is College Uncovered. I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] And I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH. This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza.
If you want to see whether a college accepts more male than female applicants, we’ve linked in the show notes to the federal government website where you can find that.
[Kirk] We had help on this episode from Liam Elder-Connors of Vermont Public and reporter Yvonne Zum Tobel in South Florida. Our sound of the Woodsmen Club came from the University of Montana student newspaper.
This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim. Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman.
[Jon] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT.
Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
To see the acceptance rates of men vs. women applicants at any college or university, go here, enter the name of the institution, and click on ADMISSIONS.
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.
What if colleges started applying to you instead of the other way around?
The anxiety-inducing college admissions game is changing. With declining birth rates and growing skepticism about the value of a degree, higher education is facing an enrollment cliff, set to hit hard in 2026. That’s 18 years after the Great Recession, when many American families stopped having babies.
As competition for students intensifies, more states desperate for workforce talent and schools dependent on tuition dollars are turning to direct admission – a system in which students receive college acceptance offers and scholarships before they even apply.
Marykate Agnes was directly admitted to Western New England University, and also got a significant amount of financial aid. Credit: Kirk Carapezza
In this episode, hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus break down how we even got to the point at which the traditional college admission process required students to spend time and money with no guarantee of success. And they ask whether direct admission is the solution colleges and students need, or a Band-Aid on a bigger enrollment crisis.
In the basement of the Student Center at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, students play pool and ping pong. At a table in the back, Ndilei Lukulay is taking a break from her studies. She tells me her mother came to the U.S. from Sierra Leone. Growing up in Springfield, Lukulay felt nervous about applying to college.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I was definitely feeling the pressure of being that my mom is an immigrant. She’s very big on going to college and making sure that you get a good career and complete all your studies and so I didn’t know where to start and I was very stressed out about the whole thing.
[Kirk] Then this university in her hometown emailed to say she was admitted and would get a scholarship and she hadn’t even applied. So she was skeptical.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I was, like, is this a scam? Is this real?
[Kirk] It was real. Western New England, a private university with about 2,000 students, offered to admit her and more than 2,000 other students before they even applied. The university tells me the goal is to make college more accessible to low-income students, like Lukulay, who make up about a third of the school’s population.
This is called direct admission, and we’re seeing a lot more schools doing this as they confront a steep decline in the number of 18-year-olds, something economists call the demographic cliff. That’s going to mean a lot fewer college students — or potential customers.
[Jon] And, Kirk, schools in areas of the country like western Massachusetts are the hardest hit.
Here’s how it works. The college tells students they’d get in based on a handful of criteria, like their GPA or intended major. For students like Ndilei Lukulay, that means getting to skip writing essays, going to interviews, and getting letters of recommendation.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I think I received direct admissions offers from about 12 to 15 schools and I was actually very shocked. I just never heard anything about it and I’m like, is that easy?
[Jon] This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Jon Marcus with the Hechinger Report. …
[Kirk] … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH News. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with the Hechinger Report, is here to show you.
In this season, we’re standing on the precipice of the demographic cliff and exploring the changing higher education landscape. And one of the major changes is how people are getting into college. Applying to schools is really stressful. But what if all that went away and colleges applied to you?
Today on the show” Tag, You’re In!”
[Kirk] Direct admission is now used by hundreds of schools across the country. And more than a dozen state systems do this, too, including Oregon, Minnesota, and Connecticut. Idaho was the first state to create a direct admissions program.
[Jennifer Delaney] In Idaho, it was actually the president of the flagship who tried to apply to his own college and found it really hard.
[Kirk] Jennifer Delaney teaches higher ed policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and she studied the direct admissions program in Idaho, where every public institution in the state participates, as well as two private colleges.
[Jennifer Delaney] It was about how do we simplify, how do think about increasing, as a state, overall college enrollment. So every kid in a public high school in Idaho gets a letter. You’re either in everywhere in the state if your GPA is high enough, or you’re into all the open-access institutions, which is every community college plus two public four-years.
[Jon] This is a major shift, Kirk, in how colleges do business. For students, it helps ease the stress of the college search by letting them know they’re in before they even apply. For colleges desperate for students, it’s a way to fill their classroom.
[Kirk] Yeah, and for states, Jon, it’s a way to keep talent close to home and develop a more educated workforce. Susan Makowski is director of admission at Rider University in New Jersey. We heard from her in our first episode this season.
[Susan Makowski] The cliff is coming, so we just will have less students.
[Kirk] At a college fair in Edison, New Jersey, she told me Rider was already admitting nearly 80 percent of those who applied when it decided to offer direct admission to students who’ve uploaded their applications through the Common App. That’s a single application accepted by more than 1,000 schools. So somebody applying to the University of Michigan suddenly gets accepted to other schools, like Rider.
[Susan Makowski] These direct admission programs run the gamut of different ways that a student gets admitted. I may alert them that they look like a great fit for Rider, but they still need to decide — do they feel that way? Whereas the other options, really, I think, sometimes worry students. Like, is this real?
[Jon] Interesting. But does direct admission really help colleges like Rider boost enrollment? And what if a college tags you? We’ll have more on that in a moment, so stay tuned.
But first, how did we get to this point where the college admissions process requires students to spend a ton of time and money with no guarantee of success? And how did the whole process become so anxiety-inducing?
[Kirk] Well, Jon, it wasn’t always this way.
[Archival newsreel sound] There were a group of congressmen with long memories who were in the last war. They knew that when a man gets out of the Army or Navy or Marines, he’s worried most about a job, an education, and a home. And that’s why Congress, led by the president, passed the law, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights.
[Kirk] Some quick history. After World War II, most of the students applying to college applied to a single school. And by the 1970s, it was maybe two schools. Today, one in three students applies to seven or more places. That shift has created a lot of uncertainty for colleges hoping to fill their seats and a lot anxiety for students and their families. To get a sense of why colleges push this system, I reached out to a long-time admissions insider.
[John Burdick] My name is John Burdick. I was, until 2023, the vice provost for enrollment at Cornell University in New York.
[Kirk] Burdick was in the game for nearly four decades. Since he left Cornell, he’s been working on international college access in Africa. So technically he’s still in the game. I asked him what drove us here?
[John Burdick] This is basically just a classic arms race. The more rejection letters we can send, the more prestige we have, the more likely people will be willing to spend money on our services. And then students follow along behind that by a year or so and say, ‘I don’t know that I’m going to get in there or the other nine, 10, 19 prestigious places that I am applying to. So I better apply to all of them.’
[Kirk] Burdick says everybody in the game has a perverse incentive — students to increase the number of applications they send, and colleges to increase the number of applications they get.
[John Burdick] Now the Ivies will by and large say, ‘Oh, we don’t want more applications. We’re already only admitting 5 percent and it’s terrible and we’d just as soon not see applications.’ They’re lying through their teeth. They would freak out if they suddenly weren’t among the most selective universities on the planet.
[Kirk] And on this planet, most colleges — 80% — admit more than half the students who apply. Still, selective or elite college admission drives the national narrative.
Jon, you’ve reported on the fact that it’s getting easier to get into college and with the demographic cliff coming it’ll only get easier at certain schools, right?
[Jon] Yeah, not at Princeton and Yale, but despite public perception, and for the first time in decades, acceptance rates at most colleges and universities are going up.
[Kirk] Where are acceptance rates going up the most?
[Jon] Well, Bucknell, George Washington, Marquette, Oberlin, Gonzaga, Brigham Young — the list goes on and on. These universities want you to think it’s impossible, or at least hard, to get in. But the fact is, on average, universities are admitting a larger proportion of their applicants than they did 20 years ago. In fact, the median acceptance rate at four-year universities was about 8 percentage points higher in 2022 than it was in 2012.
[Kirk] Many students think it’s increasingly hard to get into college, and they see the whole process as a mystery. Even as you gather up your transcripts and test scores and then add some final touches on your personal essays, the question remains: Exactly what happens after your application goes out into the unknown? At the college fair in New Jersey, I asked high school juniors Masiambou Saysay and Harmony Roundtree what they think happens behind closed doors.
[Masiambou Saysay] They just have a lot of applications, they’re like, declined, oh yeah, I don’t know.
[Harmony Roundtree] I feel like a big pile of letters being stacked on top of each other and you just gotta pick, yeah.
[Kirk] And what do you think it looks like?
[Harmony Roundtree] Hmm. Like, a million emails and then, like, three different computers
[Kirk] I got a glimpse into one of those computers and the black box that is the admissions process — the mystery of who gets in, the secrets of what really matters. After I reached out to a bunch of schools, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester agreed to give me access and a behind-the-scenes look at the admissions processes. Full disclosure, Jon, I’m a graduate of Holy Cross.
