Tag: college

  • Students Should Insure an Investment as Important as College

    Students Should Insure an Investment as Important as College

    To the editor:

    We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the recent opinion essay “Degrees of Uncertainty” (Dec. 15, 2025). The author raises important questions about rising college costs, institutional incentives and the risks of oversimplifying complex financial challenges facing students and families.  We are pleased that she recognizes Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) help address affordability challenges and provide many benefits for students and colleges. 

    However, the author questions whether students should benefit from a guarantee that their college degree will be economically valuable. 

    LRAPs are, at their core, student loan insurance. It can be scary to borrow large student loans to finance an expensive college degree. There is a market failure, however, every time a student does not attend their preferred college, study their preferred major or pursue their preferred career because they are afraid of student loans. Students should be free to pursue their passions—not forced into second-best choices because of the cost of the degree or the prospect of a lower income in the future.  

    Society also loses out—especially if the lower-income career a student wants to pursue is a human service profession, such as education, where they will invest in improving the lives of others. 

    Most purchases come with a warranty or guarantee. Why should college be different? Colleges promise to provide value to students. We applaud those colleges and universities that stand behind that promise with a financial guarantee.

    As consumers, we routinely insure our biggest risks and largest purchases. We insure our homes, cars, boats and lives—and even our pets. Why shouldn’t we insure an expensive investment in college? 

    In any class, we can expect some students will earn less than their peers. It is reasonable for students to fear being among that group. An individual student cannot diversify that risk. That is the function of insurance.  

    LRAPs spread the risk across many students, just as insurance does with other familiar risks. Most drivers can’t protect themselves from the chance of being in a car accident and facing large repair and medical expenses. Insurance spreads that risk, turning a small chance of a very large cost into a small premium that protects against that loss. 

    LRAPs serve the same function for students—without the cost—because colleges cover the program, giving students peace of mind and the freedom to attend their preferred college and pursue their passions. 

    By doing this, LRAPs are a tool that can help colleges increase enrollment and revenue. This additional revenue can be invaluable at a time when colleges face many structural challenges—from regulatory changes to the disruption of AI to declining enrollment caused by the demographic cliff. 

    LRAPs provide meaningful protection to students while maintaining clear incentives to focus on completion, career preparation and postgraduation outcomes.

    Peter Samuelson is president and founder at Ardeo Education Solutions, a loan repayment assistance program provider. 

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  • California College of the Arts to close, Vanderbilt to take over campus

    California College of the Arts to close, Vanderbilt to take over campus

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    Dive Brief:

    • The California College of the Arts plans to wind down after its 2026-27 academic year, ending the 120-year-old institution’s long-running effort to turn around its finances, officials announced Tuesday.
    • Vanderbilt University has agreed to acquire CCA’s campus. Vanderbilt’s plans include operating a school to be dubbed the “California College of the Arts Institute at Vanderbilt,” along with offering arts programming and maintaining elements of CCA’s legacy, such as its archives and an exhibition venue. 
    • The arts college’s leaders ultimately realized its “tuition-driven business model is not sustainable” amid demographic declines and persistent financial deficits, CCA President David Howse said in the announcement.

    Dive Insight:

    Over the past year, CCA has been in talks with possible partners as it recognized “lasting financial independence is out of reach given our current constraints,” Howse said. 

    “Throughout our conversations, Vanderbilt has been a thoughtful and responsive partner, with a team of people who clearly respect our 120-year legacy and see in it great value for future generations of students,” he added.

    Howse acknowledged that the news of CCA’s closure and Vanderbilt’s takeover of the campus might evoke “shock, frustration, and disappointment” in stakeholders. 

    Less than a year ago, Howse trumpeted an “extraordinary milestone” for the institution after raising $45 million to fund a turnaround. That donation blitz was anchored by a $22.5 million matching gift from Jensen Huang, the billionaire founder of Taiwanese technology company Nvidia, and his wife, Lori.

    But CCA was ultimately unable to raise the full amount needed to sustain itself. The year before receiving those gifts, the college’s endowment totaled just $42.6 million, most of it earmarked for student aid, according to its fiscal 2024 financials.

    Anticipating the question of why the Huangs couldn’t donate more to help the college, officials said in an FAQ that while the couple has been supportive, they “understand that CCA’s existing tuition-driven financial model is not working.”

    The college — the last private arts institution in the city after the San Francisco Art Institute closed in 2022 — has suffered sizable enrollment losses in recent years. Between 2019 and 2024, fall headcount dropped by roughly 30% to 1,308 students, according to federal data. That’s a problem for a college that drew just under 70% of its core revenues from tuition and fees in fiscal 2023. 

    Local media raised the possibility in 2024 that CCA could close or merge with another institution. By September of that year, the college laid off 10% of its staff and eliminated open roles as it tried to reduce a $20 million budget deficit. 

    Now it’s winding down and handing the keys over to Vanderbilt. Students on track to graduate by the end of the 2026-27 year will be able to get their degrees from the college, and CCA is working on transfer and teach-out pathways for the students who won’t be finished with their studies by then, the college said. 

