The question we are asking now is, where is the floor for the community college meltdown? The answer, from what we gather, is not clear. Folks should not assume the bottom has already been felt, even if there are signs of a rebound.
The downward path for community colleges is likely the result of several factors related to economics (including the economics of individual states and counties), demographics, and consumer choices. And we do not see these variables, in general, improving in the near future. Especially in states with declining youth and young adult populations.
If state-level austerity lies ahead for many states, the floor could be lowered, even though these community colleges provide job training at a fraction of the cost of state universities. Working class folks, in particular, would have to change the way they think about themselves and their perceptions of community colleges. And community colleges would need to provide stronger returns on investment for those who attend.
Common Appis adding its first ever community college members, the organization announced in a press release Thursday.
The seven new partner institutions are all members of the Illinois Community College system. Four of them—Sauk Valley Community, Rend Lake, Carl Sandburg and Black Hawk Colleges—are joining the platform immediately; another three institutions, Lincoln Land Community, Oakton and Triton Colleges, will join next admissions cycle.
Common App has a few members that technically include community colleges, like Miami-Dade College in Florida, but those institutions also offer baccalaureate degrees. The new members offer associate degree programs only.
In the press release, Common App CEO Jenny Rickard said she hoped the move would help promote college access and ease struggling community colleges’ recruitment efforts.
“To close the gap in low- and middle-income students applying, we need to expand the types of institutions students can connect with,” she wrote.
FDr. Andy Richranklin & Marshall College has appointed Dr. Andrew “Andy” Rich, current dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at City College of New York (CCNY), as its 17th president following a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees. Rich will take office in July, succeeding outgoing president Dr. Barbara K. Altmann, who has led the institution since 2018.
During his six-year tenure at the Colin Powell School, Rich demonstrated exceptional ability in institutional growth and fundraising, according to officials at the private school located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He spearheaded a 40 percent enrollment increase, bringing the student body to 4,000, while simultaneously launching innovative student success initiatives. Under his leadership, the school established eight new fellowship programs and created an Office of Student Success offering comprehensive mentoring, professional development, and career services.
One of Rich’s notable achievements at CCNY was the formation of a Public Service Career Hub, which more than doubled student placement in public service internships and jobs. The initiative’s success earned the 2023 Exemplary Model Award from the American Association of University Administrators. Rich also led a transformative fundraising campaign that generated over $85 million in new investments for scholarships, student services, faculty positions, and academic initiatives.
“I am excited to become an F&M Diplomat,” said Rich. “For more than 235 years, Franklin & Marshall has been a beacon for excellence in liberal arts education. We prepare students for fulfilling lives, inspiring them to achievements that enrich every sector of society.”
Prior to his role at CCNY, Rich served as CEO and executive secretary of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation from 2011 to 2019, where he oversaw the prestigious federal program supporting future public service leaders. His connection to F&M includes oversight of two recent Truman Scholars from the college: Makaila Ranges, a 2022 graduate and Akbar Hossain, who graduated in 2013. Rich also served as president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a national think tank and leadership development organization, from 2009 to 2011.
Eric Noll, chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, praised Rich’s appointment:
“He will build on Barbara Altmann’s successful presidency with his sharp strategic sensibilities and deep appreciation for our excellent liberal arts college and its importance in our society’s future,” he said.
Rich’s academic credentials include a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Richmond, where he was awarded a Truman Scholarship, and a doctorate in political science from Yale University. He has taught at both CCNY and Wake Forest University and is known for his scholarship on think tanks and foundations in American politics, having authored Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise.
Even before President Donald Trump unleashed a flurry of executive orders involving higher education, college and university presidents expressed serious concerns about his possible impact on the sector and on their own institutions. That’s according to findings released today from Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents with Hanover Research.
More than half of presidents surveyed in December and early January—51 percent—at that point believed Trump’s second administration would have a somewhat or significant negative impact on the regulatory environment for higher education. Some 38 percent of respondents said they believed Trump would have a somewhat or significant positive impact on the regulatory environment, while the remainder expected his administration to have no impact. Male presidents were more likely than their female counterparts to express confidence in the Trump administration, with 42 percent of men responding that they expected an at least somewhat positive regulatory environment for the sector compared to 30 percent of women.
Drilling down into specific concerns, the vast majority of presidents—80 percent—indicated Trump would have a negative impact on DEI across higher education. On an institutional level, 60 percent said he would negatively impact DEI efforts at their own colleges and universities.
Presidents also expressed concerns about what Trump 2.0 would mean for public perceptions of higher education’s value, the climate for campus speech and the financial outlook for colleges and universities.
The latest edition of the annual survey of presidents, now in its 15th year, includes responses from 298 leaders from a mix of two- and four-year institutions, public and private nonprofit. It was administered after Trump was elected but before he took office. The findings below are focused exclusively on his new administration and the broader political environment. The full survey, covering a broad range of issues relevant to college leaders, is forthcoming.