[Jon] Oh, really, Kirk? You never mention it. So the only school that would let you in is the only school that would allow you to observe the process?
[Kirk] That’s pretty much how this went down. The college let me sit in on one early decision committee meeting. Behind closed doors, inside a tiny conference room, I saw how the process historically went down.
[Woman’s voice] Nice program, good testing.
[Man’s voice] Yeah, a lot to like.
[Woman’s voice] People like him?
[Kirk] What’s most surprising is how quickly the committee reviews the candidates, spending about two minutes on each before deciding whether to accept, hold, or deny. To speed things along, the committee uses a lot of jargon, like LBB — that’s ‘late blooming boy’ — and RJ for ‘rejection.’
[Woman’s voice] Academically has everything. I wonder if a counselor call might be enlightening.
[Woman’s voice] I mean, honestly, it sounds like maybe he could work on it or be cognizant of it. I mean I don’t know, and he’s strong academically, I think he’s okay.
[Man’s voice] I think his classmates would bring him down to reality.
[Jon] Kirk, that’s just one small private college. So to get a broader sense of the admissions landscape and how it’s changing, we reached out to Jeff Selingo.
[Kirk] Yes, Selingo teaches higher ed leadership at Arizona State University, and he’s author of the book Who Gets In and Why. For his research, he spent a year inside three college admissions offices at Emory in Atlanta, Davidson in North Carolina, and the University of Washington in Seattle. So I asked him, how did he end up at those schools?
[Jeff Selingo] In some ways, it’s a lot like admissions. I approached 24 schools and asked them to get inside their admissions process. And most said no. And only three said yes. So it’s kind of like I applied to 24 schools. I only got into three.
[Kirk] And what do you think people imagine it’s like inside a college admissions office and what’s it actually like?
[Jeff Selingo] First of all, I think they think that the admissions officers are spending a lot more time with college applications than they really are. Emory had something like 40,000 applications. And so as a result, they’re like looking at these applications sometimes in just a couple of minutes. Probably the most they would take with an application might be 12 or 13 minutes. And meanwhile, you know, these kids are putting their heart and soul into it for years.
[Kirk] Selingo says the biggest change in the college admissions game is the lack of signals around what it takes to get in. Schools that used to require test scores, for example, have gone test-optional since the pandemic.
[Jeff Selingo] You know, some colleges have gone back, But that lack of a signal, like, if I got a 1400 or 1300 on the SAT, I kind of knew where that would place me in a class and I would not even apply to most of these schools. But now with test optional, it gave me the opportunity to potentially apply and get in. And so every year now you see just increasing number of applications again to these highly selective schools. And then you hear stories, ‘Oh, I didn’t, you, know, my kid didn’t get in or my cousin didn’t get in,’ and so the following year, kids get really nervous. And what do they do? They apply to not only those same set of schools, but then they apply to five more at the same time. And so you just see this vicious circle that just keeps going around and around again, particularly around these top schools.
[Kirk] How do you think the demographic cliff and the shortage of 18-year-olds will change this game?
[Jeff Selingo] I think the competition for student is going to intensify. And so you’re seeing that already. You see programs like direct admission, where students are getting accepted to colleges without even applying. You’re going to see a lot more marketing to students even earlier than they do now, in terms of buying their names and sending them information. The other thing, though, is on the financial aid side. I think the discounts and the merit aid that [colleges] are going to give, I think they’re just going to lean even more into that. And you’re just going to see more and more money flowing to students to try to persuade them to come to school X instead of school Y.
[Kirk] How else are these colleges handling these seismic shifts, and what’s the tone inside of the admissions office now? Is there a sense of desperation?
[Jeff Selingo] It’s interesting around enrollment. Even though we’ve known this cliff has been coming forever, admissions is really, like, especially at most of these schools that are tuition dependent and are really enrollment driven, it’s about butts in seats tomorrow, not a year from now. So, I mean, they’re kind of short sighted. They haven’t been doing very much to prepare for this. No, they haven’t, because they basically think ‘I just need to, I need to make this class for next year. I need to come in on budget. I need to. Make enrollment.’ They’re not really worried about two years down the road.
[Kirk] You mentioned direct admission. What do you make of this trend, and do you think we’ll see more schools and states adopt it?
[Jeff Selingo] Oh, I think you will, because there’s something in admissions where everybody kind of follows the leader. I’m a little skeptical of direct admission. Well, what happens when more and more schools adopt direct admissions and suddenly, now, Kirk, you’re getting, instead of, like, one or two direct admissions offers, now you’re get eight or nine, right? Like, how does that really help you, at the end of the day, make a decision, or from the college’s point of view, know who’s really interested and who’s coming?
[Jon] So Jeff Selingo is pretty skeptical of direct admission. But does it help colleges boost enrollment?
[Kirk] Well, sometimes, says Jennifer Delaney. She’s the researcher we heard at the top of this episode who looked at the first-in-the-nation program in Idaho.
[Jennifer Delaney] It’s not always able to move the needle on the enrollment side of things.
[Kirk] Delaney’s research found direct admission helped to increase full-time undergrad enrollment by at least 4 percent, and it boosted in-state enrollment by at least 8 percent.
[Jennifer Delaney] Having a bird in the hand in Idaho meant that you stayed in Idaho for school, and you didn’t go out of state.
[Kirk] And what about low-income students?
[Jennifer Delaney] Admission isn’t enough. You’ve got to be admitted and be able to pay for it.
[Kirk] And that’s why more schools are adding direct financial aid offers up front, too.
[Jon] Kirk, to compete, more and more community and four-year colleges are offering — quote, unquote — free tuition. We have a whole episode about that called “The Real Cost of Free.” You can find it in our second season.
At Western New England University, Marykate Agnes says she accepted the direct admission offer, but not before she reached out to increase her financial aid award. Agnes was admitted through direct admission, and she also received generous financial
[Marykate Agnes] I got the $32,000 scholarship, then I got another $2,000 for early action, and then I asked for more money and I got it. So I think I’m paying around $10,000. I think that it’s just an awesome thing, and it takes stress off of the students.
[Jon] Agnes says she doesn’t worry about attending a less selective school.
[Marykate Agnes] I don’t think it reflects the value of the education at all. I mean, at the end of the semester, I have more work than my friends at more selective schools do, and it’s harder, more rigorous, and the professors are absolutely amazing, and it is so personable. And I think that’s what you’re not getting at the more selective schools.
[Kirk] All of this change is putting pressure on colleges to develop a strategy. That’s where people like Kathy Ruby come in. She works with colleges to shape financial aid strategies to help them compete with other schools for students.
[Kathy Ruby] It’s a competitive market, and it’s going to get more competitive depending on where you are and the type of institution you are. I think not all institutions will experience the cliff in the same way.
[Kirk] Ruby says families are more cost-conscious than ever. Students and parents are more averse to debt, so schools are trying to make themselves seem cheaper. The goal is to attract middle-income families who don’t qualify for federal and state but also don’t have the means to pay the full price.
[Kathy Ruby] Certainly institutions are starting to focus on what can we do for those middle students, because that also can often be a good place to build. But it can be more expensive for the institution, because there’s no federal dollars to help.
[Kirk] Schools are focusing on scholarships that are offered up front and meet more students’ financial needs. Ruby’s advice to students and families? Shape a college list with your reach, target and safety schools, but also understand what that means for you.
[Kathy Ruby] Because if you’re a very bright student and your likely schools might be actually still pretty selective and not offer much in the way of merit aid, you have to do your homework on understanding what the college actually offers. Use their website, use their net price calculator, talk to people.
[Jon] And, as we always say on this podcast, ask questions and understand what your financial aid package might look like, even if you can’t get an exact figure.
[Kirk] The reality is there are tons of solid schools and programs out there. So try not to worry so much about that bumper sticker on the back of your neighbor’s SUV. And remember, getting into those bumper-sticker schools is often not about you. It’s about the college’s agenda. Factors like building a class, budgets and yield. You know, whether a student will even enroll if they’re accepted. Students and parents have a lot to gain if they change their perspective on what really qualifies as a quote,unquote good college.
[Jon] That’s right, Kirk. It’s easy to think a degree from a selective institution is the best insurance policy you can buy for your kid’s future. And if they’re not accepted, they’ll end up on the wrong side of this country’s economic divide.
But as we approach the demographic cliff, in many ways, that is simply not true. For many students, it’s a buyer’s market now.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH. …
[Jon] … and I’m Jon Marcus from the Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza, and it was edited by Jonathan A. Davis.
Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim.
[Kirk] Our fact checker is Ryan Alderman.
Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott.
All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT.
The demographic cliff was set to sound for us by James Trayford of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in England.
