Tag: admissions

  • Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

    Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

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    This fall, North Carolina is one of the latest states rolling out a direct admission program that offers high school seniors acceptance to a range of public and private colleges. 

    Through direct admissions, colleges proactively admit students based on high school academic performance metrics such as GPA, SAT scores, or the amount of credits they received. 

    Around the start of the school year, more than 62,000 public high school seniors in North Carolina were offered direct admission to select colleges through the NC College Connect Program. Eleven of the University of North Carolina System’s 16 colleges, 29 private colleges and all 58 of the state’s community colleges are participating. 

    The UNC System first piloted NC College Connect last year in partnership with state agencies, the governor’s office and North Carolina’s community college system. The system launched the program to increase access to higher education in the state, Shun Robertson, UNC’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, said in an email. 

    For many high school seniors, “the process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” said Robertson. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Over the past decade, direct admissions policies have increased the likelihood that in-state students both apply to college and apply to more colleges, said John Lane, vice president for academic affairs at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, in an email. In turn, that shift has effectively increased college enrollment, he said.

    “Direct admissions policies and programs are impactful because they eliminate the complications and uncertainties of longstanding college application processes,” said Lane. “Instead, students are proactively admitted.”

    UNC’s program

    The UNC System piloted its direct admissions initiative last fall and notified over 70,000 high school seniors with GPAs of 2.8 or higher of their eligibility for the program, Robertson said. 

    Those seniors could apply to six UNC institutions and all 58 state community colleges for the 2025-26 academic year by sharing on an online portal their email address, their potential major, and when they’d like to start college, he said. 

    UNC System officials haven’t been able to review outcome data yet for the pilot program, a spokesperson said. But over 5,000 students responded to the letter during the pilot, the spokesperson said. 

    The system simplified the program this fall. Students won’t have to formally apply to get into one of the colleges on their list, rather they are provided direct admission to institutions based on their GPA and whether they meet the program’s requirements, Robertson said. Then they just need to submit a program form to accept their admission, he said. 

    Students accepting admission to community colleges must still fill out applications, but they will already be admitted, according to the initiative’s website. 

    The program also expanded to include private colleges in the state and added more UNC institutions, said Robertson. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the system’s highly selective flagship, remains excluded from the program.

    Some of the private institutions in the program have additional direct admission qualification requirements, such as foreign language course requirements. 

    UNC System officials hope direct admissions will help the state’s institutions enrollment numbers long term by tapping into a growing college-aged student population. 

    Like most of the country, North Carolina is expected to see a decline in high school graduates between 2025 and 2030, according to a report last year from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. However, that pool of students is expected to grow again in North Carolina after that year. 

    WICHE predicts that North Carolina will be one of 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, to have growing numbers of high school students between 2023 and 2041. Overall, North Carolina should see a 6% increase in high school graduates over that period, per WICHE projections.

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  • California governor signs Cal State direct admissions program into law

    California governor signs Cal State direct admissions program into law

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    Dive Brief:

    • Qualifying high school seniors in California will be automatically admitted to a California State University campus beginning with the 2026-27 academic year under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this week. 
    • Under the program, eligible students will automatically receive letters notifying them that they have been directly admitted to Cal State campuses with enrollment capacity based on their academic records. 
    • The program expands a pilot announced last year limited to high school students in California’s Riverside County. Out of 17,000 students who received admission offers to Cal State for the fall 2025 term, 13,200 completed the required paperwork, according to state Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, who co-sponsored the bill.

    Dive Insight:

    California’s new legislation, called SB 640, aims to boost college access and help reverse enrollment declines at some of Cal State’s 23 campuses. 

    A September news release from Cabaldon’s office noted two campuses with the biggest declines were in his district: CSU Maritime Academy — which recently merged with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — and Sonoma State University, which announced deep budget and program cuts at the beginning of this year.

    “Direct admission removes the applications hurdle that stops some students from going to college, and relieves the fear that they won’t get in anywhere,” Cabaldon said after SB 640 cleared California’s Legislature last month. 

    The lawmaker cited a 2022 academic study of Idaho’s direct admissions program, implemented in 2015, that found the initiative increased first-time undergraduate enrollments by 4% to 8% — an average increase of 50 to 100 students per campus. It also boosted in-state enrollment levels by approximately 8% to 15%, the study found. 

    Enrollment gains from the direct admissions program were concentrated mainly in community colleges, though it had “minimal-to-no impacts” on the enrollment of Pell Grant-eligible students, according to the study. At the time of publication, one of the researchers noted the lack of change was not surprising, given that the program did not focus on any particular student group.

    Meanwhile, a 2023 study of 33,000 students found a Common App direct admissions initiative geared toward marginalized student groups increased applications among Black, Latinx, multiracial, first-generation and low-income students.

    California joins a growing number of states incorporating direct admissions into the acceptance process for their public colleges. That list includes North Carolina, which this year offered 62,000 public high school students admissions into one of dozens of institutions through the NC College Connect Program, an expansion of a pilot launched last year.