    For its part, Vanderbilt plans to keep aspects of CCA’s legacy alive. The Nashville-based private institution will operate CCA’s Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts while maintaining the arts college’s archival materials and engaging its alumni.

    CCA’s agreement with the university also “provides opportunities for both faculty and staff to apply for positions with Vanderbilt once Vanderbilt has completed an assessment of its needs,” CCA said in its FAQ. 

    The institutions didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal. 

    The acquisition of CCA’s campus adds to Vanderbilt’s national expansion, with planned campuses in New York and Florida as well. The New York campus is set to open this fall.

    The university plans to open the San Francisco branch for the 2027-28 academic year, pending regulatory approvals, Vanderbilt said. The university expects to serve around 1,000 students, both graduate and undergraduate, at the campus.

    “San Francisco offers an extraordinary environment for learning at the intersection of innovation, creativity and technology, and it provides an unparalleled setting for Vanderbilt to shape the future of higher education,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said in a statement Tuesday.

    CCA is one of a handful of distressed arts colleges to end operations in recent years. Perhaps the most dramatic case was the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which shuttered suddenly in 2024 — a fate that CCA managed to avoid through its fundraising and deal with Vanderbilt.

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  • Morris Brown College Fires President

    Morris Brown College Fires President

    Morris Brown College president Kevin James fought to regain the college’s accreditation. Now he’s out of a job without explanation.

    Morris Brown College

    Morris Brown College, a historically Black institution in Georgia, removed its president, effective immediately, after seven years on the job, the Board of Trustees announced Monday.

    In a news release, the board thanked Kevin James for his leadership.

    James “played a meaningful role in guiding the institution through critical seasons of growth, resilience, and transformation,” the release read. The board “wishes him well in his next chapter.”

    The board’s announcement offered no explanation for James’s termination.

    “Morris Brown College remains firmly committed to its students, its mission, and its long-term strategic vision,” Bishop Michael Mitchell, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “This transition in leadership will help to ensure continuity as we move forward with the important work of strengthening and advancing the College.”

    Under James’s tenure, the struggling college regained accreditation after nearly 20 years without it, restoring students’ access to federal financial aid. Enrollment also grew from about 20 students to more than 540, James wrote in a Facebook post Monday.  

    He said the Board of Trustees terminated his contract, which is slated to end in 2029, “without providing specific cause or substantive explanation” after a positive annual evaluation and strong performance reviews throughout his presidency.  

    He stressed that the timing is “troubling” for the college, which faces an accreditation-reaffirmation review in just a few weeks.

    “I dedicated myself fully to the restoration and resurgence of Morris Brown College, and I stand firmly behind the progress we achieved together,” James wrote. “While I am deeply disappointed by the Board’s decision, I am grateful for the overwhelming support I have received from alumni, faculty, staff, students, and community partners. Thank you for believing in the vision and the work.”

    The board named trustee Nzinga Shaw as the college’s interim leader.

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  • Calif. College of Arts to Close, Sell Campus to Vanderbilt

    Calif. College of Arts to Close, Sell Campus to Vanderbilt

    As part of its national expansion, Vanderbilt has purchased the California College of the Arts campus, which is closing.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed

    California College of the Arts will close by the end of the 2026–27 academic year amid enrollment declines that have rendered its business model unsustainable, officials announced.

    But the Wednesday announcement at a press conference at San Francisco’s City Hall came with surprising fanfare. Though CCA is going away, Vanderbilt University is stepping in to purchase its campus, giving the private institution in Tennessee a foothold on the West Coast.

    Following the closure, Vanderbilt will assume ownership of the campus and “establish undergraduate and graduate programming, including art and design programs,” and maintain archival materials from the college, CCA president David C. Howse wrote in an announcement.

    The move comes after recent financial struggles for CCA, which laid off 23 employees in 2024 and closed other vacant positions to address a $20 million budget gap. While the private college raised nearly $45 million recently, those funds were evidently not enough to stave off closure. 

    CCA enrolled 1,308 students in fall 2024, according to recent federal data, down from a recent high of nearly 2,000 students in fall 2016.

    Officials have not made details of the transaction publicly available.

    Vanderbilt’s takeover of the San Francisco campus is the latest national push from the university, which has pursued an ambitious growth plan in recent years. Vanderbilt is currently leasing a campus in New York City and building another in West Palm Beach, Fla., as announced in 2024.

    Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier told Inside Higher Ed last fall that the university was exploring a site in San Francisco and noted the booming artificial intelligence scene in the city was part of the appeal for a campus there.

    While at least 16 nonprofit institutions announced closure plans last year, California College of the Arts appears to be the first to do so in 2026, coming less than two weeks into the new year.

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  • Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

    The Lane Community College Board of Education voted to approve college leaders’ plans for a budget reduction on Jan. 7, despite fierce pushback from the faculty union. The latest controversy comes amid a dramatic year for the Oregon community college, marked by long, fractious board meetings and an ongoing battle between administrators and faculty over stalled labor negotiations and course cuts.