Mei He is our project manager. And head of GBH Podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Jon] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report, and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
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.
Most Americans would probably rather forget the Great Recession that began in 2007. But as long ago as it may seem, it triggered something that is about to become a big problem: Americans started having fewer babies, and the birth rate hasn’t recovered since.
That means a looming decline in the number if 18-year-olds. Since those are the traditional customers for universities and colleges, enrollment is projected to fall dramatically and campuses to close.
In this episode, we tell you the surprising benefits of this for students and their parents — and the scary prospects for the economy, which will suffer shortages of workers just as baby boomers retire.
Brody Scully is a high school student looking at colleges. “There’s a lot of pressure on me. I have to decide in these next two years that I’ve got to go to a specific college,” he says.
Come with us to a college fair where recruiters line up to compete for applicants, and hear from enrollment consultants, economists, and the president of a school that has already closed.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza.
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus. We’re going to start this brand-new season of the podcast by taking you back to a time most Americans would probably rather forget.
[Archival news footage] Monday, Sept. 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers files the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, precipitating the global financial crisis. … The Dow tumbled more than 500 points.
[Jon] What we now call the Great Recession started in 2008, and it left the world’s economy reeling.
[Archival news footage] More than two million prime mortgages, traditional loans for people with good credit, are now delinquent.
[Jon] The Great Recession did a lot of damage at the time, but it also caused something else most people haven’t noticed, and that’s about to affect us all.
[Archival news footage] Birth rates in the USA have dropped to their lowest annual levels in three decades, falling for nearly every group of women. … It changed the game when it comes to job security, and it led many young adults to delay marriage and kids.
[Jon] People stop having babies during economic downturns. That was a major but almost unseen impact of the Great Recession 18 years ago. And that means we’re about to run out of 18-year-olds. This is being called the demographic cliff.
Hey Kirk, help me explain the deal with this demographic cliff.
[Kirk] Yeah, so the demographic cliff is this big dropoff that’s about to hit the number of traditional-age college students. And the reason experts call it a cliff is that the number of students is going to go down, like you’re tumbling down a mountain and it never comes back up, Jon.
[Jon] The demographic cliff is pretty much the focus of our new season of this podcast. There’s some surprising good news that we’ll tell you about for students and their families, and for the parents of prospective college students. But this demographic cliff is also a big, big problem in ways most Americans don’t realize yet, for colleges and universities — and for economy.
[Nicole Smith] We are looking ahead down the road to circumstances, dire circumstances where we just can’t fill the jobs that are opening up.
[Wes Butterfield] We are at the, I’m going to call it the crossroads. You know, we’re at the cross roads for many campuses where they’re going to have to think creatively.
[Rachel Sederberg] We’re going to see issues across every occupation and every industry. There is going to be no one spared of this pain.
[Jon] Those are the voices of some experts whose job it’s been to watch this coming crisis. Like the lookouts with binoculars on the deck of the Titanic.
[Telephone ringing] Pick up, you bastards!
Yes, what do you see?
Iceberg! Dead ahead!
[Jon] So forgive us for the mixed metaphors and come with us as we help you cross these icy seas and this pivotal crossroads. We’ll show you how the demographic cliff will affect you.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. …
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report is here to show you.
[Kirk] In our fourth season, we’ll be looking at the many dramatic ways that college is changing right now and what it all means for you. Today on the podcast: “The Demographic Cliff.”
[Sound from college fair] Hi, guys, welcome to the college fair. If you’d like a bag…
[Kirk] To get a sense of what the demographic cliff looks and sounds like on the ground, I went to a national college fair in Edison, New Jersey.
[Sound from college fair] Students, make sure you have your barcode ready so the colleges can scan your barcodes.
[Kirk] Inside a massive convention and exposition center in an industrial park, a bunch of juniors and their families anxiously waited in the lobby before passing through turnstiles, and then they mingled with college representatives.
[Sound from college fair] And do you have one of the scan cards so I can get your information?
[Kirk] It’s kind of like speed dating, with most of the colleges here selling themselves.
[Sound from college fair] What’s cool about it is that we’re currently building our brand new college of business building that’s a lot of these that will be the biggest academic building on campus, so honestly your degree is going to work tenfold by the time that you end up coming to FSU.
[Kirk] There’s rows and rows of colleges. In some of those rows, it seems like there are more colleges than students.
[Sound from college fair] And we’re 10 minutes from London Heathrow Airport as well, so for international students getting on is great.
[Kirk] After the initial rush, the crowd thins out and those turnstiles stop turning.
Welcome to a new era of college admissions.
As you come to a fair like this, what are you looking for exactly?
[Brody Scully] I’m looking for environmental sciences and eco-engineering.
[Kirk] Brody Scully is a junior from West Milford, New Jersey. He says he knows exactly what he wants in a college: someplace where he can be active and maybe ski, and someplace small.
[Brody Scully] Because I definitely learn where there’s probably a smaller group of people, so I’m looking for that.
[Kirk] Is it anxiety-inducing for you guys, going through this process?
[Brody Scully] I would say yeah, definitely, and, like, time intensive.
[Kirk] Why is it so stressful?
[Brody Scully] There’s a lot of pressure on me. I have to decide in these next two years that I’ve got to go to a specific college.
[Kirk] But Brody may be in luck, because in the college admissions game, he was born at the right time: in 2008, just as birth rates in the U.S. started to decline. Remember Jon, that means there will be fewer 18-year-olds applying to college over the next few years. And except at elite schools like Harvard or Stanford and a few dozen other most selective colleges, the odds of getting in are going up. Eight out of 10 applicants to public universities and 7 out of 10 at private colleges are accepted now. That’s nearly 8 percentage points higher than 10 years ago.
Brody was surprised and thrilled when I told him this. In fact, his eyes widened.
[Brody Scully] I’m not aware of that at all and I’m kind of happy now that you told me that.
[Kirk] As the fair winds down, college reps, some standing alone in the back of the convention center, keep smiling, making eye contact, and hoping for just one more student to come by.
I mean, the reality is, this is a competitive landscape for many colleges, and for students, it’s increasingly a buyer’s market.
Take Rider University, which is trying really hard to stand out in this sea of schools. Its reps are simply telling potential students what the school is all about. and where it is.
[Susan Makowski] It is a small private school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, which is about 15 minutes south of Princeton.
[Kirk] Susan Makowski is director of admissions at Rider, and for the past 20 years, she’s helped organize this fair.
This seems like organized chaos.
[Susan Makowski] I think that’s a great way to describe it.
[Kirk] This year, there are about 300 schools here looking for applicants. Colleges pay about $700 just to rent a booth. They think it’s worth it for a chance to connect with some of the nearly 3,000 registered students. And, of course, to scan their barcodes so they can follow up with endless reminders and marketing materials.
[Sound from college fair] I think I’m all good, but I’m making some…
Do you have one of the scans?
Uh, yes I do.
[Kirk] This year, Makowski tells me, Rider University is trying something a little different.
[Susan Makowski] Tonight, to be honest, I’m in New Jersey school at a New Jersey fair. I bought two booths. That’s how I’m standing out physically tonight so that you see that I’m here, right? You can’t miss me.
[Kirk] So you expanded your footprint.
[Susan Makowski] Yes, I did.
[Kirk] You can’t just walk, you can’t blow by you.
[Susan Makowski] Right, but that’s a selfish thing that I’m choosing to do, because I want to make certain that I can capture as many students Who might not have heard of us or might be really interested in us
[Kirk] Looking ahead and over the demographic cliff, Makowski tells me she knows things are about to change with fewer applicants.
[Susan Makowski] I think that’s going to be a natural progression, simply because a cliff is coming.
[Jon] Kirk, the seeds of this problem for colleges were planted back in 2008.
[Archival news footage] It was a manic Monday in the financial markets. The Dow tumbled more than 500 points after…
[Wes Butterfield] We were in a fairly dark place. And, again, that’s impacting us today.
[Jon] That’s Wes Butterfield. He’s chief of consulting services at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a consulting firm that helps colleges and universities recruit students.
[Wes Butterfield] Anytime we reach those types of points in our history, birth rates go down. People just simply stop having babies. People were concerned about whether or not they’d have the resources to be able to start a family. And so those numbers backed off, and it takes a while for us to get to a point where it truly begins to impact us.
[Jon] The decline in births that started 18 years ago is about to translate into fewer students coming out of high school and enrolling in college. By 2039, there will be 15 percent fewer 18-year-olds per year than there are now.