Unpacking the Findings
Given the timing of the survey and the rapid-fire executive orders and other actions that have followed, which included a temporary freeze on federal funding that created uncertainty and alarm across the sector, some experts believe presidents would respond even more negatively now.
“I don’t think there’s any question that had this survey been done after Jan. 20, the numbers would be more negative than they were, with what we have seen since: the executive orders flowing out of the White House and funding freezes and just the chaos and uncertainty,” Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, told Inside Higher Ed.
“The survey indicates that presidents had some sense of what was coming,” Harris said. But he noted their “failure of imagination” to realize how quickly Trump would act.
Already higher education is feeling the pressure on DEI, an area presidents anticipated would come under fire by the new administration.
One of Trump’s first executive orders, issued on Jan. 21, called on federal agencies “to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” It also tasked Trump’s attorney general and the education secretary with crafting guidance for universities on how to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned the consideration of race in admissions policies.
Universities have reacted in myriad ways to Trump’s attack on DEI. Last month the Rutgers University Center for Minority Serving Institutions canceled a virtual conference on apprenticeships at historically Black colleges and universities, and Michigan State University called off a lunch to celebrate Lunar New Year (but allowed other related events to go on).
According to the survey, 71 percent of respondents believe that Trump will have a negative impact on the climate for free inquiry and civil dialogue across higher education. But only 52 percent said their own institution would suffer those negative effects.
The majority of respondents—71 percent—also said Trump would have a negative financial impact on the sector. But at the institutional level, only 45 percent believe the same is true at their institution. And nearly a quarter of respondents believe he’ll positively affect their finances.
Harris views with skepticism the belief among many presidents that their institutions will fare better than the rest of the sector. He argues that presidents can be “blinded” by proximity to their institution, which makes them overconfident in its strength.
“I tend to believe the response around the industry more than the individual institution,” he said.
But Anne Harris, president of Grinnell College—and no relation to Michael—believes that presidents have a firm grasp on their community “and all of its complexity,” which helps them better understand how a situation may play out on campus. She said that the “direct impact of a federal policy is always going to be negotiated, diffused and maybe absorbed by the multiplicity of constituencies on a campus.”
While the new Republican president was the cause of concern for many respondents, presidents also expressed dissatisfaction with his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, last year.
In Inside Higher Ed’s 2024 survey of College and University Presidents, only 33 percent of respondents indicated satisfaction with the Biden administration’s record on higher education. Last year’s survey found that 41 percent of respondents were completely or somewhat dissatisfied with Biden, who left behind a mixed legacy on higher education. He was accused of leaving some promises unfulfilled while overreaching in other areas, such as student loan forgiveness.
Killing the Education Department
One of Trump’s campaign promises was to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, a process that he has already taken steps toward but that will likely face an uphill battle given that he would need congressional approval to shut it down, which Democrats have made clear they are unwilling to provide. Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, the move faces highly unlikely odds.
The majority of presidents surveyed disapprove of shutting down the department: 72 percent opposed the idea and 21 percent indicated uncertainty, while 8 percent voiced support for the effort. Presidents of private, nonprofit institutions were most likely to support the move.
Harris, the Grinnell College president, questions what role last year’s botched launch of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid played in draining support from the Department of Education, given the financial pressures felt by countless students, families and institutions.
“There are going to be very few presidents who are going to cheer what happened with FAFSA,” she said. “So maybe this is some FAFSA lack of confidence saying the Department of Education did not serve higher ed well with the FAFSA debacle last year. So why not try something else?”
Brad Mortensen, president of Weber State University, offered a similar perspective.
“It wouldn’t have surprised me if [that number] was higher, just given how rough of a time the Department of Education had in rolling out the new FAFSA,” Mortensen told Inside Higher Ed. “That had real impacts on all types of institutions across the country.”
Both presidents indicated that the programs housed in ED are more important than the department itself. They are more concerned about the continued flow of federal financial aid, for example, than where it comes from—whether that’s ED or the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Ongoing Optimism
Concerns about Trump notwithstanding, other findings in the forthcoming full survey were positive—including the financial outlook at the institutional level, despite clear signs of strain across the sector. (Financial findings will be covered in depth as part of the full survey release.)
Some presidents believe that optimism comes with the job.
“College and university presidents are a funny lot. As I was applying for this job, I had a past president tell me, ‘Brad, you have to be smart enough to get the job and dumb enough to take it.’ I think by nature, we tend to be naïve optimists because it’s a job with a lot of challenges,” Mortensen said.
The second Trump administration has begun with a cacophony of executive orders, memos from the Office of Management and Budget, and the disconcerting disappearance—and some reappearance—of research grants and programs. This has led to fear of the loss of important federal data, threats to the livelihoods of researchers and students, and the end of critical programs that have enabled greater participation in science. Many of these actions are being litigated in the courts, and while some judges have helped stop the worst actions, the whiplash leads to more drama and uncertainty. The research community on college campuses has been left in a state of anxiety and confusion.