    College administrators argue the approved proposal—cutting spending by $8 million over the next three years—is a financial necessity. They say the college regularly falls short of a board requirement to maintain 10 percent of its balance in reserves. Administrators also conducted a new multiyear forecast that predicted expenses are going to grow.

    The college is expected to be “in a deficit every year … if we continue on the same trends that we have been in the last two or three years,” said Kara Flath, Lane’s vice president of finance and operations. The plan also proposes using some of the freed-up money for deferred maintenance and other projects.

    But faculty union leaders disagree with the administration’s view of the college’s financial present and future. Adrienne Mitchell, president of the faculty union, the Lane Community College Education Association, believes leadership’s projections are pessimistic and that a roughly 8 percent cut to the $104 million operating budget is excessive.

    “We don’t believe any of those cuts are necessary,” Mitchell said. “Currently, all of our funding sources—state funding, property taxes and student tuition revenue—are up.”

    The union came out with an independent report last week suggesting that the college is in a sound financial position and should invest more, not less, in faculty and the campus over all. But faculty and administrators fundamentally disagree on how much spending will rise and what tranches of money the college has at its disposal.

    The union’s perspective that the college can spend less “makes the numbers look better,” Flath said. “But as finance people, we have decades of finance experience” and such cost estimates are “not fiscally viable.”

    Mitchell also argued that Oregon Local Budget Law requires the board to follow a legal process that includes forming a committee of board and nonboard members, presenting the budget and hosting a public hearing, before formally adopting a budget. The union put out a legal memo on the matter in September.

    But administrators say their overarching plan isn’t the final budget—it doesn’t specify where exactly cuts will be made—so it doesn’t need to go through such a process yet. They said they plan to review programs, solicit community feedback and draw up a list of recommended cuts in the spring.

    Board members, initially skeptical of the plan’s lack of specificity, held multiple ad hoc budget committee meetings last week to discuss it ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, which lasted almost five hours.

    Board member Zach Mulholland said at the Wednesday meeting that he still sees “red flags and concerns with regards to unspecified cuts” but concluded, “at this moment in time, this appears to be a balanced proposal.” Mulholland and other board members on the ad hoc committee recommended the board move forward with the plan, as long as it includes annual updates and regular progress reports from administrators.

    “Now maybe as a college we can work together,” Flath said.

    Fraught Faculty Relations

    But the college is also mired in other controversies. The faculty union, which represents about 525 full- and part-time professors, has been without a contract since June as administrators and faculty clash over the details.

    Discussions have soured over disagreements about workloads, class-size limits, cost-of-living adjustments, the timing of layoff notices and the college’s efforts to strike some provisions, which Mitchell says amounts to a “net divestment” of over a million dollars in spending on faculty. The administration argued some of the issues in the proposed contract aren’t directly connected to faculty benefits, including proposals to add immigration status to the college’s nondiscrimination policy and ramp up campus safety measures.

    Grant Matthews, vice president of academic affairs, said significant progress has been made since the summer, but “really, we’re stuck on economics.”

    “We’re trying to really have a fiscally sustainable institution, and the proposals that we’re receiving at the table are not fiscally responsible,” he said. He estimated that the current contract proposal could cost the college up to $61 million.

    Professors aren’t pleased with how the process is going. In a December survey of 271 faculty members, 87 percent reported low morale, 90 percent said they didn’t trust the college’s president and 69 percent reported that they fear retaliation for expressing their views. The union has also raised concerns that faculty of color are leaving the college. On Wednesday, about 75 union members and supporters picketed outside ahead of the board meeting.

    Two more bargaining sessions are planned for this month, and mediation is scheduled after.

    Recent course cuts have also frayed relations between faculty and college leaders. Lane cut about 100 course sections for the winter and spring terms after introducing a new system that allows students to sign up in the fall for courses for the entire year.

    Administrators said this is a typical number of course cuts for the college, on par with past years, to optimize their academic offerings, and advisers are ensuring students still get the classes they need. But Mitchell described the move as a blow to part-time faculty, who lost classes that might have filled up later in the year. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, arguing the eliminated courses should have been a part of bargaining. Mitchell also worries the cuts are a roadblock for students who need to take certain courses, noting that a popular biology class—a prerequisite for many health professions courses—has a wait list of 168 students.

    Leadership Tensions

    The board, meanwhile, has had its own share of drama over the past year.

    The faculty union has accused administrators of encroaching on board responsibilities and criticized the board for failing to exercise its authority.

    “There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the administration essentially taking over the role of the Board of Education,” Mitchell said.

    Meanwhile, in August, a third-party report concluded that Mulholland, formerly the board chair, and other board members discriminated against President Stephanie Bulger, a Black woman, on the basis of race and sex. The report described Mulholland and some other board members as displaying a dismissive or hostile attitude toward Bulger, cutting her off in conversations, and deferring questions to male staff. The report also found that Mulholland had intimidated a student. In September, the board censured the former board chair, who apologized, and the full board then came out with a joint apology.