The effect of all of this that you and I report about the most, Kirk, is what it will do to colleges and universities. It comes on top of a decline in enrollment that’s already been happening over most of the last 10 years. People have been questioning whether college is worth the high cost, and a relatively strong labor market drew a lot of high school graduates straight into jobs. Emily Wadhwani keeps a close eye on this as a senior director at Fitch Ratings, where she’s the sector lead for education. Fitch rates the financial health of institutions.
[Emily Wadhwani] We’ve been seeing kind of a trending downward of demand in terms of enrollment, particularly on the undergraduate side. So this is definitely a longer trend that we’re seeing.
[Jon] The pandemic only made things worse. And now the demographic cliff is here.
[Emily Wadhwani] Where we are now climbing back out of this post-pandemic recovery period, we see the same challenges that schools were facing prior to the pandemic, only now it’s more pronounced because those demographic trends have only deteriorated since then.
[Jon] That’s why colleges have started closing. Fitch categorizes the outlook for the higher education sector as deteriorating. Kirk, you and I have been seeing that a lot lately on abandoned campuses of colleges that have closed.
[Bob Allen] This is sort of a movie-set college campus, and people say that as soon as they essentially walk in the front gate.
[Kirk] That’s Bob Allen. He was the last president of a 185-year-old Green Mountain College in Vermont before it closed in 2019. By the time I visited the campus, it looked more like a ghost town.
[Bob Allen] So, yeah, watch yourself on these. They aren’t, see normally all of this would have been cleaned up.
One of the advantages of a small school is that it really was like an extended family. I knew not all of the students by name, but I knew most, and they knew me. They called me Bob, which was what I would prefer.
[Kirk] To Allen’s right, the red brick dining hall and dorms. To his left, the empty swimming pool, a ghost-like symbol of dried-up enrollment.
[Bob Allen] Increasingly students want to go to schools in cities and not rural areas. Poultney is a very tiny Vermont town.
[Kirk] At the time, Allen told me he preferred to give tours like these when the college was still open.
[Bob Allen] It was a lot more fun when we had students, all right.
[Kirk] At its peak, Green Mountain had about 800 students. That was already pretty small. But by the end of the 2010s, there were only a little more than half that many left. So Allen and his board decided that the college had to close.
[Bob Allen] It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do personally. I spent most of my career building businesses and to take a 185-year-old institution and have to shut it down was really tough.
The demographics are working against all colleges, but in particular, small rural colleges. It’s tough for surrounding towns when colleges close too. Our payroll just for the college alone was $6 million. It has to, in the end, have an economic impact on the town. You know, some of the businesses had closed even long before we made our announcement.
[Jon] Kirk, the demographic cliff means there will be a lot more colleges closing. Don’t take it from us. That’s the prediction of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Already, 21 colleges defaulted on their bonds last year, or were at risk of defaulting. That’s way up. Here’s Emily Wadhwani from Fitch.
[Emily Wadhwani] We’ve seen the closure rate accelerate over the last few years. We expect to see that continue for the next few years. That has tended to be smaller, private, liberal arts, sometimes religiously affiliated schools with perhaps less than a thousand students. I’m generalizing; there are a couple outliers there, but broadly speaking, those are the types of schools that we’ve seen close.
[Jon] That’s a pretty good list of the kinds of colleges that are in trouble, and consumers need to keep that in mind. No matter what schools you’re considering, you need to do more these days than look at their courses or the athletics program. You need to check out their finances.
[Emily Wadhwani] The second place I would look is the strength of fundraising, often an indicator of the level of wealth the university has — the capacity to fund scholarships and other aid packages, less reliance on tuition as a primary means of operating revenue.
[Jon] We’ve talked before in this podcast about how you can see if your college might be in financial trouble. And we’ll post the link to that in the show notes.
Now, it’s obviously a sad situation when colleges close, for their employees and students and alumni, and for the towns that depend on them. But, Kirk, there are a couple of bright spots if you’re currently a college student or the parent of a college student, or have a child who’s considering college.
[Kirk] Yeah, Jon, colleges teach this in Econ 101. It’s the simple law of supply and demand. As the number of students is falling, there’s less demand. And as demand goes down, two things are happening. First, most colleges are becoming easier to get into. And second, the price of tuition has actually started falling.
[Jon] Now, Kirk, let’s be clear: College is still expensive, and to make up for keeping tuition low, colleges with dorms and dining plans are raising the price of food and housing. But increases in tuition are finally dropping when adjusted for inflation, after decades of exceeding the cost of almost everything else that Americans spend money on.
[Kirk] Exactly, Jon. You’re also likely to be able to negotiate for more financial aid. We gave a lot of advice about this in the first episode of our second season, and we’ll link that in the show notes too.
[Jon] We’ll have a lot more to tell you about the dramatic changes in admission in our next episode. So check that out.
[Kirk] So that’s all pretty good news for future students and their families. But there’s more bad news. And not just for colleges, but for the economy and society. There will be fewer graduates coming out the other end with skills employers need, and fewer young people in general available to work in any kinds of jobs.
[Jon] Right, and all of that, Kirk, is coinciding with the tidal wave of baby boomers who will be retiring at the same time.
[Rachel Sederberg] We’re already well underway in this process where we saw vast retirements over the last few years.
[Jon] That’s Rachel Sederberg, a senior economist and director of research at the labor market analytics firm Lightcast. Ten-thousand baby boomers are turning 65 every day. And Sederberg says there just aren’t enough workers coming up behind these retiring baby boomers to fill the jobs they’re leaving.
[Rachel Sederberg] The generations that follow the baby boomers are simply smaller and cannot mathematically make up for that decline.
[Jon] These shortages are already happening, Kirk.
[Rachel Sederberg] We are losing people across every occupation and industry. So we’re going to need more workers across, and we don’t have enough of any kind.
[Kirk] Okay, to tie this all together for you, we reached out to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. It studies the connection between higher education and the economy. Chief Economist Nicole Smith connected these dots for us.
[Nicole Smith] So if you’re a college president, one way to look at this is, you know, ‘I don’t have enough students.’ But as an economist, I’m also thinking of the impact on the economy. Young people and young labor and the labor force — it’s the lifeblood of our society.
[Kirk] Smith says the decline in the number of traditional-aged college students will affect much more than whether a bunch of colleges close.
[Nicole Smith] We just don’t have enough who are completing and going to college and finishing school at as fast a rate as the economy is creating jobs for people with college degrees.
[Kirk] She’s not just talking about bachelor’s degrees, but all kinds of education after high school, including in manufacturing and the trades.
[Nicole Smith] Seventy-two percent of all jobs over the next decade will require some type of education and training beyond high school. So even if you don’t need a full bachelor’s, we need something that’s beyond high school and everyone has to be prepared to go back to get that credential so that you are prepared for that particular job.
[Kirk] So we’re all going to be falling down the demographic cliff together. In some parts of the country, labor shortages are already well underway.
[Nicole Smith] Many communities are facing this already. Rural communities are already having problems filling vacancies for some of their medical fields. They’re offering all sorts of incentives for doctors to come and work in those locations. So we’re already there.
[Jon] Kirk, as our experts have said, this demographic cliff is a dramatic turning point for higher education and it comes alongside questions about the value of college and a general decline in the proportion of high school students who are bothering to go.
[Kirk] Right, Jon, and that’s on top of huge political pressure on colleges and universities under the Trump administration and massive funding cuts.
[Jon] Throughout this season of the podcast, we’ll be looking at the ramifications of this unprecedented moment in the history of higher education. We’ll tell you how admissions is changing, why men in particular aren’t going to college, and the many new ways that are popping up, other than college, to train people for the workforce. and there’s much more.
[Kirk] So keep listening to future episodes to hear more about what colleges and universities don’t teach you in class.
This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH.
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza, and it was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim.
[Kirk] Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman
Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. We also used some music in this episode from the Stony Brook University Orchestra.
The demographic cliff was set to sound for us by James Trayford of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in England.
Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Jon] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report, and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
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 weeks of uncertainty, two tribal colleges have been told they can hire back all employees who were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts across the federal workforce in February, part of a judge’s order restoring some federal employees whose positions were terminated.
Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, widely known as SIPI, in New Mexico lost about 70 employees in mid-February amid widespread staffing cuts to federal agencies. While most of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities are chartered by American Indian tribes, Haskell and SIPI are not associated with individual tribes and are run by the federal government.
About 55 employees were laid off and 15 accepted offers to resign, according to a lawsuit filed last month by tribes and students. The colleges were forced to cancel or reconfigure a wide range of services, from sports and food service to financial aid and classes. In some cases, instructors were hired by other universities as adjuncts and then sent back to the tribal colleges to keep teaching.
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It was not clear this week when and if the workers would return, whether the employees who resigned would also be offered their jobs back, or if the government would allow colleges to fill vacancies. Both colleges said some employees had turned down the offers.