The public response from college presidents has been mostly muted so far. While this is causing even more distress in some quarters, there are reasons for it. The administration has suggested that on top of the current actions, there are prospects for increasing the tax on large university endowments, cutting indirect cost recovery on federal grants, investigating students and institutions for antisemitism, and more. It’s no surprise that university presidents, general counsels, communications professionals and federal relations officials want to play it safe. Many of these leaders probably also feel constrained by their commitments to institutional neutrality and don’t want to be seen as taking a political position against the administration’s actions.
And so higher education is in yet another crisis. This one affects the whole country, just like the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Former Tulane University president Scott Cowen faced a unique local crisis after Hurricane Katrina and also navigated the pandemic as interim president at Case Western Reserve University. He has been justifiably praised as an outstanding crisis manager, bringing Tulane through an event that easily could have permanently devastated the institution. He said on this site that—both after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and during COVID-19 in Cleveland—frequent, emotionally transparent communication was crucial to lower anxiety and provide updated information.
“Crises are bound to happen,” he said, “impacting a few people or everyone. How we lead through them depends in large part on the nature of the crisis. And when one strikes, a leader should first understand how that particular crisis makes themfeel” (emphasis mine).
We don’t need to wonder about how people feel this time. The current crisis is definitely making people on campuses anxious and afraid. A few presidents have heeded Cowen’s advice and made public statements, including Christina Paxson at Brown University, Maurie McInnis at Yale University and Kevin Guskiewicz at Michigan State University. These statements have all acknowledged the pain and anxiety on the campuses. All three of these presidents are quite experienced: Paxson has been in office at Brown for 12 years, and McInnis and Guskiewicz are both in their second executive positions.
Paxson perhaps went the farthest in taking a stand. “We always follow the law,” she said. “But we are also prepared to exercise our legal right to advocate against laws, regulations or other actions that compromise Brown’s mission.” That would be a difficult statement to make at a public university in a red state—and is still quite a courageous one at a private one in Rhode Island.
Other presidents have made similar statements, and as the situation grinds on, more will continue to do so, particularly as it becomes apparent that this is not something to be waited out but rather to be managed and adapted to. Nearly every college president cares first and foremost about their campus; when they don’t show it, it’s usually because they think doing so would cause more damage in the long run. My heart goes out to all of the officials who for two weeks—and for many weeks to come—have had long early-morning and late-night meetings trying to figure out what they can and cannot do or say. Being in the foxhole late at night with your team and college town takeout can be energizing at first, but as it continues, it gets very difficult, especially as the days start to blur and it’s hard to remember whether you’ve already decided something or not.
I went through two crises myself as chancellor of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I followed Cowen’s advice on the first one, the 2008 financial crisis; I had seen him present on what he did at Tulane at my first presidents’ meeting. I sent out frequent emails to the campus with the help of a very sharp communications colleague who helped me craft my voice for such times. I went to employee meetings and answered all the questions I could. I hugged people when appropriate and let them share their emotions. As an autistic person, I don’t always know when emotions are in the air, but this was a dire enough situation that I didn’t need to do a lot of interpreting. We got through it, and I felt even more connected to the campus when we did.
In the second crisis, which was a local scandal involving UNC athletics, I started off on the right foot by famously apologizing to “everyone who loves this university” at the first press conference. It seemed a logical continuation of what had gotten me through my first crisis, and it was consistent with what I had learned from Cowen. But the reaction was very different. While much of the campus appreciated it, the sports fans ridiculed me for being apologetic and not having a “stiffer spine” when it came to fighting for athletics. To my literal brain, this meant they wanted me to say it was acceptable that we cheated. I should have ignored that, because it caused me to lose my voice for a year or more, during which I just looked tongue-tied and indecisive while the scandal grew. As with the current situation, I was worried that saying anything would lead to more investigations and penalties for the Tar Heels. Finally, a wise adviser told me that I needed to decide who my people were. The people on the campus—the students, staff and faculty—those were my people. The sports fans were not; I can’t make a layup to save my life. “Stick to your people,” he said. I eventually got my voice back and happily went off to a Division III university.
As the current crop of presidents goes through this same process, they’ll begin sticking with their people, too. Like me, many of them will end up wishing they did it sooner, but that’s to be expected given the stress and tension. In the long run, we need leaders who can lead the academic community to the other side of this. And that doesn’t always mean overt “resistance” as we often hear calls for, although as Paxson said in her letter, it certainly does mean standing up for the academic freedom of the individuals on the campus. It also means understanding the situation, caring for the people under their charge who are affected, helping them grieve for what is being lost and leading a conversation about how higher education is going to adapt to the new realities without sacrificing our values. I believe those leaders will emerge.
As McInnis said at Yale, “Our mission is to create, share and preserve knowledge; to educate and inspire students; and to apply our discoveries to address the world’s greatest challenges. We are committed to navigating these times with a steadfast focus on advancing that mission and on supporting members of our community.” Most of the college leaders who read this and don’t think they can say something like it are wishing they could. In the coming weeks, more will.