    “The process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” Shun Robertson, the University of North Carolina’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, told Higher Ed Dive earlier this fall. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Institutions in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Hawai’i, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Utah and West Virginia also offer direct admissions programs.

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  • Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

    Inside North Carolina’s direct admissions program

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    This fall, North Carolina is one of the latest states rolling out a direct admission program that offers high school seniors acceptance to a range of public and private colleges. 

    Through direct admissions, colleges proactively admit students based on high school academic performance metrics such as GPA, SAT scores, or the amount of credits they received. 

    Around the start of the school year, more than 62,000 public high school seniors in North Carolina were offered direct admission to select colleges through the NC College Connect Program. Eleven of the University of North Carolina System’s 16 colleges, 29 private colleges and all 58 of the state’s community colleges are participating. 

    The UNC System first piloted NC College Connect last year in partnership with state agencies, the governor’s office and North Carolina’s community college system. The system launched the program to increase access to higher education in the state, Shun Robertson, UNC’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, said in an email. 

    For many high school seniors, “the process of applying to college, transferring between institutions, and navigating the maze of financial aid feels like an insurmountable series of hurdles,” said Robertson. “Eliminating these barriers has been a high priority.”

    Over the past decade, direct admissions policies have increased the likelihood that in-state students both apply to college and apply to more colleges, said John Lane, vice president for academic affairs at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, in an email. In turn, that shift has effectively increased college enrollment, he said.

    “Direct admissions policies and programs are impactful because they eliminate the complications and uncertainties of longstanding college application processes,” said Lane. “Instead, students are proactively admitted.”

    UNC’s program

    The UNC System piloted its direct admissions initiative last fall and notified over 70,000 high school seniors with GPAs of 2.8 or higher of their eligibility for the program, Robertson said. 

    Those seniors could apply to six UNC institutions and all 58 state community colleges for the 2025-26 academic year by sharing on an online portal their email address, their potential major, and when they’d like to start college, he said. 

    UNC System officials haven’t been able to review outcome data yet for the pilot program, a spokesperson said. But over 5,000 students responded to the letter during the pilot, the spokesperson said. 

    The system simplified the program this fall. Students won’t have to formally apply to get into one of the colleges on their list, rather they are provided direct admission to institutions based on their GPA and whether they meet the program’s requirements, Robertson said. Then they just need to submit a program form to accept their admission, he said. 

    Students accepting admission to community colleges must still fill out applications, but they will already be admitted, according to the initiative’s website. 

    The program also expanded to include private colleges in the state and added more UNC institutions, said Robertson. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the system’s highly selective flagship, remains excluded from the program.

    Some of the private institutions in the program have additional direct admission qualification requirements, such as foreign language course requirements. 

    UNC System officials hope direct admissions will help the state’s institutions enrollment numbers long term by tapping into a growing college-aged student population. 

    Like most of the country, North Carolina is expected to see a decline in high school graduates between 2025 and 2030, according to a report last year from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. However, that pool of students is expected to grow again in North Carolina after that year. 

    WICHE predicts that North Carolina will be one of 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, to have growing numbers of high school students between 2023 and 2041. Overall, North Carolina should see a 6% increase in high school graduates over that period, per WICHE projections.

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  • WEEKEND READING: University Collaboration – the case for admissions and professional registration  

    WEEKEND READING: University Collaboration – the case for admissions and professional registration  

    This HEPI guest blog was kindly written by James Seymour, who runs an education consultancy focusing on marketing, student recruitment, admissions and reputation and Julie Kelly who runs a higher education consultancy specialising in registry and governance challenges. Julie and James have worked for a range of universities at Director level in recent years.  

    The Challenge  

    All through August and September, many admissions and faculty/course teams have been working hard to get thousands of new students over the line and onto the next stage of their lives. It is more than just their UCAS application, interview, selection and firm acceptance or journey through Clearing – they have to actually enrol and succeed too.  

    Many of these students are training to be nurses, teachers, paramedics, social workers and doctors amongst many other allied health professional and education courses. They all need to go through essential and important Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body (PSRB) requirements and additional compliance checks, from passports, to Disclosure and Barring Service questionnaires, to health questionnaires and more. Many are mature students who must demonstrate GCSE or equivalent competency at Grade C/4 or above. They are less likely to have support navigating this process as they are less likely to be in full-time education.  

    Most of these applicants have already been interviewed, attended selection days or Multiple Mini Interviews – MMIs (like selection speed dating) involving lots of competency stations.  

    These health students also must apply for their Student Finance loans in good time to trigger the all-important £5K+ NHS learning support fund – essential to enable them to succeed and even get to their clinical placements via bus, train or car.  

    It’s a very onerous process for applicants, their supporters, and the academic, admissions, and compliance teams, who must arrange and record all of this.  

    Clearly, getting all this information recorded and verified is important, but does it have to be so admin-heavy and time-consuming? Are we putting up barriers and disincentives deterring students from starting their studies?  

    At present, we have an inconsistent mess, often involving email and incessant chasing.  