The Bureau of Indian Education, which runs the colleges, declined to answer questions except to confirm the laid-off workers would be offered jobs with back pay to comply with a judge’s order that the government reverse course on thousands of layoffs of probationary employees. But the agency also noted the jobs would be available “as the White House pursues its appeals process,” indicating possible turmoil if an appeals court reinstates the layoffs.
Both colleges said the bureau also has refused to answer most of their questions.
SIPI leaders were told last week that the positions were being restored, said Adam Begaye, chairman of the SIPI Board of Regents. The 270-student college lost 21 employees, he said, four of whom decided to take early retirement. All but one of the remaining 17 agreed to return, Begaye said.
The chaos has been difficult for those employees, he said, and the college is providing counseling.
“We want to make sure they have an easy adjustment, no matter what they’ve endured,” Begaye said.
The chairman of Haskell’s Board of Regents, Dalton Henry, said he was unsure how many of the 50 lost employees were returning. Like SIPI, Haskell was forced after the layoffs to shift job responsibilities and increase the workload for instructors and others.
Haskell was reviewed by accreditors in December, and Henry said he was worried how the turmoil would affect the process. Colleges and universities must be accredited to offer federal and state financial aid and participate in most other publicly funded programs.
Henry declined to discuss his thoughts on the chaos, saying there was nothing the college could do about it.
“Whatever guidance is provided, that’s what we have to adhere to,” he said. “It’s a concern. But at this point, it’s the federal government’s decision.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to make the presidents of the two colleges available for interviews.
Tribal colleges and universities were established to comply with treaties and the federal trust responsibility, legally binding agreements in which the United States promised to fund Indigenous education and other needs. But college leaders argue the country has violated those contracts by consistently failing to fund the schools adequately.
In the federal lawsuit claiming the Haskell and SIPI cuts were illegal, students and tribes argued the Bureau of Indian Education has long understaffed the colleges. The agency’s “well-documented and persistent inadequacies in operating its schools range from fiscal mismanagement to failure to provide adequate education to inhospitable buildings,” plaintiffs claimed.
Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, both Kansas Republicans, said before Trump took office that they plan to introduce a bill shifting Haskell from federal control to a congressional charter, which would protect the university from cuts across federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education.
“[F]or the last few years the university has been neglected and mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moran said in a written statement in December. “The bureau has failed to protect students, respond to my congressional inquiries or meet the basic infrastructure needs of the school.”
The February cuts brought rare public visibility to tribal colleges, most of which are in remote locations. Trump’s executive orders spurred outrage from Indigenous communities and a flurry of national news attention.
“We’re using this chaos as a blessing in disguise to make sure our family and friends in the community know what SIPI provides,” said Begaye, the SIPI board president.
The uncertainty surrounding the colleges’ funding has left a lasting mark, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. But she added she was proud of how the schools have weathered the cuts.
“Indian country is always one of the most resourceful and creative populations,” she said. “We’ve always made do with less. I think you saw resilience and creativity from Haskell and SIPI.”
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.
Abrupt cuts in federal funding for life saving medical research. Confusing and misleading new guidance about campus diversity programs. Cancellation, without due process, of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and contracts held by a major university. Mass layoffs at the Education Department, undermining crucial programs such as federal student aid.
All of this, and more, in the opening weeks of the second Trump administration.
The president has made clear that colleges and universities face a moment of unprecedented challenge. The partnership the federal government forged with American higher education long ago, which for generations has paid off spectacularly for our country’s civic health, economic well-being and national security, appears in the eyes of many to be suddenly vulnerable.
America must not permit this partnership to weaken or dissolve. No nation has ever built up its people by tearing down its schools. Higher education builds America — and together, we will fight to ensure it continues to do so.
Some wonder why more college and university presidents aren’t speaking out. The truth is, many of them fear their institutions could be targeted next.
They are also juggling immense financial pressures and striving to fulfill commitments to teaching and research.
But the American Council on Education, which I lead, has always stood up for higher education. We have done it for more than a century, and we are doing it now. We will use every tool possible — including litigation, advocacy and coalition-building — to advance the cause.
ACE is the major coordinating body for colleges and universities. We represent institutions of all kinds — public and private, large and small, rural and urban — with a mission of helping our members best serve their students and communities.
Let me be clear: We welcome scrutiny and accountability for the public funds supporting student aid and research. Our institutions are subject to state and federal laws and must not tolerate any form of discrimination, even as they uphold freedom of expression and the right to robust but civil protest.
We also know we have much work to do to raise public confidence in higher education and the value of a degree.
However, we cannot allow unwarranted attacks on higher education to occur without a vigorous and proactive response.
When the National Institutes of Health announced on Feb. 7 a huge cut in funding that supports medical and health research, ACE joined with the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and a number of affected universities in a lawsuit to stop this action.
ACE has almost never been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government, but the moment demanded it. We are pleased that a federal judge has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction to preserve the NIH funding.
When the Education Department issued a “Dear Colleague” letter Feb. 14 that raised questions about whether campus programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion would be permissible under federal law, ACE organized a coalition of more than 70 higher education groups calling for the department to rescind the letter.
We raised concerns about the confusion the letter was causing. We pointed out that the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts in the Students for Fair Admissions case acknowledged that diversity-related goals in higher education are “commendable” and “plainly worthy.”
We invited the department to engage with the higher education community to promote inclusive and welcoming educational environments for all students, regardless of race or ethnicity or any other factors. We remain eager to work with the department.
Unfortunately, in recent days the administration has taken further steps we find alarming.
ACE denounced the arbitrary cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia University. Administration officials claimed their action was a response to failures to adequately address antisemitism at Columbia, though it bypassed well-established procedures for investigating such allegations. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College, Columbia University.)
Ultimately, this action will eviscerate academic and research activities, to the detriment of students, faculty, medical patients and others.
Make no mistake: Combating campus antisemitism is a matter of utmost priority for us. Our organization, along with Hillel International and the American Jewish Committee, organized two summits on this topic in 2022 and 2024, fostering important dialogue with dozens of college and university presidents.
We also are deeply concerned about the letter the Trump administration sent to Columbia late last week that makes certain demands of the university, including a leadership change for one of its academic departments. To my mind, the letter obliterated the boundary between institutional autonomy and federal control. That boundary is essential. Without it, academic freedom is at risk.
Meanwhile, layoffs and other measures slashing the Education Department’s workforce by as much as half will cause chaos and harm to financial aid and other programs that support millions of students from low- and middle-income families. We strongly urge the administration to change course and Congress to step in if it does not.
Despite all that has happened in the past several weeks, we want President Trump and his administration to know this: Higher education is here for America, and ready to keep building. Colleges and universities have long worked with the government in countless ways to strengthen our economy, democracy, health and security. We cannot abandon that partnership. We must fortify it.
Ted Mitchell is president of the American Council of Education in Washington, D.C.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
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.
This spring, the number of high school graduates in the United States is expected to hit its peak. Starting in the fall, enrollment will likely enter a period of decline that could last a decade or more.
This looming “demographic cliff” has been on the minds of education leaders for nearly two decades, dating back to the start of the Great Recession. A raft of college closures over the past five years, exacerbated by the pandemic, has for many observers been the canary in the coal mine.
In the years to come, schools at all levels — reliant on per-pupil funding for K-12 and on tuition dollars for colleges and universities — will begin feeling the squeeze.
The question now is whether to treat the cliff as a crisis or an opportunity.
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As they prepare for enrollment shortfalls, superintendents and college presidents are primarily focused on crisis management. With good reason, they’re spending the bulk of their time on the hard short-term decisions of cutting programs and personnel to meet looming budget shortfalls.
In the precious few years before the situation becomes even more dire, the question is whether schools should just continue bracing for impact — or if they can think bigger in ways that could be transformative not just for the landscape of education, but for the economy more broadly. In my view, they should think about what it would look like to make a moment of crisis a real opportunity.
Here are some ideas about how that could happen. The first involves blurring the lines between high school and college.
Colleges today feel immense pressure because there aren’t enough high school graduates. High schools feel similar pressure because there are fewer young people around to enroll each year — not to mention the chronic absenteeism and disengagement that has persisted since the pandemic.
What if the two worked more closely together — in ways that helped high schools keep students engaged while enabling colleges to reach a broader range of students?
In many states, this is already happening. At last count, 2.5 million high schoolers took at least one dual-enrollment course from a college or university. But it’s not enough to just create tighter connections between one educational experience and another. Today’s students — and today’s economy — also demand clearer pathways from education to careers. It makes sense to blur the lines between high schools, colleges and work.
So imagine taking these changes even further — to a world in which instead of jumping from high school to college, students in their late teens entered entirely new institutions that paid them for work-based learning experiences that would lead them to a degree and eventually a career.