In the meantime, the academic community needs to stick together and try not to get overwhelmed by responding to everything that comes along while also acknowledging the fear, loss and pain many are experiencing. Teaching, patient care, research, justice and opportunity have defined American higher education for a century. And, somehow, they will continue.
Holden Thorp is the editor in chief of the Science family of journals. He previously served as the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the provost of Washington University in St. Louis.
Dean Hoke and Kent Barnds Relaunch Acclaimed Series to Explore the Future of Small Colleges
Bloomington, Indiana – February 3, 2025 – Small College America, the podcast dedicated to exploring the strengths, challenges, and future of small colleges, is officially relaunching with a new season. The series is co-hosted by Dean Hoke, Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group and former President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators, and Kent Barnds, Executive Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
Both Hoke and Barnds are passionate advocates for small colleges, having graduated from Urbana University (OH) and Gettysburg College (PA), respectively. Their personal experiences and professional expertise have shaped their commitment to highlighting the vital role these institutions play in American higher education.
“The landscape for small colleges is shifting rapidly, and we believe now is the time to amplify the conversation about their future,” said Kent Barnds. ” Dean and I are both passionate advocates for these institutions because we’ve experienced firsthand the impact of a small college education.” Dean Hoke stated, “The first season of Small College America confirmed that there is a deep need for dialogue about the opportunities and challenges facing these schools. With this new season, we aim to engage with higher education leaders to explore innovative strategies that will help small colleges not just survive but thrive in an evolving higher education environment.”
The original four-part series first aired on January 10, 2023, and was hosted by Dean Hoke and Tom Davisson, who now serves as Charter Commissioner for the National Association for Academic Excellence (NAAE). The inaugural season featured insightful conversations with small college presidents, including:
Dr. Barry Ryan, Former President of Woodbury University (Burbank, California)
Stefanie Niles, President of Cottey College (Nevada, Missouri)
Ryan Smith, President of the University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College (Rio Grande, Ohio)
Janelle Vanasse, President of Alaska Pacific University (Anchorage, Alaska)
The new season of Small College America will continue its mission of bringing critical discussions to the forefront by interviewing higher education leaders, policy experts, and innovators. The podcast will delve into the evolving role of small colleges, their economic impact, innovative strategies for sustainability, and how they can continue to provide a highly personalized educational experience.
Season Two will begin weekly on March 11th at 11AM Eastern. More details, including upcoming, will be announced soon.
For updates, visit [Podcast Website] or follow Small College America on [Social Media Links].
About the Hosts
Kent Barnds is the Executive Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at Augustana College, where he has been a senior administrator since 2005. A recognized thought leader in enrollment management and institutional strategy, Barnds is deeply invested in the success of small colleges and the students they serve.
Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy, and formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced today it agrees with a federal court ruling that appropriately found the Biden-era Title IX rules to unconstitutionally restrict student First Amendment rights.
Those rules, effective in August 2024, infringed on constitutionally protected speech related to sex and gender. They also rolled back crucial due process rights for those accused of sexual misconduct on campus, increasing the likelihood that colleges would arrive at unreliable conclusions during those proceedings. OCR announced it will instead enforce the 2020 rules adopted during the first Trump administration which carefully considered the rights of complainants and respondents alike, while providing robust free speech and due process protections.
The following can be attributed to Tyler Coward, FIRE lead counsel for government affairs:
The return to the 2020 rules ensures that all students — whether they are the accused or the accuser — will receive fair treatment and important procedural safeguards. That includes the right of both parties to have lawyers present during hearings, the right for both attorneys to cross-examine the other party and witnesses, and the right to receive all of the evidence in the institution’s possession. Colleges are also required to adopt a speech-protective definition of sexual harassment that enables schools to punish genuine harassment instead of merely unpopular speech.
Restoring the Trump administration’s rules means that students can once again feel secure that their rights to due process and free speech will be respected while ensuring administrators have the tools they need to punish those who engage in sexual misconduct and harassment.
During the 2016-2017 school year, the Brothers to Sisters Club at Compton College reserved a portion of their meetings for “Real Talk.” This allowed students to share their current feelings and experiences. During one of these meetings, two students spoke up and shared that they were homeless. This moment inspired Joshua Jackson and Dayshawn Louden, then student leaders at Compton College, to begin campaigning and advocating for student housing and increased basic needs on campus.
“Immediately, Dayshawn and I went into planning,” says Jackson,
Eight years later, Compton College is breaking ground on a 250+ bed housing facility, becoming the first community college in Los Angeles County to offer campus housing to its students.
CCCD Student Housing RenderingCompton College President and CEO Dr. Keith Curry says Jackson and Louden were worried about their peers’ lack of basic needs and immediately brought their concerns to him.
“It was a great conversation when they first brought it forward, and their question was, ‘How do we do it,” says Curry in an interview with Diverse. “I give them the credit for it because they got me to think about it differently and what we could do. I’m a former student activist, so seeing student activists seeing what we need was good.”