    There has to be a better way  

    Over the last 10 years we have been involved in a number of process improvement/student journey projects at a number of UK universities.  In our experience it takes at least five times longer to admit a Nurse compared to a Business, Law or English student, and at least twice as long compared to a creative arts student who submits their portfolio for interview and review. Data from The Student Loans Company indicates that at least 25% of all new students only apply for their loans on or after results day in August – presenting real risk of delays in getting their money in time for enrolment.  

    Typically, only 85-90% of Nurses and other key NHS-backed students who have a confirmed UCAS place in August actually enrol in September. Another 3-5% have left before January.  

    This is not all about motivation or resilience – part of the issue is linked to getting these students over the line with all the additional hoops they have to jump through.  

    Another issue is around wasted resource across the sector and a poor student experience.  A student typically applies to their five UCAS choices, and many universities undertake the additional PSRB checks during the admission process.  A student is therefore having to supply their information to multiple institutions, which then need to be processed for students who may never actually enrol.  Surely it is better for students to supply this information once during the initial application stage? 

    Postgraduate Teachers including PGCE and Teach First students have to navigate a gov.uk application process (rather than UCAS) which feels like completing your tax return. A daunting and clunky first step to train in one of the most important careers any of us will ever do. They also only get three choices for courses that start in early September – only 2-3 weeks after many final year degree results are confirmed, putting undue pressure both on students, schools and institutions alike. 

    It’s clear that in the context of improving efficiency, eventual enrolment and reducing stress for all, a more collaborative approach across UK HE and professional training would be a real win. The same issues apply for onboarding, applications and selection for degree and higher apprenticeships.  

    The NHS workforce plan signals a clear need to train more Nurses and other key NHS staff and we know that teacher recruitment targets have been missed again this year.  

    Solutions and Future Projects 

    In the context of collaboration between universities, NHS, UKVI, UCAS and DfE we propose some key, essential ways to improve the process and increase the pipeline of future health and education professionals.  

    1. Create a safe, secure one-stop shop for PSRB checks, uploads and compliance so that students do it once and can be shared with all their university choices and options. There are a number of Ed Tech companies as well as UCAS, providing portals for applicants and the Gov.uk system is already improving each year.  
    1. As well as the process, revisit the timeline for applications and compliance for NHS and other PSRB courses – if this is all checked and ready by April-May and directly linked up to Student Finance Applications and/or NHS bursary support – far more students would be able to enrol, train and be ready to learn.  This would require proper process mapping and joined up thinking across different government departments, UCAS and universities themselves.  
    1. The HE sector and NHS should collectively review the factors, groups and critical incidents affecting non-enrolment and first year drop out – nationally and across all PSRB courses – and work at pace to ‘fix the leaks’ accordingly. At present these data sets are not shared or acted upon across the UK but only via individual universities, trusts and occasionally at conferences and sector meetings.  
    1. UCAS and exam boards need to urgently bring forward automatic sharing of GCSE results via the ABL system so that universities and applicants can be assured of level 2 qualifications.  
    1. Look at alternatives to the ‘doom loop’ of GCSE Maths and English retakes and essential requirement for entry to NHS and other professional courses. There are already alternative qualifications including Functional Skills and these need to be amplified, so more students are able to get over the line and start training.  
    1. Universities should work together not against each other. Each university or training provider spends many tens of thousands each year on recruitment campaigns.  For Nursing degrees alone, we estimate this to be at least £1M per year; pooling just 10% of this figure to ensure a consistent brand and overarching campaign would widen the pool of applicants rather than pit universities against each other.  
    1. Review the application process for Postgraduate Teacher Training – consider whether it should be given back to UCAS or another tech platform to improve visibility, choice, applicant journey and eventual enrolment figures.  Clearly only three choices is not enough with some providers being more efficient than others in responding to applicants and dealing with application volumes. The resulting bottlenecks impact on applicant confidence in the system. The early September start date for PG teaching courses also needs a review.  Apart from the application time pressure, these students are also starting before the campus (and school?) is truly ready for the start of term.  Why not start with the rest of their peers at the end of September and also introduce a January start point as an option? 
    1. Make funding more consistent and long term – at present universities are only paid to train students based on first year intake each year, leading to short term decisions, volatility and competition. The LLE due in 2027 is unlikely to lead to flexibility in PSRB course transfer. Giving universities and health trusts a 3-4 year funding model would iron out that volatility, encourage new entrants and provide certainty to invest in facilities, staff and support to train those students.  

    Conclusion and next steps  

    As the HE sector looks back on admission and enrolment for the 2025/26 academic year and prepares for 2026/27 entry we feel that something must change to enhance the admission process for PSRB courses, all of which are critical to the future of the UK.  

    The practical steps and ideas included within the article are all deliverable but need joined-up thinking across different parts of the process. We propose establishing a working group or task force to address quick wins and consider a roadmap for addressing longer-term solutions. 