    “We are deeply sorry for the negative impact our behavior has had on you and the college community at large,” said Austin Fölnagy, the current board chair, who was also accused of adopting a dismissive tone toward the president. “President Bulger, please accept the board’s apology for treating you badly.”

    Mitchell said the union is “very concerned about any type of discrimination, and we think it’s really important for everyone on the campus to feel safe.”

    The college’s accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, also deemed the college “substantially in compliance” with accreditation standards but “in need of improvement” in a notice last March. The accreditor recommended the college evaluate its internal communication and ensure decision-making processes are “inclusive of all constituents,” among other suggestions.

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  • 3 major policy changes college leaders should keep tabs on

    3 major policy changes college leaders should keep tabs on

    ORLANDO, Fla. — Higher education policy reached a watershed moment last year. 

    Congress passed a massive spending package over the summer, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that makes major changes to federal student lending and other higher education policies. And the Trump administration pursued large-scale policy changes, such as new restrictions on international enrollment. 

    This year, colleges will begin to bear the brunt of many of those changes, with the end of the Grad PLUS loan program and the introduction of new lending caps taking effect July 1. The Trump administration is likewise expected to finalize several regulations governing the higher education sector in the coming days and months. 

    Meanwhile, lawmakers are weighing further changes to student aid in the federal government’s budget for fiscal 2026, including the potential elimination of some major programs. 

    This week, higher education experts at the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute — an annual gathering of hundreds of top leaders at private nonprofit institutions — broke down some of the policy changes expected in the year ahead and called on college presidents to advocate for their sector’s interests. 

    “We really all do rise or fall as a sector, certainly in terms of federal policy,” CIC President Marjorie Hass said during a conference event Wednesday. “Even the largest and loftiest institutions have discovered that.” 

    Congress is weighing major changes to federal student aid

    Congressional lawmakers ended the longest government shutdown in history in November by passing a measure to continue federal funding through Jan. 30, 2026. But they still need to pass a budget package to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. 

    So far, proposals released from the House and Senate’s appropriations committees for higher education funding are drastically different. 

    The House’s version, for instance, would eliminate all funding for the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, which provides need-based financial aid to undergraduate students. It would also lower funding for Federal Work-Study, which provides part-time employment to students to help them pay for college, to $779 million — $451 million less than 2025 levels. 

    However, the House’s plan would hold the maximum Pell Grant steady at $7,395. 

    Meanwhile, the Senate’s version would keep funding level for FSEOG, Federal Work-Study and the maximum Pell Grant. 

    “A lot of the student aid started about 50 some years ago,” Barbara Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said Wednesday. “If we want to continue to secure that student aid for the next decade, it’s on us.”

    Mistick told conference attendees that it’s important for them to weigh in on these issues annually. “If you sent a letter last year, don’t think they’re still holding on to that letter and going to take a look at it again,” Mistick said. 

    Regulators mull which programs are “professional”

    One of the biggest changes in the OBBBA is the end of the Grad PLUS loan program, which for two decades has allowed graduate students to borrow up to the cost of their attendance. 

    Lawmakers also capped graduate student lending at $100,000 for most programs and $200,000 for professional programs. The U.S. Department of Education convened a committee late last year to craft regulatory language to carry out the new legislation through a process called negotiated rulemaking. 

    That committee — composed of different higher education stakeholders, including college and student representatives — reached consensus on language specifying which programs are deemed professional and thus eligible for the higher lending caps. 

    However, the language drew immediate pushback for excluding some major fields, such as graduate nursing, occupational therapy and physician associate programs. 

    “If you’ve got deans and you’ve got nursing schools and health sciences programs on your campus, [or] other programs that were not deemed professional, get those professional organizations involved,” Mistick said. 

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  • Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    Reading Sophocles in My Community College Class (opinion)

    I have a rule for myself in freshman English that I don’t assign readings that require much explanation. If I continually have to provide background of a work’s history and context, it means the students are awaiting a deus ex machina, AI or me to summarize and simplify. I seek out readings that feature conversational voices that create an immediate, imaginable world that my students can understand on their own—that is, read.

    Every year, though, I make one exception to this rule and assign either Sophocles’s Oedipus the King or Antigone. They don’t get any easier, no matter how many times I teach them, but they’re worth the effort because they’re sublime, and the range of topics they provide us for discussion and writing seems inexhaustible and ever relevant. In fall 2024, with the presidential election looming, I assigned Antigone.

    “Before we start … you know family trees? I need to show you Antigone’s.” I began drawing on the whiteboard the Oedipus family tree from the bottom. “Antigone and her siblings—Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles. Their parents: Jocasta and Oedipus. Up here, Jocasta’s parents: Menoeceus and Ms. Unknown. Oedipus’s parents, Laertes and Jocasta, are over here. And because they’re characters from Greek myth and legend, we can keep going back—”

    “Professor!” calls out Varna. “You made a mistake. Jocasta can’t be Oedipus’s mother, too—right? … Right?”

    “Actually …”

    “He can’t have children with his mother.”

    “Shouldn’t have. ”

    “Mm?”