Jackson and Louden had just begun their roles as Compton College’s Associated Student Body President and Vice President when they approached Curry.
“We were motivated, and I think we felt that space gave us the courage to believe that we could create change,” says Jackson. “Our roles also gave us the conviction that we should.”
Rallying The Community
After their conversation with Curry, the student leaders called on their community at Compton College for support. Under Curry’s leadership, their efforts grew into a larger task force committed to addressing housing, food, and basic needs for the student body. Their next step was to identify Compton College students who identified as homeless.
“We took it upon ourselves,” says Louden. “I recall me and Joshua going into classrooms to say, ‘hey, utilize your voice,’ because the school can’t address a problem if there’s no need for it.”
Louden says that their roles as campus leaders positioned them to advocate for their fellow students and the longevity of the institution.
“Housing was like a five-to-six-year plan, but to address the needs that we could see that Compton College had, we pushed for a pantry, opening the showers that were going unused by the football team, and supplying bathroom kits and supplies,” he says.
Within weeks, Compton College began implementing additional programs designed to serve students’ needs.
Dr. Keith Curry“It’s not just about a lack of physical space to live. It’s about the absence of opportunity, the absence of safety, the absence of stability,” says Louden. “This was not just about providing resources. This was about fostering community and belonging.”
Curry, who previously served as the Dean of Student Services at Compton College and has been instrumental in the college’s growth, success, and rebuilding, says that his role in this process was to also be courageous.
“I announced at one of our professional development days the need to build student housing, and I think people were like, ‘What is he talking about,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘we’ll be the first ones to build housing,’ and sometimes you have to dream. Sometimes you have to say stuff and get people united because you said it.”
Curry also became one of the founding chairpersons of the Chief Executive Officers of the California Community Colleges’ Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce in spring 2018. This group provides system-wide recommendations to address housing and food insecurities for California Community College students.
“I was advocating statewide for basic needs, so then I was able to fold in that advocacy to include food and also housing,” says Curry.
Once Compton College gathered all of the data and support they needed, college leaders submitted a proposal. Curry, however, was intentional about the request. “I think the most important piece to this was we didn’t ask for the planning grant,” remembers Curry. “We went directly for the project funding grant. We went for the entire dollar amount, and that was the strategic plan.”
Over the course of about five years, what began as a conversation in a student club meeting eventually became a reality.
Celebrating In Community
In June 2022, California lawmakers moved to include a student housing grant totaling $80,389,000 in the 2022-2023 State Budget for the Compton Community College District to build their proposed 250+ bed student housing facility.
“We proved our critics wrong,” says Curry, who has emerged as a national thought-leader on community colleges. “When we’re talking about student housing and having conversations, we were able to take a dream that some people thought was not possible and made it possible for the community that we serve.”
The Compton College Housing Project Groundbreaking Ceremony took place last month, a win that those involved hope to share with the entire Compton community and Compton Community College District (CCCD).
“We’re serving Black and Brown individuals within our community, and for me, it gives these students hope,” says Curry. “They can see a college campus that looks like a four-year college with new facilities but also with student housing. That means that they will not be looked at as less than.”
Phase one of the 86,000-square-foot building will include three floors of affordable student living quarters with 100 percent occupancy designated for students in need. The facility will provide three types of living configurations: 50 double-room units with access to shared bathrooms and common spaces, 50 double-suite units with bathrooms and access to common spaces, and 50 studio units for single occupants. The student housing will also include study areas, lounges and shared kitchens.
“We’re showing other colleges that this can be done,” says Curry. “Compton is the model for that. When you think about our history, we’re the first community college in the state of California whose accreditation was revoked, and to go from that in 2006 to be where we’re at now and to be on the cutting edge, that tells you that transformation can happen, but transformation can happen in communities where we look like the students.”
Curry marks this moment as one of hope, not just for Compton but for communities of color all over the country.
“We’re always criticizing what we don’t do in our communities. Now we see what we can do, and that gives people hope that change is coming,” he says. “But also, this gives the students the opportunity to say look at my backyard, and my community college matters.”
Big things have been on the horizon for Compton College for some time now. Just last year, rapper Kendrick Lamar surprised 2024 Compton College graduating students as their graduation speaker.
“If you look at our video from graduation, you can see the words from Kendrick Lamar where he talks about the value of our degree and how important it is and what it means to be a Compton College graduate,” says Curry. “It gives our students hope. When you’re told you’re not good enough, and now you see a college in your community that is doing stuff that makes you proud, that means you know you’re a part of something that’s bigger than us.”
Phase one is just the beginning of Compton College 2035, a comprehensive master plan outlining the college’s plans to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities, including a physical education complex and a visual and performing arts complex, over the next decade and beyond.
“The city is already going up, as you can imagine why, but this is another notch to add under the belt of why Compton is just a historic and beautiful place,” says Jackson.