That’s a lofty goal. But it’s the kind of big thinking that both high schools and colleges may need to reinvent themselves for the country’s shifting demographics.
Colleges have an opportunity right now to double down on creating and expanding job-relevant programs — and to think even bigger about who they serve. That could include expanding opportunities for adult learners who have gained skills outside the classroom through credit for prior learning and competency-based learning. It could also mean speeding up the development of industry-relevant coursework to better align with the needs of the labor market and leaning into short-form training programs to upskill incumbent workers.
Not every student is ready to invest four years of time and money to earn a bachelor’s degree. But they shouldn’t have to be — and colleges have a chance to expand their offerings in ways that give students more pathways into today’s fast-changing economy and further education if they so choose.
Part of the problem with the current trajectory from high school to college is that the wrong things get incentivized. Both K-12 schools and colleges get money and support based on the number of students they enroll and (sometimes) the number of people who graduate — not on how well they do at helping people gain the skills to effectively participate in the economy.
That’s not anyone’s fault. But it often boils down to a matter of policy. Which means that changing policy can create new incentives to tighten the connections between high school, college and work.
States like Colorado are already taking the lead on this shift. Colorado’s “Big Blur” task force put out a report with recommendations on how to integrate learning and work, including by creating a statewide data system to track the outcomes of educational programs and updating the state’s accountability systems to better reflect “the importance of learners graduating ready for jobs and additional training.”
If schools and policymakers stay the course in the decade to come, they already know what’s ahead: declining enrollment, decreased funding and the exacerbation of all the challenges that they’ve already begun to face in recent years.
It’s not the job of the education system to turn the tide of demographic change. But the system does have a unique, and urgent, opportunity to respond to this changing landscape in ways that benefit not only students but the economy as a whole. The question now is whether education leaders and policymakers can seize that opportunity before it’s too late.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about demographic cliff in higher education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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.
Emma Bittner considered getting a master’s degree in public health at a nearby university, but the in-person program cost tens of thousands of dollars more than she had hoped to spend.
So she checked out master’s degrees she could pursue remotely, on her laptop, which she was sure would be much cheaper.
The price for the same degree, online, was … just as much. Or more.
“I’m, like, what makes this worth it?” said Bittner, 25, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Why does it cost that much if I don’t get meetings face-to-face with the professor or have the experience in person?”
Among the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are charging more for online education to subsidize everything else they do, online managers say. Huge sums are also going into marketing and advertising for it, documents show.
Universities and colleges “see online higher education as an opportunity to make money and use it for whatever they want to make money for,” said Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at the left-leaning think tank New America.
Bittner’s confusion about the price is widespread. Eighty percent of Americans think online learning after high school should cost less than in-person programs, according to a 2024 survey of 1,705 adults by New America.
After all, technology has reduced prices in many other industries. And online courses don’t require classrooms or other physical facilities and can theoretically be taught to a much larger number of students, creating economies of scale.
While consumers complained about remote learning during the pandemic, online enrollment has been rising faster than was projected before Covid hit.
Yet 83 percent of online programs in higher education cost students as much as or more than the in-person versions, an annual survey of campus chief online learning officers finds. About a quarter of universities and colleges even tack on an additional “distance learning fee,” that survey found.
In addition to using the income from their online divisions to help pay for the other things they do, universities say they have had to pay more than they anticipated on advising and support for online students, who get worse results, on average, than their in-person counterparts.
Bringing down the price of a degree “was certainly a key part of the appeal” when online higher education began, said Richard Garrett, co-director of that survey of online education managers and chief research officer at Eduventures, an arm of the higher education technology consulting company Encoura.
“Online was going to be disruptive. It was supposed to widen access. And it would reduce the price,” said Garrett. “But it hasn’t played out that way.”
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Today, online instruction for in-state students at four-year public universities costs $341 a credit, the independent Education Data Initiative finds — more than the average $325 a credit for face-to-face tuition. That adds up to about $41,000 for a degree online, compared to about $39,000 in tuition for a degree obtained in person.
Two-thirds of private four-year universities and colleges with online programs charge more for them than for their face-to-face classes, according to the survey of online managers. The average tuition for online learning at private universities and colleges comes to $516 per credit.
And community colleges, which collectively enroll the largest number of students who learn entirely online, charge them the same as or more than their in-person counterparts in 100 percent of cases, the survey of online officers found (though Garrett said that’s likely because community college tuition overall is already comparatively low).
Social media is riddled with angry comments about this. A typical post: “Can someone please explain to me why taking a course online can cost a couple $1000 more than in person?”
Online education officers respond that online programs face steep startup costs and need expensive technology specialists and infrastructure. In a separate survey of faculty by the consulting firm Ithaka S+R, 80 percent said it took them as much time, or more, to plan and develop online courses as it did in-person ones because of the need to incorporate new kinds of technology.
Online programs also need to provide faculty who are available for office hours, online advisors and other resources exclusively to support online students, who tend to be less well prepared and get worse results than their in-person counterparts. For the same reasons, many online providers have put caps on enrollment, limiting those expected economies of scale.
“You still need advisers, you still need a writing center, a tutoring center, and now you have to provide those services for students who are at a distance,” said Dylan Barth, vice president of innovation and programs at the Online Learning Consortium, which represents online education providers.
Still, 60 percent of public and more than half of private universities are taking in more money from online education than they spend on it, the online managers’ survey found. About half said they put the money back into their institutions’ general operating budgets.
Such cross subsidies have long been a part of higher education’s financial strategy, under which students in classes or fields that cost less to teach generally subsidize their counterparts in courses or disciplines that cost more. English majors subsidize their engineering classmates, for example. Big first-year lecture classes subsidize small senior seminars. Graduate students often subsidize undergrads.
“Online education is another revenue stream from a different market,” said Duha Altindag, an associate professor of economics at Auburn University who has studied online programs.
Universities “are not trying to use technology to become more efficient. They’re just layering it on top of the existing model,” said New America’s Carey, who has been a critic of some online education models.
“Public officials are not stopping them,” he said. “They’re not coming and saying, ‘Hey, we’re seeing this new opportunity to save money. These online courses could be cheaper. Make them cheaper.’ This is just a continuation of the status quo.”
Another page that online managers have borrowed from higher education’s traditional pricing playbook is that consumers often equate high prices with high quality, especially at brand-name colleges and universities.
“Market success and reputation can support higher prices,” Garrett said. It’s not what online courses cost to provide that determines the price, in other words, but how much consumers are willing to pay.
With online programs competing for customers across the country, rather than for those within commuting distance of a campus or willing to relocate to one, universities and colleges are also putting huge amounts into marketing and advertising.
An example of this kind of spending was exposed in a review by the consulting firm EY of the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC, which the university created by acquiring for-profit Ashford University in 2020. Obtained through a public-records request by New America, the report found that the university was paying out $11,521 in advertising and marketing for every online student it enrolled.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus committed to spending $500 million foradvertising to out-of-state students over six years, a state audit found.
“What if you took that money and translated it into lower tuition?” asked Carey.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus is spending $500 million to market and advertise to out-of-state students over six years.
While they’re paying the same as or more than their in-person counterparts, meanwhile, online students get generally poorer success rates.
Online instruction results in lower grades than face-to-face education, according to research by Altindag and colleagues at American University and the University of Southern Mississippi — though they also found that the gap is narrowing. Students online are more likely to have to withdraw from or repeat courses and less likely to graduate on time, these researchers found, which further increases the cost.
Another study, by University of Central Florida Institute of Higher Education Director Justin Ortagus, found that taking all of their courses online reduces the odds that community college students will ever graduate.
Lower-income students fare especially poorly online, that and other research shows; scholars say this is in part because many come from low-resourced public high schools or are balancing their classes with work or family responsibilities.
Students who learn entirely online at any level are less likely to have graduated within eight years than students in general, who have a 66 percent eight-year graduation rate, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
Graduation rates are particularly low at for-profit universities, which enroll a quarter of the students who learn exclusively online. In the American InterContinental University System, for example, only 11 percent of students graduated within eight years after starting, federal data shows, and at the American Public University System, 44 percent. The figures are for the period ending in 2022, the most recent for which they have been widely submitted.
Several private, nonprofit universities and colleges also have comparatively lower eight-year graduation rates for students who are online only, the data shows, including Southern New Hampshire University (37 percent) and Western Governors University (52 percent).
If they do receive degrees, online-only students earn more than their entirely in-person counterparts for the first year after college, Eduventures finds — perhaps because they tend to be older than traditional-age students, researchers speculated. But that advantage disappears within four years, when in-person graduates overtake them.