    Even before the pandemic, I had given up assigning Oedipus and Antigone as homework reading. In my classes, we read Sophocles together. On paper, out loud. “Put away your devices, please. We’re going really old-school—ancient Greek school.”

    Although some of my community college students have shaky English or discomfort with speaking aloud, at some point in our halting and struggling reading we catch the play’s spirit and profundity and are knocked back on our heels. Marie, despite her thick accent, whether reading Antigone or Creon, is inspired and masterful. Is it the theatricality or simply having to communicate the words on the page that guide her into clearer enunciation?

    Bewildered Samuel, meanwhile, eventually finds his footing and delightedly embodies the comic outlook of the Sentry. Everybody reads, taking turns with the roles. We are mostly patient with one another, and we dig in as anxious Tina loses heart and her voice notches down into her shoes and her classmates cheer her on and plead with her to speak up. The students’ encouragement of and aid to one another helps me limit my interventions, though I still continually interject with vocabulary definitions or references or to explicate idiomatic expressions or pose obvious questions to check in on comprehension. I pause us after a character’s thrilling or brilliant statement and ask them to quote this or that for us to ponder in writing.

    Reading aloud in a community college classroom is less a pleasure cruise than a field trip through a museum.

    During my recent sabbatical, while working on a biography of Max Schott, an author, one of my old teachers and my friend, I was, as must happen to some professors on leave, missing the classroom. So as a supplement to or diversion from my daily notes and questions to Max, I wrote scenes for a few weeks in the form of a play of what I remembered and imagined of what it was like to teach Oedipus the King, from the first day through the next several class sessions. Max regularly expressed enjoyment over the daily installments. That was my reward, praise from my mentor. Still, at the end, I told him on the phone that it was nice to be done.

    He said, “You’re not done.”

    “Yeah, I am. I even imagined them through the essay and the drafts!”

    “But what about Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone?”

    “Oh, I’d never try to teach those with Oedipus in the same semester. It’s freshman English.”

    “Why not?”

    “Well, they’re supposed to read essays and articles, too, and in real life the students themselves wouldn’t let me.”

    “You’re making it up anyway!” he laughed.

    I resisted for a week. I had just about finished the biography and the subject of the biography, my own mentor, was encouraging me to go on, write more about my imaginary classroom. No one else was asking for more from me.

    I reread what I had, about 150 single-spaced pages, half of which, I should say, were composed by Sophocles. I can compare my contribution to the play within a play to a quirky improvisational movie in which the soundtrack is a series of movements from Mozart’s string quartets. Whatever else is going on, the music—in my case, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King—carries a lot of intelligence and feeling.

    But Max was right—the imaginary semester wasn’t over. So for Act 2, the students having finished writing their essays, the teacher character, Bob, brings in a box of stapled copies of Oedipus at Colonus. The imagined students surprise me and are much more game than I thought possible. We proceed, not unhappily, and with interesting discussions (I thought) through Oedipus’s fateful disappearance from this land of suffering. Typing up the “transcript” of my students reading Oedipus at Colonus, I occasionally felt as if I, the writer, not the teacher character, was going through the motions for Max’s sake. Each day, pen on paper, I would reread and revise the previous day’s pages and then go on, writing by hand, through another several pages, and then type and email them off to Max. He and I were still talking once or twice a week by phone about his writing and life and about books, and he didn’t complain that the quality of my made-up classes had dropped off; hence, I knew I had to continue through Antigone. By the end of a semester’s classes, I had imagined me and my students through the three plays.

    Then I started going through old emails that I had sent Max about my real-life classes. These had been written, usually, on my phone on the subway home after my day’s teaching. “Don’t explain,” Max had often told us, his writing students, back in the day. “See if you can reveal the characters mostly through what they say.” And there, in those emails, I found my unimaginary students and me, my unimaginary self, acting sort of like the ones I’d made up.

    For example (I’ve changed their names and identifying information, but not, unfortunately, mine):

    Bob: Do we need to go over the characters in Antigone again?

    Tawny: Do we? I don’t.

    Bob: Who’s Creon?

    Class: …

    Tawny: (sighs) The king!

    Bob: Thank you … Anything else about him?

    Ashley: Antigone’s uncle?

    Bob: Yes! … Remember, we talked about identities. Paul?

    Paul: No.

    Bob: We didn’t?

    Jason: We did!

    Paul: Then I don’t remember. What’s identities anyway?

    Bob: We all have different identities depending on where we are … Here, I’m a …

    Class: …

    Bob: Right! A teacher. At home I’m Suzanne’s husband. Just like you’re in a role at home and another role at work and another here.

    Tawny: And so?

    Bob: In your paper, as a character yourself, you’re going to have to talk to one of the characters as they are at the end of the play … So where are they, what are they, when the play ends?

    Marcus: Creon’s alive.

    Bob: Right! And you can’t say that for …

    Ryann: Antigone.

    Bob: Right! Or … Haemon or … Eurydice. But the play is over, and you have to talk to one of them—whether they’re dead, down in Hades, or alive in Thebes—about this same topic as my morning class did—the purpose of life.

    Marcus: But they’re dead.