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  • College admissions in a rapidly evolving world

    College admissions in a rapidly evolving world

    The years ahead will be anything but boring for college admissions officers. From demographic changes and increasing college competition to budget cuts and evolving approaches for admissions requirements — not to mention tectonic federal policy shifts and the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence — the field is as fluid as ever. 

    Those topics and more were under discussion at the Sept. 18-20 annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Columbus, Ohio. 

    While there are many forces outside the control of the admissions office, attendees tuned into the internal challenges and opportunities they’re navigating. Panelists, for instance, dug into data on diversity in college enrollment, how to best prepare future students for college math classes and when to deploy AI in institutional operations. 

    Here’s an in-depth look at some of the most interesting conversations Higher Ed Dive heard at NACAC’s 2025 conference:

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  • Why Did College Board End Best Admissions Product? (opinion)

    Why Did College Board End Best Admissions Product? (opinion)

    Earlier this month, College Board announced its decision to kill Landscape, a race-neutral tool that allowed admissions readers to better understand a student’s context for opportunity. After an awkward 2019 rollout as the “Adversity Score,” Landscape gradually gained traction in many selective admissions offices. Among other items, the dashboard provided information on the applicant’s high school, including the economic makeup of their high school class, participation trends for Advanced Placement courses and the school’s percentile SAT scores, as well as information about the local community.

    Landscape was one of the more extensively studied interventions in the world of college admissions, reflecting how providing more information about an applicant’s circumstances can boost the likelihood of a low-income student being admitted. Admissions officers lack high-quality, detailed information on the high school environment for an estimated 25 percent of applicants, a trend that disproportionately disadvantages low-income students. Landscape helped fill that critical gap.

    While not every admissions office used it, Landscape was fairly popular within pockets of the admissions community, as it provided a more standardized, consistent way for admissions readers to understand an applicant’s environment. So why did College Board decide to ax it? In its statement on the decision, College Board noted that “federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions.” The statement seems to be referring to the Trump administration’s nonbinding guidance that institutions should not use geographic targeting as a proxy for race in admissions.

    If College Board was worried that somehow people were using the tool as a proxy for race (and they weren’t), well, it wasn’t a very good one. In the most comprehensive study of Landscape being used on the ground, researchers found that it didn’t do anything to increase racial/ethnic diversity in admissions. Things are different when it comes to economic diversity. Use of Landscape is linked with a boost in the likelihood of admission for low-income students. As such, it was a helpful tool given the continued underrepresentation of low-income students at selective institutions.

    Still, no study to date found that Landscape had any effect on racial/ethnic diversity. The findings are unsurprising. After all, Landscape was, to quote College Board, “intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity.” If you look at the laundry list of items included in Landscape, absent are items like the racial/ethnic demographics of the high school, neighborhood or community.

    While race and class are correlated, they certainly aren’t interchangeable. Admissions officers weren’t using Landscape as a proxy for race; they were using it to compare a student’s SAT score or AP course load to those of their high school classmates. Ivy League institutions that have gone back to requiring SAT/ACT scores have stressed the importance of evaluating test scores in the student’s high school context. Eliminating Landscape makes it harder to do so.

    An important consideration: Even if using Landscape were linked with increased racial/ethnic diversity, its usage would not violate the law. The Supreme Court recently declined to hear the case Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. In declining to hear the case, the court has likely issued a tacit blessing on race-neutral methods to advance diversity in admissions. The decision leaves the Fourth Circuit opinion, which affirmed the race-neutral admissions policy used to boost diversity at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, intact.

    The court also recognized the validity of race-neutral methods to pursue diversity in the 1989 case J.A. Croson v. City of Richmond. In a concurring opinion filed in Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard, Justice Brett Kavanaugh quoted Justice Antonin Scalia’s words from Croson: “And governments and universities still ‘can, of course, act to undo the effects of past discrimination in many permissible ways that do not involve classification by race.’”

    College Board’s decision to ditch Landscape sends an incredibly problematic message: that tools to pursue diversity, even economic diversity, aren’t worth defending due to the fear of litigation. If a giant like College Board won’t stand behind its own perfectly legal effort to support diversity, what kind of message does that send? Regardless, colleges and universities need to remember their commitments to diversity, both racial and economic. Yes, post-SFFA, race-conscious admissions has been considerably restricted. Still, despite the bluster of the Trump administration, most tools commonly used to expand access remain legal.

    The decision to kill Landscape is incredibly disappointing, both pragmatically and symbolically. It’s a loss for efforts to broaden economic diversity at elite institutions, yet another casualty in the Trump administration’s assault on diversity. Even if the College Board has decided to abandon Landscape, institutions must not forget their obligations to make higher education more accessible to low-income students of all races and ethnicities.

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  • Angel Pérez Book Outlines Advice for Admissions Leaders

    Angel Pérez Book Outlines Advice for Admissions Leaders

    It’s a trying time to be an admissions dean.