For all the growth in online higher education, employers appear to remain reluctant to hire graduates of it, according to still other research conducted at the University of Louisville. That study found that applicants for jobs who listed an online as opposed to in-person degree were about half as likely to get a callback for the job.
How strongly consumers feel that online higher education should cost less than the in-person kind was evident in lawsuits brought against universities and colleges that continued to charge full tuition even after going remote during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet students keep signing on. For all the complaining about remote learning at the time, its momentum seems to have beenspeeded up by the pandemic, which was followed by a 12 percent increase in online enrollment above what had been projected before it hit, according to an analysis of federal data by education technology consultant Phil Hill.
Online students save on room and board costs they would face on residential campuses, and online higher education is typically more flexible than the in-person kind.
Sixty percent of campus online officers say that online sections of classes tend to fill first, and nearly half say online student numbers are outpacing in-person enrollment.
There have been some widely cited examples of online programs with dramatically lower tuition, such as a $7,000 online master’s degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (compared to the estimated nearly $43,000 for the two-year in-person version), which has attracted thousands of students and a few copycat programs.
There are also early signs that prices for online higher education could fall. Competition is intensifying from national nonprofit providers such as Western Governors, which charges a comparatively low average $8,300per year, and Southern New Hampshire, whose undergraduate price per credit hour is a slightly lower-than-average (for online courses) $330.
Universities have started cutting their ties with for-profit middlemen, called online program managers, who take big cuts of up to 80 percent of revenues. Nearly 150 such deals were canceled or ended and not renewed in 2023, the most recent year for which the information is available, the market research firm Validated Insights reports.
Another thing that could lower prices: As more online programs go live, they no longer require high up-front investment — just periodic updating.
“It is possible to save money on downstream costs if you offer the same course over a number of years,” Ortagus said.
A student studies on her laptop. The number of college students who learn entirely online will this year surpass the number who take all their classes in person.
While that survey of online officers found a tiny decline in the proportion of universities charging more for online than in-person classes, however, the drop was statistically insignificant. And as their enrollments continue to plummet, institutions increasingly need the revenue from online programs.
Bittner, in Texas, ended up in an online master’s program in public health that was just being started by a private, nonprofit university, and was cheaper than the others she’d found.
Her day job is at the national nonprofit Young Invincibles, which pushes for reforms in higher education, health care and economic security for young Americans. And she still doesn’t understand the online pricing model.
“I’m so confused about it. Even in the program I’m in now, you don’t get the same access to stuff as an in-person student,” she said. “What are you putting into it that costs so much?”
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.
TUCSON, Ariz. — Olivia Howe was hesitant at first to add French to her major in finance at the University of Arizona, fearing that it wouldn’t be very useful in the labor market.
Then her language skills helped her land a job at the multinational technology company Siemens, which will be waiting for her when she graduates this spring.
“The reason I got the job is because of my French. I didn’t see it as a practical choice, but now I do,” said Howe, who, to communicate with colleagues and clients, also plans to take up German. “The humanities taught me I could do it.”
The simple message that majoring in the humanities pays off is being pushed aggressively by this university and a handful of others; they hope to reverse decades of plummeting enrollment in subjects that teach skills employers say they need from graduates but aren’t getting.
The University of Arizona campus. The university is among a handful of higher education institutions taking steps to revive humanities enrollments. Credit: Mason Kumet for The Hechinger Report
The number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities at the University of Arizona has increased 76 percent since 2018, when it introduced a bachelor’s degree in applied humanities that connects the humanities with programs in business, engineering, medicine and other fields. It also hired a humanities recruitment director and marketing team and started training faculty members to enlist students in the major with the promise that an education in the humanities leads to jobs.
That’s an uncharacteristic role for humanities professors, who have tended to resist suggestions that it’s their role to ready students for the workforce.
But it’s become an existential one.
Nationwide, between 2012 and 2022 the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in the humanities — English, history, languages, literature, philosophy and related subjects — fell 24 percent, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It’s now below 200,000 for the first time in more than two decades.
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In response, universities and colleges nationwide have started eliminating humanities departments and laying off humanities faculty as policymakers, parents and administrators put a premium on highly specialized subjects they believe lead more directly to jobs.
Efforts to revitalize humanities enrollment are widely scattered, however, with surprisingly few examples like Arizona’s, and no guarantee of widespread success.
“What we are up against is the constant negative storytelling about how the humanities are useless,” said Alain-Philippe Durand, dean of the University of Arizona’s College of Humanities and a professor of French.
Higher education has largely struggled to counteract this. Presidents and deans use vague arguments that the humanities impart knowledge and create citizens of the world, when what tuition-paying consumers want to know is what they’ll get for their money and how they’ll repay their student loan debt.
Alain-Philippe Durand is dean of humanities at the University of Arizona, where the number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities is up 76 percent since 2018. “What we are up against is the constant negative storytelling about how the humanities are useless,” he says. Credit: Mason Kumet for The Hechinger Report
“When you tell them we are teaching the life of the mind, they laugh at you,” Durand said over lunch at the student center.
“You have people saying, ‘Do we really need this?’ ” he said. “It should be the opposite: ‘Hey, did you know that in the College of Humanities we teach some of the most in-demand skills in the job market?’ ”
Durand’s department went so far as to put that declaration on a billboard on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, conveniently near the campus of rival Arizona State University. “Humanities=Jobs,” it said, with the college’s web address. Durand keeps a model of it on a shelf in his office.
The skills he’s talking about include how to communicate effectively, think critically, work in teams and be able to figure out a way to solve complex problems outside of a particular area of expertise. Employers say they want all of those but aren’t getting them from graduates who major in narrower fields.
Eight out of 10 executives and hiring managers say it’s very or somewhat important that students emerge from college with these kinds of skills, according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Yet half said, in a separate survey by the Business-Higher Education Forum, that graduates are showing up without them, and that the problem is getting worse.
Along with Arizona, Virginia Tech is among a small group of universities taking steps to change the conversation about the humanities. A surprising number are technology-focused.
These include the Georgia Institute of Technology, which has also started drawing a connection between the humanities and good jobs at high pay. That has helped boost undergraduate and graduate enrollment in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts by 58 percent since 2019, to 1,884 students in 2023 — the most recent period for which the figure is available.
Before then, “we were doing almost nothing to explain the value of the humanities,” said Richard Utz, interim dean. That’s important at a technological institute, he said. “So we started to connect each and every thing we do with the values that these kinds of skills have for [students’] career preparation.”
A medievalist, Utz uses the example of assigning his students 15th-century Robin Hood ballads. “They read something that is entirely alien to them, that is in late medieval English, so they’re completely out of their comfort zone,” he said. Then they split into groups and consider the material from various perspectives. It makes them the kind of future workers “who are versatile enough to look at a situation from different points of view.”
To him, Utz said, “the future of the humanities is not being hermetically sealed off, as in, ‘You’re over there and we’re over here.’ It’s making clear that the skills of engineers and computer scientists increase if you include the arts, the humanities, the social sciences.”
That’s also the idea behind a program in French for medical professionals at Washington University in St. Louis, which recruits students who took French in high school but may not have continued. For some, it leads to studying in Nice and interning at a hospital there, an unusual opportunity for undergraduates.
“These students, when they come back to the United States, they are accepted in the best medical schools because their dossiers are at the top of the pile,” said Lionel Cuillé, a professor of French who spearheads the initiative. “Those pre-meds take French because it is a clear added value to their first major.”
The participants in the humanities-focused executive education program at Virginia Tech — in the first two years, they’ve come from Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow and other companies — study history, philosophy, religion, classics, literature and the arts. They use these to consider questions about and qualities of leadership and see how what they learn can be applied to technology trends including data privacy and artificial intelligence.
University of Arizona humanities dean Alain-Philippe Durand keeps a model of a billboard in his office that the department put up on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, near the campus of rival Arizona State, to promote the practical benefits of the humanities.
“What I was observing around me in Silicon Valley and more generally was a world that was missing that story,” said Virginia Tech’s Jaitly, a former technology entrepreneur and founder of a venture capital firm whose own undergraduate degree was in history. “The superpowers of the future emanate from the humanities: introspection and imagination, storytelling and story-listening, critical thinking.”
He purposely picked “leadership” instead of “humanities” for the name of the program, he said. “To me, ‘leadership’ is a high-impact word to show and not tell the power of the humanities.”
With a $1.25 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, Emory University is helping faculty members redesign humanities courses to emphasize their relevance, said Barbara Krauthamer, dean of its College of Arts and Sciences. “We’re not denying the reality of career readiness, of real-world application and of the context of the world we live in now, which is increasingly technological and changing rapidly,” Krauthamer said.