Serving As A Model For Other Community Colleges In California And Beyond
In addition to Compton College being the first community college in LA County to have student housing, the housing project is also the first prefabricated modular student housing project that is design-approved by the California Division of the State Architect.
A prefabricated modular means that most of the building will be built thousands of miles away.
“It’s a unique project,” says David Lelie, senior project manager with Gafcon, the construction management company managing the project. “They’re going to build them in a factory in Idaho, and then they’re going to ship them by truck to our site and use a crane to place them.”
This model is designed to decrease construction time and disruptions.
“What we’re saving is sustainability and time nuisance for the students,” says Lelie. “So, instead of bugging students for two years, you’re dropping all those modules into place in two weeks.”
Once the building is placed on campus, the exterior and final touches will be completed, which is projected to be done by May 2027. This will save about six months of traditional construction time.
“It’s a seed, and eventually other campuses will use this idea and this method of prefab modular in order to build their student housing,” says Lelie. “Yes, we’re housing 250 students, but now other colleges, especially in California, can take this model and replicate it, and every time you replicate it, it’s like a car, they get less and less expensive.”
HPI, which is the architecture company responsible for some of the first non-modular student housing on community college campuses, took on this project to continue building cutting-edge experiences and homes for community college students.
They wanted the design to provide not only a place to sleep but also academic support and integration into the broader campus.
“As we learned about how to deliver modular student housing, it was really taking the program that [Compton College] had already established in terms of number of beds and the types of beds and then looking at how we could do that in a way that created community,” says Larry Frapell, principal and president of HPI architecture.
“We wanted the amenities to be easy to get to, a combination of both indoor and outdoor spaces, and a sense of security.”
HPI has a long history of serving higher education and, specifically, larger community colleges.
“We have a good understanding of not only the need for housing but how housing relates to community college students and how to integrate that in a community college campus,” says Frapell. “It’s part of a greater campus and part of a greater community, so we hope that this becomes a home for students and that this is a desirable place to live.”
Jackson and Louden are proud of the legacy they left to be continued for generations to come. Jackson says that he recently spoke with the two students who inspired the project’s advocacy.
“They’re housed, and they’re happy,” he says. “So, I’m grateful to be a part of history in this regard. I’m grateful for what I call following a tradition of activism that’s taking place at Compton College and just through our history as Black folks generally. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what we were doing. We just wanted to help.”
Louden believes now, more than ever, that Compton’s faith in humanity is one of its superpowers.
“Compton made that choice as an institution to restore faith in humanity,” says Louden, “and in the words of Compton College’s late great Dr. Joseph Lewis, ‘Compton makes the world go around.’”
Undergraduates’ level of trust in their institution has been positively linked to individual student outcomes, as well as the broader institutional culture and reputation. So trust matters. And a new analysis of data from Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey with Generation Lab shows which groups of campus employees students trust the most—and least—to promote an enriching experience.
Asked to rate their level of trust in the people in various roles across campus to ensure that they and other students have a positive college experience, nearly all students have some (43 percent) or a lot (44 percent) of trust in professors. This is consistent across institution size, classification (both two-year and four-year) and sector, though students at private nonprofit institutions are somewhat more likely than their peers at public institutions to say they have the highest level of trust in their professors (51 percent versus 42 percent, respectively).
Methodology
Nearly three in 10 respondents (28 percent) to Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey, fielded in May 2024 in partnership with Generation Lab, attend two-year institutions, and closer to four in 10 (37 percent) are post-traditional students, meaning they attend two-year institutions and/or are 25 or older. The 5,025-student sample is nationally representative. The survey’s margin of error is 1.4 percent.
Other highlights from the full survey and from follow-up student polls on key issues can be found here, while the full main survey data set, with interactive visualizations, is available here. In addition to questions about academic life, the main annual survey asked questions on health and wellness, the college experience, and preparation for life after college.
Trust in professors is also relatively consistent across a swath of student characteristics, including gender, household income level and even political affiliation, with 47 percent and 44 percent of Democratic- and Republican-identifying students, respectively, having a lot of trust in them. By race, however, Black students (32 percent) are less likely to say they have a lot of trust in professors than are white (47 percent), Asian American and Pacific Islander (42 percent), and Hispanic students (41 percent).
Academic advisers come next in the list of which groups students trust a lot (36 percent), followed by campus safety and security officers (32 percent). The trust in security is perhaps surprising, giving heightened concerns about overpolicing in the U.S., but some general public opinion polling—including this 2024 study by Gallup—indicates that confidence in policing is up year over year. That’s as confidence in other institutions (including higher education) remains at a low. In a 2022 Student Voice survey, undergraduates were about equally likely to have a lot of trust in campus safety officers.