    More than two years after the Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities could no longer consider race in admissions decisions, the Trump administration has launched a crusade to ensure institutions are abiding by that decision. Government officials have demanded colleges submit detailed data on the racial makeup of their admitted students, cast suspicion on so-called proxies for race in the admissions process and required some universities to reform their admissions practices—without specifying what, exactly, needed changing. (The administration has also used the decision as justification to call for the cancellation of other diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, from scholarships to student lounges.)

    Then again, according to Angel Pérez, a longtime admissions dean and the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, it’s never not a trying time to be an admissions dean.

    Hence the title of his forthcoming book, The Hottest Seat on Campus (Harvard Education Press), which he admits freely to have borrowed, albeit subconsciously, from a 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education feature. Admissions deans are incredibly visible, he said in a recent interview with Inside Higher Ed; their failures and successes are known to all—and have consequences well beyond their own offices.

    Now, as these leaders grapple with the new challenges the Trump administration has brought—and as the first day of NACAC’s annual conference kicks off in Columbus, Ohio—Pérez hopes his book, which is built upon interviews with dozens of admissions leaders from across the country, will prove an important resource for others struggling to navigate the hot seat. Inside Higher Ed spoke with him over the phone about his advice for admissions deans and the changing landscape of higher education.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Q: I wanted to start off by asking about your personal story. What made you interested in holding an admissions role yourself?

    A: I think my story is actually very typical of most people who go into the admissions profession. I still call myself an accidental admissions dean—this is not what I was supposed to be doing for a living.

    So many people go into the admissions profession by actually being involved on their college campus, as was I. I was involved in student activities, I was a residence hall director, 
I dabbled in tour guiding.
 The dean of students at Skidmore [College], Dean Joe Tolliver, who has now retired but is still very active in student affairs, said to me, “You’d be really great in higher education. You should consider a job in higher education.” And to be honest, I didn’t think that those were real jobs, on a college campus. So, I didn’t take it very seriously until someone in the admissions office, Roslyn Estrada, said to me, “Angel, there’s going to be an opening in the admissions office. You should apply. You’d be really good.”

    And eventually I said yes to applying because I thought I would go and do that for one year until I found a real job. And many, many years later, here I am, and [I am] delighted that I took that calling.

    So, it was really the taps on the shoulders. But I will say—it’s one of the reasons I’ve written the book—that I think we need to change that paradigm and I think we need to change that pathway. I want to create much more intentional pathways into the profession and I want to create much more intentional pathways into leadership.

    Q: What would that look like? Do you guys have any initiatives currently underway that are trying to create more intentional pathways?

    A: [NACAC has] launched a program called NEXT, where we work with admissions counselors who are one to three years in to basically help them understand what growth in the profession can look like, what a pathway can look like.


    The second thing is that, thanks to the support of Strada Education Foundation, we are actually going to be launching a brand new dean’s fellowship, starting in 2026. This is in order to support brand-new deans who are moving into these chairs and cultivate them into leadership. In the book, in the spirit of me being the accidental dean, I write about the fact that one day I was the director of admissions, and the next day, my boss retired and said to me, “The president would like to speak to you.” And then, all of a sudden, I was the vice president for enrollment, and my job was so fundamentally different. That happens to so many people—it’s kind of like sink or swim. What we want to do at NACAC in the future is create much more intentional leadership growth for deans.

    One thing that I aspire to do—we’re not there yet; I’m still looking for the funding—is actually to create a program where those tour guides on college campuses and student interviewers, I would like to actually create a NACAC fellowship for them to learn about what it’s like to go into the profession, to give them a mentor as they’re applying for their first job out of college, into the admissions profession, and then make them a part of the NACAC community.

    Q: I enjoyed the section of the book where you were talking about admissions deans as storytellers. Could you describe how that storyteller role differs from others on campus and also how effective storytelling translates to outcomes for the admissions office?

    A: I always have believed that that admissions deans are chief storytellers of an institution. The reason I say that is because they have such a large constituency. They’re not just telling stories on their campus; they’re also telling the story of the institution outside of campus, right? They’re talking to high school counselors. They’re talking to students. They’re talking to people like you, for example, in the media who are trying to understand the complex admissions world that we have built.

    What I have seen in my experience is that so many admissions deans fail in the role because they did not embrace the role of storytelling. A big part of their job is to actually educate the community about the challenges of enrollment, to educate the community about the fact that enrollment is all about trade-offs; in the environment that we’re living in, everybody’s not going to get what they want on campus.

    Q: You describe navigating admissions during COVID-19 and the bungled FAFSA rollout of 2024. What takeaways from those two events have stuck with you going forward?

    A: These are really the messages that I took away from the teams that I interviewed. One is, during both of those crises—but I would argue any crisis—the importance of communication. I mean, we were just talking about storytelling, right? The importance of bringing your staff along, your constituents, making sure that people are feeling informed, even during incredible uncertainty.
 We’re living that again right now, so the book is very timely.