    Bob: We’re just imagining it. They all do have some hard-won experience, right? Imagine yourself talking to one of them. All right? … How about Antigone? What do you remember about her?

    Tawny: She’s dead.

    Bob: Yeah … What else? … Did we really forget the play over the weekend?

    Kaylia: (nods)

    Bob: Can anybody summarize it?

    Zeina: We have to summarize it?

    Bob: No … But can somebody just say what happens—in a nutshell, a tiny summary—so that we have that magic word “context” before we write? (Bob points at the word “context” at the board, from the lesson at the beginning of class time, when the six on-time students and he read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s essay “Conversation.”) Context, anybody?

    Tawny: Her brothers died.

    Bob: Yeah. And …?

    Tawny: She buried one of them.

    Ryann: But against the law.

    Bob: Right! Remember, guys? Let’s go back to Creon’s big speech near the beginning. That’ll remind us who he is and what he thinks of himself and the world. Ryann?

    Ryann: (reads Creon’s speech about “our Ship of State, which recent storms have threatened to destroy …”)

    Bob: What is Creon asking the citizens, the old men of Thebes, to do?

    Niege: Guard the body.

    Bob: He’s got professional soldiers for that. He asks them for one thing. What is it?

    Ryann: To stick with him.

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Bob: What’s that word, Olya?

    Olya: Loyalty.

    Juan: No matter what, you back them.

    Bob: Got it! Creon doesn’t need them for service. He needs them to support him no matter what he does.

    Tawny: They’re in his corner.

    Bob: Yes. He wants that assurance from them—and they give it. Do you think he knows he’s going to violate divine law? … Yeah, Paul?

    Paul: If we’re gonna write—

    Bob: We’re going to write.

    Paul: I forgot my pen.

    Bob Blaisdell teaches English at Kingsborough Community College.

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  • Higher education postcard: University College Stockton

    Higher education postcard: University College Stockton

    A significant book in political science is Pressman and Wildavsky’s wonderfully titled Implementation: how great expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland; or, why it’s amazing that federal programs work at all, this being a saga of the economic development administration as told by two sympathetic observers who seek to build morals on a foundation of ruined hopes.

    Let’s see how different things were in County Durham.

    The Middlesbrough Herald and Post, 14 October 1992, could hardly have been more excited. Hailing the opening of the University College Stockton, a joint venture between Durham and Teesside universities, it noted that it was “the most important higher education development in Britain for 25 years” (the transmogrification of polytechnics to universities was clearly just a footnote).

    The principal, Professor Bob Parfitt, who had joined from the University of Western Australia, expressed the view that the college would have a bright future in 20 years’ time:

    I would hope that we are an international institution which is a clear part of the local community. We will be meeting the needs of the local market in our degrees and short courses, but I also hope we shall play a leading role in the industrial and urban regeneration of the area.

    Fast forward to 1995 and the first students were graduating. The Stockton and District Herald and Post on 28 June 1995 reports that Catherine Barker was the first to receive a joint degree from Durham and Teesside, gaining a first in European Studies (French). Environmentalist David Bellamy and local environmental activist Angela Cooper received honorary degrees at the same ceremony.

    But it wasn’t to last. John Hayward’s account of the first ten years of the college tells a tale of insufficient capital, changing government policy which slowed expansion of student numbers, and the complexities of operating a college jointly between two universities. It had been only by the skin of its teeth that the new college had got off the ground at all; and in 1994 the two universities agreed that it would continue under the tutelage of just one of them – Durham University.

    Over the next few years the university college fought to establish a sustainable basis for operations, trying different subjects and seeking funding from many sources for buildings and equipment. By the late 1990s it was no longer operating in deficit, and in the early 2000s, in order to bring it more into line with norms elsewhere in Durham University, two colleges were created at the Stockton Campus – Stephenson College and John Snow College.

    The colleges have since moved, physically, to Durham, and the campus is now known as the Queen’s Campus, Stockton. It hosts the university’s International Study Centre, so in this respect Professor Parfitt’s hope that it would be an international institution has been borne out. But not in a way he would ever have imagined.

    John Hayward’s account is worth a read. There’s a story – hidden behind the institutional politics and the minutiae of council and senate meetings – of the practical difficulties in getting something new off the ground. And of the difficulties in multi-institutional working. Which in these days of radical new governance models is a lesson worth remembering.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard – it wasn’t posted, but must date from the early 1990s. It was sold in aid of the Butterwick Hospice, and slight perforation marks at the top suggest that it was one of a concertina strip of cards.

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  • 7 college presidents on 2026’s top challenges and opportunities

    7 college presidents on 2026’s top challenges and opportunities

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    ORLANDO, Fla. — College leaders face no shortage of challenges in the year ahead. They’re up against an uncertain federal policy landscape, challenges to international enrollment and, for some institutions, operating models that may no longer be working. 

    This week, top leaders attending the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute — an annual gathering of hundreds of leaders of private nonprofit institutions — shared those woes and more with Higher Ed Dive. 