Toward the bottom of the list of campus groups students trust a lot is financial aid staff (23 percent). This finding may be influenced by the tenor of national conversations about college costs and value, as well as last year’s chaotic Free Application for Federal Student Aid overhaul. Revised national data suggests that the FAFSA mess did not have the negative impact on enrollment that was feared. But another Inside Higher Ed/Generation Lab flash survey in 2024 found that a third of students disapproved of the way their institution communicated with them about the changes, with lower-income students especially likely to say this communication had been poor.
Victoria Nguyen, a teaching fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and a program coordinator in the Office for Community Conduct at the university, recalls worrying about the financial aid process during her undergraduate years. “The issue is transparency and understanding … Did my scholarship go through? Are they going to reimburse me [for tuition paid]? … It’s not a lack of trust, but since there’s no transparency it feels as though financial aid staff does not have that care,” says Nguyen, who earned her bachelor of science degree in 2023.
At the very bottom of the trust hierarchy are presidents and other executive-level college and university leaders, with just 18 percent of students expressing a lot of trust in this group. It’s been a tough few semesters for college leaders, with presidents, in particular, in the hot seat—including before Congress—over their responses to campus dynamics surrounding the war in Gaza. And those current tensions aside, the presidency appears to be getting harder and harder to hold on to, with average tenures shrinking.
In any case, the newly released Student Voice data shows that students, too, may be losing faith in presidents and other senior leaders. These findings are relatively consistent across institution and student type.
Closing the Presidential Trust Gap
One recent study that sought to identify essential competencies for any modern college president ranked trust-building No. 1 in a list of seven that emerged from focus groups and surveys of presidents themselves: Some 96 percent emphasized that presidents need to behave “in a way that is trustworthy, consistent and accountable.”
Jorge Burmicky, assistant professor of higher education leaders and policy studies at Howard University and co-author of that study, says that while this particular survey item on trust-building was drafted without a specific population in mind, presidents in focus groups emphasized the importance of building trust with students, as well as with faculty members. Participants’ ideas for building trust included bringing campus stakeholders into decision-making processes, minimizing surprises, supporting shared governance and showing consistency by aligning actions with personal and institutional values. Respondents also identified listening to and understanding the needs of various campus groups as a related, critical skill.
Presidents “shared that it was important for them to maintain visibility on campus and that they often took time to visit with students as a way of staying connected to their campus,” Burmicky notes. He also encourages further study on what students—not just presidents—think about core competencies for presidents and means of building trust, including and perhaps especially around communication. Some presidents in his study shared feelings of frustration that students were not reading weekly or monthly presidential newsletters, and he advises that presidents develop trust in a way that works for their campus. Town hall–style gatherings might work in smaller settings, but not others, for instance.
“There is clearly a perception gap between students and presidents on important issues such as trust-building and feeling heard,” he says. “Presidents ought to reach students where they’re at by using outlets that are relevant to their day-to-day lives,” such as social media or athletic events.
Nguyen of Harvard would like to see college presidents showing care by attending more events where they can listen to students’ concerns, such as student organization meetings and workshops, or meetings of task forces that include students. Leaders’ “presence in the room matters so much more than they think,” she says.
Tone and authenticity are additional considerations: Generic messages “do not resonate with most people as they lack empathy, as expressed by our participants,” says Burmicky.
Nguyen adds that campus leaders should assess their communication to ensure they’re not “using tactics from 20 years ago that don’t match our student population anymore.”
Faculty ‘Trust Moves’
Another study published last month shed new light on the concept of student-faculty trust, seeking to better understand how students perceive its value. The study, involving hundreds of engineering students in Sweden, identified showing care and concern as the most important trust-building approach for professors. Teaching skills also mattered.
Co-author Rachel Forsyth, of Lund University, explains that students “seem to want to have confidence that the teacher knows what they are talking about, is able to communicate their ideas and will attempt to build an effective relationship with them.” Student participants indicated that they could learn without trust, “but that the process felt more effective if it were present and that they had more options in terms of supporting that learning and extending their engagement with the materials.”
The question of faculty trust is only gaining urgency with the rise of artificial intelligence–powered teaching tools, she adds.
Peter Felten, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, professor of history and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University, notes that prior research in this area has defined trust as both “students’ willingness to take risks based on their judgment that the teacher is committed to student success” (original study here) and as “the perception that the instructor understands the challenges facing students as they progress through the course, accepts students for who they are and cares about the educational welfare of students.”
Felten says that his own research—completed with Forsyth and involving experienced faculty members teaching large science, engineering, technology and math courses—found there are four categories of “trust moves” faculty can make in their teaching:
Cognition, or showing knowledge, skill and competence
Affect, or showing care and concern for students
Identity, or showing sensitivity to how identities influence learning and teaching
Values, showing that they are acting on professional or cultural principles
These trust moves, Felton says, include “not only what instructors do and say, but how they design their courses, how they assess students and more.”
What do you do to build trust in your classroom or on your campus? Let us know by sharing your ideas here.
I have now been teaching at Duke University for 20 years. I have been through all kinds of teaching fads—active learning, team-based learning, alternative grading, service learning, etc. You might assume that I have become a better teacher over these many years. Yet I am noticing a curious trend in my course evaluations: Some of my students like me and my courses less and less.