    I think the other thing that stands out for me—something that, again, was highlighted through these amazing deans I interviewed in the book—is the importance of building teams and making sure that you rely on those team members and not carry the weight of leading in crisis by yourself. I think the leaders who crashed and burned during COVID, during the FAFSA debacle and during all of the different crises that we face, these are individuals who try to do it all by themselves. The reality of the matter is none of us can do it by ourselves. If you can put together a really diverse team who thinks differently, who complements each other in different diverse ways, you’re going to be set up for a lot more success. And obviously empowering them is going to be a big part of that as well.

    Q: On a similar note, this book was written before the series of crises that we’re going through with the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education. Is there any piece of advice you would add to the book if you could about navigating this current moment?

    A: I think so much of the advice [in the book] actually is very much translatable to what’s happening today. The difference is, the level of change is coming so much faster than ever before, even faster than COVID, even faster than FAFSA, because every day the Trump administration could say something that fundamentally upends how we do our work. I think that’s what’s different.

    So if I could have a whole other chapter in the book, I would actually focus on how to lead in an era of uncertainty, and the skill sets that you need, personal and professional, to actually navigate change that’s coming faster than ever.

    One of the quotes [that] I use in every presentation I do right now is from Justin Trudeau, and this quote just blows me away. He said it at the World Economic Forum: “The pace of change has never been this fast and it will never be this slow again.” To me, that is our new reality. And so I think I would focus a lot on, how do you keep organizations stable when the news cycle is changing every single day?

    The other thing that I would focus on is actually how to be unresponsive. What I mean by that is oftentimes we’re so wired to jump at the crisis of the day. One of the things the dean said to me really recently last week was “You know what? Every time news comes out now, I just sit and I wait, because it might be different tomorrow.” And so there’s also this skill set that I think people need to build of not overreacting when the news cycle is breaking every single day. It’s tough. We’re living in tough times.

    Q: If you could go back in time to when you were first starting in admissions, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself, either from the book or just off the dome?

    A: I think I would say to myself, “Enjoy this moment.” And the reason I would say that is because so many young admissions counselors are so eager to rise in the ranks very quickly. As you saw in the book, I talk about it: The faster you rise up the ranks, it becomes a lot messier and murkier and sometimes painful. As a dean, there were many more days that I longed for the simplicity of being on the road, recruiting students, spending my days in high schools and then going back home and reading applications from kids all over the world. It was such a beautiful job with not a ton of pressure.

    But then, obviously, I was an eager beaver, and I climbed the ranks actually very quickly;
 I became a dean in my early 30s. I now wish that I had said to myself, “Slow down, enjoy this moment, and don’t be too quick to rise, because those pressures are going to be very, very different.”

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  • Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74

    Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74


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    A conservative mainland group whose lawsuit against Harvard University ended affirmative action in college admissions is now building support in Hawaiʻi to take on Kamehameha Schools’ policies that give preference to Native Hawaiian students.

    Students for Fair Admissions, based in Virginia, recently launched the website KamehamehaNotFair.org. It says that the admission preference “is so strong that it is essentially impossible for a non-Native Hawaiian student to be admitted to Kamehameha.”

    “We believe that focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court,” the website says.

    Kamehameha’s Board of Trustees and CEO Jack Wong said in a written statement that the school expected the policy would be challenged. The institution — a private school established through the estate of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiians — successfully defended its admission policy in a series of lawsuits in the early 2000s. The trustees and Wong promised to do so again.

    “We are confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail,” the statement said.

    The campaign also drew criticism from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, established in the late 1970s for the betterment of Native Hawaiians. OHA’s Board of Trustees called it an “attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”

    “These attacks are not new — but they are escalating,” the trustees said in a written statement. “They aim to dismantle the hard-won protections that enable our people to heal, rise, and chart our future.”

    Several groups have tried and failed in the past to overturn Kamehameha’s admissions policy. Federal courts, siding with Kamehameha, have ruled that giving preference to Native Hawaiians helps alleviate historical injustices they faced after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

    In the 2006 decision upholding Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policy, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel pointed to longstanding challenges Native Hawaiian students have faced in schools. 

    “It is clear that a manifest imbalance exists in the K-12 educational arena in the state of Hawaiʻi, with Native Hawaiians falling at the bottom of the spectrum in almost all areas of educational progress and success,” Judge Susan Graber wrote in the majority opinion. 

    These disparities persist. Just over a third of Native Hawaiian students in public schools were proficient in reading in 2024, compared to 52% of students statewide. Less than a quarter of Native Hawaiian students were proficient in math.

    The state education department has also fallen short of providing families with adequate access to Hawaiian language immersion programs, according to two lawsuits filed against the department this summer. The Hawaiian immersion programs are open to all students, not just those of Hawaiian ancestry.  

    Moses Haia III, a lawyer and former director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said that improving outcomes for Hawaiian students is Kamehameha’s primary reason for existing. He said this new challenge appears to be based on ignorance of Hawaiʻi’s history.

    “Ultimately, what I see is these people being uneducated,” Haia said of the mainland group. “Not knowing the history of Hawaiʻi, not knowing the reasons for Kamehameha’s existence, and just once again trying to push Hawaiians into this box… and wanting to be on top.”

