About one in four college students is both first-generation and from low-income backgrounds, making the path to a college degree especially challenging. At Boston College’s Messina College, a new, two-year, fully residential associates degree program, a wide range of support is helping change that. John Yang visited the campus to learn more as part of our ongoing series, Rethinking College.
Tag: 4year
-
Education Department zeroes in on 4-year colleges for expanded IPEDS collection
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.Dive Brief:
- Only four-year institutions would be subject to significantly stepped-up reporting requirements for admissions data disaggregated by race and sex, under a notice issued by the Trump administration on Wednesday.
- The plan, first introduced in August, would require affected colleges to submit six years worth of application and admissions data — disaggregated by student race and sex — as part of the next reporting cycle.
- The updated terms would exempt two-year colleges and open-enrollment institutions that only award aid based on financial need from having to report this data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
Dive Insight:
The U.S. Department of Education currently only requires institutions to submit data disaggregated by race for enrolled students.
But under the Trump administration’s proposal, colleges would have to disaggregate data for applicants, those admitted and enrolled students by race and sex. They would also have to cross-reference the data with each individual’s admissions test scores, GPA, family income, Pell Grant eligibility and parents’ educational level.
Colleges would be required to submit this information for every academic year dating back to 2020-21 for the first IPEDS reporting cycle of the new plan, currently proposed as 2025-26.
The administration intends to use the data points to “indicate whether institutions of higher education are using race-based preferencing in their admissions processes,” according to the Federal Register notice filed by Ross Santy, data officer at the agency’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious admissions practices in 2023.
The plan would also mandate that colleges submit their graduation rates from 2019-20 to 2024-25.
In its August notice, the Education Department said it expected to focus these additional reporting requirements on four-year institutions with selective admissions processes. It said these colleges “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” both in admissions and scholarships, while it considered community colleges and trade schools at low risk for civil rights noncompliance in admissions since they admit all or virtually all of their applicants.
The department at the time sought public comment on which institutional types should be subject to the new reporting proposal. This week, it made revisions based on that input, according to Santy.
Since the Trump administration first announced the proposal, higher ed groups and colleges have raised concerns about the administrative burden it would put on institutions and the rapid turnaround time necessitated by a 2025-26 start date.
Wednesday’s update would bring relief for two-year institutions and many of those with open enrollment policies. But many of the sector’s concerns went unaddressed, including comments about unclear language in the proposal, issues around student privacy and unease that the Trump administration would construe the data with the intent of attacking colleges further.
Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, the federal government has alleged that colleges supporting diversity efforts or permitting student protests are in violation of civil rights law and has opened numerous investigations on these grounds.
-
Trump administration proposes 4-year cap on international student visas
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.Dive Brief:
- The Trump administration on Thursday proposed capping the length of time international students can stay in the U.S. at four years, regardless of the length of their studies, per a plan published in the Federal Register.
- International student visas, known as F visas, typically allows them to stay in the U.S. for as long as it takes to finish their programs. Bachelor’s and master’s degrees are typically designed to be completed in four years or less, but many Ph.D. programs tend to run longer.
- The new rule would also affect J visas, which cover certain international students, as well as short-term college instructors and researchers. If finalized, holders of both types of visas would need to apply for extensions and undergo “regular assessments” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stay in the country after four years.
Dive Insight:
Restricting the flow of noncitizens into the U.S. — international students included — is not a new focus for the Trump administration. During the last year of President Donald Trump’s first term, the agencies proposed the same cap on F and J visas. The Biden administration withdrew the proposal the following year.
DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement argued Thursday that neither program gives federal authorities enough oversight over how long visa holders remain in the country.
In the proposed rule, the agencies alleged that the lack of a fixed end date for F and J visas incentivizes fraud, and DHS said it has identified “many examples of students and exchange visitors staying for decades.” As of April, over 2,100 international students who first entered the country between 2000 and 2010 still hold an active F visa, DHS said.
That’s a tiny share of the total number of international students the U.S. hosts. In 2023 alone, more than 1.6 million people entered the U.S. through F visas, according to DHS data. Over 500,000 people entered via J visas that year.
A DHS spokesperson on Wednesday accused international students of “posing safety risks” and “disadvantaging U.S. citizens” — and accused past administrations of allowing them to stay in the country “virtually indefinitely.”
“This new proposed rule would end that abuse once and for all by limiting the amount of time certain visa holders are allowed to remain in the U.S., easing the burden on the federal government to properly oversee foreign students and their history,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The proposal would also prohibit graduate students on F-1 visas from transferring to other institutions or “changing educational objectives,” along with adding similar restrictions for first-year students.
Student advocates quickly panned the Trump administration’s plan, saying it would increase bureaucratic backlogs, deter international students from attending U.S. colleges and harm the country’s advancement.
Fanta Aw, CEO and executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said Wednesday that the change would also give federal agencies oversight over decisions that “have long been the domain of academia.”
“This proposal will only increase the degree of government oversight without any evidence that the changes would solve any of the real problems that exist in our outdated immigration system,” Aw said in a statement.
Aw also decried the proposal as a poorly considered draft that represents a “dangerous overreach by government into academia.”
“These changes will only serve to force aspiring students and scholars into a sea of administrative delays at best, and at worst, into unlawful presence status — leaving them vulnerable to punitive actions through no fault of their own,” she said.
Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, called the proposed rule an “unnecessary and counterproductive action.”
She emphasized the increased paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles it would require of international students.
“The rule would force them to regularly and unnecessarily submit additional applications to be able to stay in the country and fulfill requirements of their academic programs, imposing significant burdens on students, colleges and universities, and federal agencies alike,” Feldblum said in a Wednesday statement.
Both Feldblum and Aw noted that international students are already one of the most closely monitored groups in the U.S.
The DHS spokesperson on Wednesday also alleged that international students cost an “untold amount of taxpayer money.”
Yet foreign students are often a financial boon for colleges — especially tuition-dependent ones — as they are more likely than U.S. residents to pay an institution’s full sticker price.
In 2023, international college students contributed more than $50 billion to the U.S. economy, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The proposal from DHS and ICE is open for public comment through Sept. 29.