    They pointed to the end of Grad PLUS loans, which will be phased out starting this year. Graduate students will also soon face federal student lending caps of $100,000 for most programs and $200,000 for professional degrees. 

    The U.S. Department of Education hasn’t yet put out formal regulations that define which programs will be considered professional. But late last year, during a process called negotiated rulemaking, the agency reached consensus with a group of stakeholders on regulatory language that would exclude some major programs, such as graduate nursing degrees, from the higher lending caps. 

    Despite these challenges, college presidents also pointed to several opportunities such as focusing on workforce development, using artificial intelligence and striking partnerships with other institutions. 

    On the last front, a handful of private nonprofit colleges formalized plans to combine in the past couple of years. 

    That includes St. Ambrose University, in Iowa, acquiring nearby Mount Mercy University, a fellow Catholic institution. Likewise, Gannon University is acquiring Ursuline College — two Catholic colleges located in Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively. 

    Below, we’re rounding up responses from seven college presidents on what they see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in the year ahead. 

    Responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. 

    President: Bryon Grigsby

    Institution: Moravian University, in Pennsylvania

    HIGHER ED DIVE: What do you see as the biggest opportunity in the year ahead? 

    BRYON GRIGSBY: Workforce development is the biggest opportunity. We’re starting an aviation program, and it’s because aviation programs are in crisis right now. Pilots are needed. People work in the airlines, in the airports, air traffic controllers — we saw all the problems that were happening with that. This is just going to get worse over the next 10 years. So I think all of us are involved in workforce development — real, substantive workforce development for our communities.

    What do you see as the biggest challenge? 

    GRIGSBY: Funding the workforce development. It costs an incredible amount of money to create pilots. And the federal government just restricted how much loans they can take out, which prevents people who want great jobs but don’t have rich families to be able to afford that. 

    We’re seeing that in the healthcare industry. You know, not counting nursing and [doctor of physical therapy degrees] and [physician associates programs] as professional programs damages the ability of those students to be able to get those jobs and to be contributing members to society. 

    I wish the federal government would see that we’re trying to solve the workforce. We need the funding for the students so they can solve that as well.

    President: Valerie Kinloch

    Institution: Johnson C. Smith University, in North Carolina

    What do you see as the biggest opportunity in the year ahead?

    VALERIE KINLOCH: The biggest opportunity is deepening partnerships with people across different types of institutions, thinking beyond where we are to think more nationally and globally about building those types of partnerships.

    What do you see as the biggest challenge? 

    KINLOCH: I would say the biggest challenge is a lack of resources. To sustain the types of educational institutions that we know we should requires more resources, and not just finances, but also partnerships, talent, and I think those things are going to be really important.

    President: Donald Taylor

    Institution: University of Detroit Mercy

    What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead? 

    DONALD TAYLOR: We don’t really know ultimately what the federal financial aid budget is going to look like for next year. And now there’s talk about, maybe there’s going to be another government shutdown. 

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  • College Dining Halls Embrace Plant-Forward Menus

    College Dining Halls Embrace Plant-Forward Menus

    Not long ago, chalky tofu and limp lettuce constituted some of the only vegetarian meal options available at campus dining halls. But that’s changed in recent years as more colleges and universities have set broader sustainability goals, which often include pledges to offer more plant-based foods.

    Nowadays, students have access to more adventurous plant-based dishes, such as cauliflower ceviche, japchae and sesame tempeh, to name just a few.

    Over the past decade, dozens of colleges and universities have vowed to provide more plant-based meals, including Smith College, the University of North Texas and the University of California, Los Angeles.

    In November, the University of California, Riverside—where meatless meals already make up about 45 percent of its dining options—became one of the latest universities to commit to expanding its meatless offerings, pledging to make 50 percent of meals plant-based by 2027.

    While such pledges are rooted in sustainability goals, they’ve also led to the creation of more diverse and healthier menu options—both things students have called for. And regardless of students’ motivation for consuming more plant-based food, prioritizing such options at campus dining halls—which feed millions per year—has the power to affect environmental change at scale.

    “Without question, institutional procurement is a massive lever for climate solutions at school and an often-overlooked tool for public health,” said Sophie Egan, co-director of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative housed at Stanford University. Founded in 2012, the collaborative is a network of 85 colleges and universities that are using campus dining halls as living laboratories to research promotion of plant-forward options, food-waste reduction and increasing food literacy. “The decision-makers at universities who hold the purse strings and design menus are the potential heroes in this story. They can make small tweaks to menu sourcing and operations that can have a huge impact at scale.”

    For colleges, the shift satisfies multiple goals.

    “There are so many things that play into sustainability that are low-hanging fruit, including trying to offer menu items that don’t require a lot of water,” said Lanette Dickerson, director of culinary operations at UC Riverside. At the same time, she’s also focused on creating menus that reflect students’ varied and changing tastes. “UC Riverside is a really diverse campus—more than 40 percent of students are Latino and 34 percent are Asian—which makes it easier for us to offer these items because they’re already deeply rooted in these cultural diets.”

    She added that offering vegetarian foods—which tend to be lower in fat, cholesterol and other ingredients associated with an increased risk of chronic disease—may also help some students adopt healthier overall eating habits.