    Past Challenges 

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that private schools can’t discriminate based on race in a case called Runyon v. McCrary, which involved Black school students trying to gain admission to private schools that had yet to integrate non-white students.

    An anonymous student sued Kamehameha in 2003, invoking the 1976 ruling and alleging that the school’s policy of giving preference to Hawaiian children was discriminatory. The case eventually landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    A majority of the appeals court judges sided with Kamehameha. They used a part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in the workplace as a legal framework for looking at the admissions policy.

    Judge Graber wrote that a preference for Native Hawaiian students “serves a legitimate remedial purpose by addressing the socioeconomic and educational disadvantages facing Native Hawaiians, producing Native Hawaiian leadership for community involvement, and revitalizing Native Hawaiian culture, thereby remedying current manifest imbalances resulting from the influx of western civilization.”

    But it was a narrow victory for Kamehameha, an 8-to-7 vote. Dissenting judges wrote that admitting mostly Hawaiian students didn’t create a diverse student body; others said that the policy was clearly discriminatory.

    The anonymous student appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Kamehameha entered a $7 million settlement with the student and their mother before the court decided whether to take up the case.

    While the settlement safeguarded the admission policy from a ruling by the nation’s highest court it also meant lawyers punted the issue.

    Another group of anonymous students challenged the admissions policy a few years later and again took that case to the Supreme Court. But the court declined to take up that case in 2011.

    Students for Fair Admissions previously brought two landmark cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that the two schools’ race-conscious admissions policies discriminated against Asian American and white applicants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges cannot use race as a factor in their admissions, although the decision didn’t specify what this could mean for K-12 schools.

    Last fall, the number of Black students enrolled at both universities fell, although some researchers cautioned that colleges might not see the full impact of the Supreme Court ruling until a few admissions cycles have passed. 

    The challenge to Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policies comes amid national pushback on efforts to promote diversity in schools. In February, the U.S. Department of Education said any colleges and K-12 schools using race-based practices in hiring and admissions could lose federal funding, although a court subsequently prevented the department from enforcing those requirements. 

    Kamehameha receives no funding from the federal government, according to its tax filings. The school, which is the state’s largest private landowner, has assets valued at about $15 billion.

    This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat.


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  • Free College Admissions Counseling for Cancer Survivors

    Free College Admissions Counseling for Cancer Survivors

    Anthony Gallonio has spent most of his career working in higher education admissions and financial aid, watching young people select, apply to and enroll in colleges. But when his daughter Grace received a cancer diagnosis 14 years ago, when she was a year old, he realized there was an underserved group of teens who needed support in college exploration: cancer patients.

    “I remember looking at these kids coming in [to the hospital] thinking, ‘How are they doing it?’” Gallonio said. “Their lives are still going on, high school is taking place, college is still in the future. We know one missed application or one missed form or one missed deadline could mean the difference between getting into a school or not or getting tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships or not.”

    In 2011, Gallonio established the National GRACE Foundation, a nonprofit that offers free information and advice on higher education for families of young people who survived childhood cancer. The group is supported by volunteers across the country who work in higher ed, illuminating the hidden curriculum to encourage student success.

    The background: GRACE, named after Gallonio’s daughter and short for Growing, Recovering and Achieving a College Education, is designed to break down barriers to enrollment for childhood cancer survivors and support parents and caregivers navigating college applications and beyond.

    “The whole goal has been to take the stress out of the college admissions and financial aid process for families who have a lot of stress going on and try to help them avoid the mistakes that I have seen over the years,” Gallonio said.

    A 2019 study of 16,700 childhood cancer survivors found that about half graduated from college; those reporting chronic conditions were even less likely to complete a degree by age 25.

    Many pediatric cancer survivors Gallonio works with aspire to careers in helping roles, including in health care, social services or research, he said. Getting into and through college is just the first step in that journey.

    How it works: GRACE provides a range of services, including offering advice on financial aid, tracking upcoming deadlines, explaining confusing terminology or jargon, and highlighting various colleges and programs that might be a good fit for the student. A majority of the students and parents come from low- or middle-income families, and they often find the foundation through word of mouth or through partnerships with hospitals.

    “I think about our services in the way that a family might hire college consultants, but we do it all for free,” Gallonio said. “That’s the group that we’re seeing—those folks who need help but also don’t have necessarily the resources to pay for [a consultant].”

    GRACE volunteers also provide in-person and webinar events for parents and caregivers on topics like college costs and scholarships.

    Once students are enrolled, GRACE supports their persistence by working as a liaison between institutions and families. They might appeal for more financial aid, for instance, or advocate for student supports through disability services offices. “We know what [families] are going through, we know what these school are going through, we kind of speak their language,” Gallonio said.

    The organization has up to 30 volunteers at any point in the academic year, but “we are always looking for volunteers in the higher ed landscape—anywhere in the country, at any type of institution,” to provide counseling to pediatric cancer survivors, Gallonio said.