Central Michigan University in the fall began to offer a bachelor’s degree modeled on the University of Arizona’s, in “public and applied liberal arts.” It was added after the number of incoming students there who listed their intended majors as English, humanities and foreign languages fell from 179 in 2019 to zero in 2022 and 2023, according to university figures.
That trend “has a lot to do with the fact that even at a regional public [university], you need to know how you’re going to pay the bills after you’re done,” said Christi Brookes, assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. “It’s a question we’ve ignored.”
The new degree connects humanities courses with the “applied fields” of entrepreneurship and environmental studies. Future combinations are planned with fashion and game design.
The traditional argument for the humanities, Brookes said, has been, “ ‘Well, it will make you a better citizen and person.’ But what was left out was, ‘What does that look like on a day-to-day basis?’ What we’re trying to do is say, ‘Here’s the connection.’ ”
Another way some universities are doing that is by showcasing the successes of former humanities students.
The liberal arts college at Georgia Tech serves up a litany of alumni success stories on its website. Arizona’s College of Humanities has produced a video of graduate testimonials; it features a senior counsel at Netflix, a principal investigator for the first NASA mission to return rock samples from an asteroid, the head of corporate strategy at the meal-delivery service Blue Apron, a diplomat, a Broadway actor and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr.
Judd Ruggill, head of the Department of Public and Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona. When parents see examples of humanities graduates in high-profile jobs, “you can see [them] visibly relaxing,” Ruggill says. Credit: Mason Kumet for The Hechinger Report
When they see examples like these, “You can see the parents visibly relaxing,” said Judd Ruggill, head of Arizona’s Department of Public and Applied Humanities.
The video is part of a relentless recruiting effort here, which ranges from a pop-up “humanities cafe” on the campus mall where faculty and advisers mingle with prospective majors to a mandatory two-day recruitment workshop training graduate teaching assistants to pick out humanities prospects among the students in required general-education courses. “Talent-spotting,” the college calls it.
“I think they know we need that push,” said senior Liliana Quiroz, who added Italian to her anthropology major after being prodded by a faculty member. Even then, she said, “My parents didn’t quite understand the benefits. There wasn’t that understanding of the skill sets that represented.”
But when she got an internship in a marketing department, she realized her humanities experience made her “confident enough to figure it out as I went.” She used self-reliance she learned taking on the challenge of a new language, Quiroz said, and analytical skills she developed reading literature in the original Italian.
Howe, the University of Arizona French and business double major, may not have initially thought French would help her get a job. She simply liked it and wanted to improve her skills — something else that advocates of the humanities say is being lost as colleges keep dropping these programs.
“I definitely discovered ways that it helped me in my finance career later on, but at the outset it was my passion that drove me to French,” she said.
Fellow senior Peyton Broskoff combined business administration with applied humanities. She also took a humanities course for which she teamed up with other students to revitalize a community library. That taught her “intercultural competence — just being able to understand and work with people.” It will help her in a future job, she said. “If you can market to different people, that means you can sell more products.”
Arturo Padilla signed up for a joint program in religious studies for health professionals. The son of indigenous Mexican parents, he plans to use what he is learning to combine traditional wellness and healing with modern medical practices.
Maxwell Eller has gotten something simpler from his major in classics. “It helped my attention span in a world of YouTube and Instagram,” said the University of Arizona senior. “I felt my knowledge was pretty shallow. I wanted to wrestle with ambiguities.” And learning the grammatical structures of Latin and Greek helped him in his volunteer work teaching English to women in Afghanistan.
University of Arizona humanities dean Alain-Philippe Durand keeps a model of a billboard in his office that the department put up on Interstate 10 in Phoenix, near the campus of rival Arizona State, to promote the practical benefits of the humanities. Credit: Mason Kumet for The Hechinger Report
While their incomes in the 10 years after graduation are below the median of all college graduates, students who go to liberal arts colleges, over the long term, earn a total of about $200,000 more according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.
With little overhead, the humanities are also comparatively cheap to teach. Producing a credit hour in English or philosophy costs only a little more than half of what it costs to produce a credit hour in engineering, a study for the University of North Carolina System by Deloitte and the Burning Glass Institute found.
Still, humanities departments at public universities including Arizona’s are funded based on the number of students they enroll, making their recovery a matter of survival.
“At some point, we had to do something,” said Matt Mars, a professor in Arizona’s Department of Public and Applied Humanities. “If we think innovation is important, then we need to be innovative.”
It may take more than that. Some legislators who control the budgets of public universities and colleges have been skeptical of the value of humanities departments, especially those that house such subjects as gender and ethnic studies.
Some humanities faculty also bristle at the idea that their work is relevant only when combined with more career-oriented disciplines, said Durand, at the University of Arizona. “But you have to be aligned with your students,” he said.
Younger humanities faculty “get it,” Durand said. “They are willing to do interdepartmental collaboration. They know we can’t do things the way we always have.”
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.
A late-night directive from the White House budget office Monday that appeared to freeze streams of federal dollars that pay for everything from school lunches to university research is facing immediate legal challenges — after first stunning the education world.
“There is no question this policy is reckless, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional,” said New York Attorney General Leticia James, one of the first to announce a lawsuit against the Trump administration freeze. “When Congress dedicates funding for a program, the president cannot pull that funding on a whim.”
After widespread confusion, the administration clarified that some education aid would not be affected, specifying Pell Grants and federal student loans. In addition, according to Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann, the pause does not affect Title I funding that supports K-12 schools with many low-income students, IDEA grants for students with disabilities or other so-called formula grants.
Many questions are still unanswered, however. What triggered the confusion: a two-page memo sent to government agencies late Monday by Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It said federal agencies must pause distributing grant or loan money until after they review that spending to ensure it does not run afoul of the executive orders President Donald Trump has issued since he took office last week. Agencies have until Feb. 10 to report back on spending that runs counter to the executive orders, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
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White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt later said federal money sent directly to individuals — in the form of Medicare, Social Security benefits, food stamps and welfare benefits, among other aid — also would not be affected by the pause.
Biermann, the Education spokeswoman, said the department “is working with OMB to identify other programs that are not covered by the memo.”
The Hechinger Report is working to decipher some of the effects of the pause. This article will be updated. Send your questions to editor@hechingerreport.org.
Is Head Start affected?
The federal grant that funds early childhood programs for low-income children is not at risk under the freeze, according to a memo issued on Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget and reported by Bloomberg News and other outlets. The clarification ended several hours of speculation and fear among advocates and program officials that the federally-funded early learning program would be cut off from funding.
Still, several Head Start providers who logged into their payment system Tuesday morning found a message that warned payments could be delayed due to “potentially unallowable grant payments,” according to The Huffington Post. But later Tuesday, the National Head Start Association said “Head Start agencies are not included in the list of federal grants and loans whose funds are frozen. Agencies have been able to access funds through the Payment Management System.”
What does this mean for Child Care and Development Block Grants (CCDBG)?
It is unclear whether the block grant — which provides federal funding for states to improve child care quality and run subsidy programs to help low income families pay for care — will be touched by the freeze. The Administration for Children and Families did not address the question in response to a request for comment.
Some early childhood experts suspect the grant will be affected, which could have repercussions for the children and programs that rely on those funds. “Trump and his administration are going out of their way — even circumventing the law — to deprive children and the people who care for them the resources they need to ensure safe and nurturing environments for our kids,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice and senior fellow at The Century Foundation, in a statement.
Read more: The Hechinger Report examined how child care block grant funds are stretched too far to help all the families that are eligible.
What about school lunch?
School cafeterias rely on monthly payments from the federal government to cover the cost of food labor and supplies. It isn’t clear whether those payments will be affected, the School Nutrition Association, an organization that represents people who work in school cafeterias, said. It was hoping for more clarity from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Grants do pay for other types of school food programs, such as the Farm to School Program, which incorporates local foods into school meals.
Does the pause affect student loans or Pell grants? What about federal Work Study?
Loans and Pell Grants are not affected by the funding pause because their funding goes directly to individual students, according to Biedermann, the U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman.
But Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 colleges and universities, told the Boston Globe that his team believes that work-study programs are included in the freeze. Many students rely on these programs to earn money to help pay for college.
What about grants for HBCUs and MSIs (Minority Serving Institutions)?
The Education Department said the freeze will not affect grant programs for historically Black colleges and universities and predominantly Black institutions, the Washington Post reported. The federal government provides these colleges with money for a host of programs, including graduate education, science programs and infrastructure.
A department spokesperson told the Post that “the administration strongly supports HBCUs and MSIs [Minority Serving Institutions]. Funds flowing under those grant programs will not be paused, but we will work to ensure the programs are in line with the President’s priorities.”
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.