    Vegan Labels a ‘Turn-Off’

    Reaching the university’s new plant-forward menu goals will require more training for Dickerson’s staff. “Our team needs to know how to prepare these items to make sure they’re palatable,” she said. What won’t work is advertising plant-based menu options as meatless, vegan or vegetarian. “We got such bad feedback on our ‘meatless Mondays,’” she said, noting that students assigned more value to meat-based proteins. “We did still try to do it, but without such heavy marketing behind it.”

    Experts say that kind of reaction to food labeled vegetarian, vegan or meatless is exceedingly common, despite consumers’ increased appetite for plant-based foods and the growing availability of plant-based ingredients.

    “The term ‘vegan’ has a bit of a bad connotation. ‘Plant-based’ seems a lot sexier,” said Scott Zahren, director of culinary development at Aramark, which provides dining and food services to more than 275 U.S. colleges and universities. “Plant-based products these days are much better than they were 10 or 20 years ago. We have such great alternative dairy products now that we can offer a lot more dishes.”

    Vegetarian dining at Smith College

    Jessica Scranton/Smith College

    But Zahren and his team recognized that “vegan” can be a “turn-off,” and Aramark recently updated its marketing content to describe its menu items as “plant-based” instead. “The marketing reads a lot better for the masses.”

    Presenting plant-based foods as a default menu item rather than an alternative also increases the likelihood that students will eat them. According to a 2024 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, on days that dining halls set up food stations with a vegan default—say, stir fry with tofu—those stations saw a 58 percent increase in plant-based dining, and meat consumption declined anywhere from 21 percent to 57 percent. In short, students don’t run away from plant-based dishes when they’re presented as the norm.

    ‘It’s About Good Food’

    In addition to sustainability initiatives, changing food preferences are also driving dining halls to offer more meatless options.

    In 2020, the global market for plant-based foods was valued at $29.4 billion; by 2030, it is expected to grow more than fivefold to $162 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence. While data also shows that about 22 percent of Gen Z are actively limiting their meat consumption, what students really want out of campus dining is more options. According to a 2023 Inside Higher Ed Student Voice survey, respondents said that if dining halls want to improve their offerings, they should prioritize variety and quality of flavors, reduce ultra-processed foods and offer a variety of cuisines.

    “Campus dining programs are responding to customer preferences,” said Robert Nelson, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Food Services. “The focus is on making great-tasting dishes that happen to be plant-forward. What’s important for dining halls as they expand their plant-forward, vegan and vegetarian offerings is to market them with descriptive, flavorful language. It’s not meatless curry, it’s coconut curry; it’s amazing mushroom pasta; it’s crispy cauliflower tacos.”

    That’s the approach Smith College has taken in its quest to offer more plant-based meals.

    A light-skinned man in a black chef's coat, backward baseball cap and black gloves stands in front of a large flattop cooking surface stirring a pile of greens.

    Chef Adam Dubois sauteing local greens at Smith College.

    Jessica Scranton/Smith College

    “We’re showing students that it’s not about the words ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’—it’s about good food. It doesn’t have to have meat to be good,” said German Alvarado, director of culinary services at Smith. “With all of the technology that’s available, students are seeing all the variety of food out there and they want to see it in front of them. What’s trending is variety and healthy choices.”

    In 2015, the college pledged to reduce meat consumption by 5 percent each year, aiming to make 55 percent of its entrées plant-based by 2025. As of December, it was around 51.5 percent, according to Alvarado.

    “We’re not that far off,” he said, adding that the college just needs to add a handful of additional menu items to reach its goal. “We don’t want to do this for the sake of doing it. We want to make sure students are enjoying it and we’re creating good recipes.”

    Choice Is Key

    But Smith, UC Riverside and many other colleges have no plans to stop serving meat entirely. A dustup in the opinion pages of the Williams College student newspaper already showed limited appetite for that: In November, a student wrote an op-ed suggesting the college go vegan to mitigate animal cruelty, prompting blowback.

    “When accepting the invitation to attend the College, students did not sign up for a vegan menu,” Ella Goodman, a freshman at Williams, wrote in response. “Suddenly restricting our meal offerings would be unfair to students for whom a vegan menu could have been a dealbreaker in choosing between colleges.”

    Preserving personal choice is key for institutions undertaking plant-based dining initiatives, said Egan, the co-director of Menus of Change.

    “The word ‘meatless’ really backfires. People tend to not like being told they can’t have something,” she said. “The behavioral science is very clear: Having something taken away or restricting choice is a very good way to make people not excited about what’s left. Plant-forward is really about celebrating what’s in a dish.”

    And those initiatives at campus dining halls can also shape student relationships with food, which has implications that stretch far beyond the campus.

    “A person’s college years are a particular formative time for developing food identity, food preferences and making decisions about food,” Egan said. “Showing students that healthy, sustainable, plant-forward ways of eating can be delicious, comforting, satisfying and help them perform well in sports, academics and their different pursuits—those preferences stay with them long after their college years.”

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