    Building better: Since launching in 2011, GRACE has assisted over 300 young people in their pursuit of a college degree, and Grace, the foundation’s namesake, is “a happy and healthy 15-year-old,” Gallonio said. Families have also secured over $3 million in scholarships through the foundation’s advocacy work.

    Olivia Falzone, a rising first-year student at the College of Charleston and cancer survivor, receives the Isabel Helen Farnum Scholarship from the National Grace Foundation.

    Anthony Gallonio/National GRACE Foundation

    Over the years, GRACE has expanded services beyond the Northeastern U.S., where Gallonio is located, to support prospective students from coast to coast. As the foundation’s reach has grown, so has its perspective on postsecondary education.

    Initially, the focus was to help cancer patients have a good shot at a competitive institution. It has since expanded to highlight the value of higher education in any capacity and offer vocational or alternative pathway support as well.

    “A lot of it has to do with breaking down that [college] can be done, that it can be affordable,” Gallonio said. “The stories that we hear about debt, about the $90,000 colleges—that’s not every college, and there are colleges in every state that a family can afford to go to.”

    Gallonio is considering changing GRACE’s acronym to “Growing, Recovering and Continuing Education,” to reflect the wider range of pathways available to young people.

    This fall, GRACE will launch a mobile application and webpage so prospective students and parents can explore colleges and universities’ disability services, careers and trades, financial aid information, and selectivity rates. The app also includes a personalized scholarship search service, allowing individuals to put in their information and receive tailored suggestions for scholarships to apply for.

    “We try to make it a one stop,” Gallonio said. “We’re not charging them for usage or anything like that. Hopefully it saves our volunteers and us time.”

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  • More UChicago Ph.D. Programs Will Pause Admissions

    More UChicago Ph.D. Programs Will Pause Admissions

    More UChicago programs are pausing new Ph.D. admissions for the 2026-27 academic year.

    Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Images

    The University of Chicago’s Arts and Humanities Division is now pausing new Ph.D. student admissions for the 2026–27 academic year across all departments except philosophy and one program within the music department. The move expands on last week’s announcement from the dean that about half of all departments would pause admissions, while the rest would reduce the number of admissions.

    The departments that won’t be accepting Ph.D. students now include art history, cinema and media studies, classics, comparative literature, East Asian languages and civilizations, English language and literature, Germanic studies, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Romance languages and literatures, Slavic languages and literatures, and South Asian languages and civilizations, plus the music department’s ethnomusicology and history and theory of music programs.

    The Social Sciences Division has also announced it will not admit Ph.D. students into four programs in 2026-27: anthropology, political economy, social thought, and conceptual and historical studies of science. The UChicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice had earlier announced it was pausing Ph.D. admissions and the Harris School of Public Policy said it was pausing admissions for the Harris Ph.D. (in public policy studies), the political economy Ph.D. and the master of arts in public policy with certificate in research methods.

    The announcements reflect how the deeply indebted university is responding to budget issues. But UChicago is just one of multiple highly selective universities—including Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania—that have announced over the past year that they were freezing or scaling back Ph.D. admissions and programs amid financial pressures and other factors.

    UChicago had formed committees of faculty and staff to plan over the summer for changes within the Arts and Humanities Division. But on Aug. 12, division dean Deborah Nelson announced the initial pause, stressing that “this decision is not the recommendation of any committee.”

    Then on Wednesday, Nelson wrote a new email, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, announcing a revised plan “based on the strong recommendation of the PhD committee and department chairs.”

    “After the announcement last week, I met with all department chairs and consulted with the faculty-led committee on PhD programs,” Nelson wrote. “Nearly all faculty leadership agreed that instead of admitting students to only a select number of departments, they preferred a broader pause for the division so we can spend time this coming year to collectively assess and better navigate the challenges we face.”

    A department chair who asked not to be named confirmed to Inside Higher Ed that chairs met with the dean last Friday to discuss the pause, and most department chairs agreed it should be applied throughout the division to allow for more collaborative work during the academic year on the future of Ph.D. education at UChicago.

    Nelson also wrote in her Wednesday email that she “heard from many faculty that the initial decision caught them off guard. The timing of my initial announcement about PhD cohorts was partly driven by deadlines to submit information to software platforms that would have made semi-public our decisions to open or close applications to programs. And I wanted to make sure our community knew about these decisions first.”

    In an email, a university spokesperson simply said, “As Dean Nelson noted in her email, the decision to revise the plan for PhD admissions in the Arts & Humanities Division for academic year 2026-27 was based on the strong recommendation of the PhD committee and department chairs. Crown, Harris and SSD have also made announcements regarding pauses in PhD admissions for the 2026-2027 academic year.”

    Clifford Ando, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, History and the College, told Inside Higher Ed Thursday that “we easily have the resources to support the humanities without inflicting cuts disproportionate to the humanities’ role in creating the financial crisis.”

    “We are in the unique position of being a well-resourced university that has been so reckless with our resources that we now have to make decisions as if we were a poor one,” Ando said.

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