As a teaching faculty member, this matters greatly to my own career trajectory, and so I’ve wondered and worried about what to do. Why am I struggling to teach well and why are my students struggling to learn?
Looking back on the past two decades of my teaching and reaching further back into my own college experience, I see six clear differences between now and then.
Difference No. 1: Access to Information
When I took my first college environmental science class, way back in 1992, I was mesmerized. This was before the days of Advanced Placement Environmental Science, so I came into the class knowing almost nothing about the topic, motivated by my naïve idea to be part of “saving the world.” To learn, I had a textbook (that I still have, all highlighted and marked up) and the lectures (for which I still have my notes). Sure, I could go to the library and find books and articles to learn more, but mostly I stuck to my textbook and my notes. I showed up to the lecture-based class to learn, to listen, to ask questions.
Today, my students show up in my course often having taken AP Environmental Science, with access to unlimited information about the course topics, and with AI assistants that will help them organize their notes, write their essays and prepare for exams. I have had to shift from expert to curator, spending hours sifting through online articles, podcasts (SO many podcasts) and videos, instead of relying on a single textbook. I look for content that will engage students, knowing that some may also spend their class period fact-checking my lectures, which brings me to …
Difference No. 2: Attention
When I lecture, I look out to a sea of stickered laptops, with students shifting their attention between me, my slides and their screens. I remind them that I can tell when they are watching TikTok or texting, because the class material probably isn’t causing their amused facial expressions.
Honestly, I am finding myself more distracted, too. While lecturing I am not only thinking about the lecture material and what’s on the next slide—I am also wondering how I can get my students’ attention. I often default to telling a personal anecdote, but even as they briefly look up to laugh, they just as quickly return their eyes to their screens.
The obvious advice would be to have more engaging activities than lecturing but …
Difference No. 3: More Lectures, Please
After 2020, one comment showed up over and over on my course evaluations: lecture more. My students seemed not to see the value of small-group activities, gallery walks, interactive data exercises and discussions. They felt that they were not learning as much, and some of them assumed that meant that I didn’t know as much, which leads me to …
Difference No. 4: Sense of Entitlement
While I teach at a private elite university, my colleagues across a range of institutions have backed this up: Some students seem to not have much respect for faculty. The most common way this shows up is at the end of the semester, when students send me emails about why my course policies resulted in a grade they think is unfair, or after an exam, when they argue that I did not grade them fairly, which leads me to …
Difference No. 5: Assessment Confusion
When I was in college, I took midterms and finals. I rewrote my notes, made flash cards, created potential exam questions, asked friends for old exams and studied a lot. I took multiple-choice exams and essay exams, in-class exams and take-home exams. When I first started teaching my lecture-based class, I assigned two midterms and a final. I took the business of writing exams seriously, often using short-answer and essay exams that took a whole lot of time to grade. I wanted the experience of taking the exam to help students feel like they had learned something, and the experience of studying to actually entice them to learn.
Then, two things happened. We faculty got all excited about alternative assessments, trying to make our classes more inclusive for more learning styles. And the students started rebelling about their exam grades, nitpicking our grading for a point here and there, angry that, as one student put it, I was “ruthless” in my grading. Students didn’t show up at my office hours eager to understand the concepts—they wanted more points.
So, I threw out exams in favor of shorter papers, discussions and activities. In fall 2024, I had 74 students and I gave a whopping 67 of them A’s. To do well in my class now, you don’t really have to learn anything. You just need to show up. Except the problem with grading for attendance is …
Difference No. 6: Our Students Are Struggling
We all know that our students are struggling with more mental and emotional health issues, perhaps due to COVID-related learning loss, the state of the world and so many other things. Many of us include mental health resources in our syllabus, but we know that’s not enough. Students are much more open about their struggles with us, but we aren’t trained therapists and often don’t know the right thing to say. Who am I to determine whether or not one student’s excuse for missing a class is valid while another’s is not? How can I keep extending the deadlines for a struggling student while keeping the deadline firm for the rest? Sure, there are suggestions for this (e.g., offer everyone a “late assignment” ticket to use), but I still spend a lot of time sifting through student email requests for extensions and understanding. How can we be fair to all of our students while maintaining the rhythm of course expectations?
Usually, one acknowledges the differences between students now and “back then” at retirement, reflecting on the long arc of a teaching career. But I am not at the end—I have a long way to go (hopefully). I am expected to be good at this in order to get reappointed to my teaching faculty position.
Teaching requires much more agility now as we attempt to adapt to the ever-expanding information sphere, our students’ needs, and the state of the community and world beyond our classrooms. Instead of jumping to solutions (more active learning!), I think it’s reasonable to step back and acknowledge that there is no one change we need to make to be more effective educators in 2025. We also can acknowledge that some of the strategies we are using to make our classes more engaging and inclusive might backfire, and that there still is a time and place for really good, engaging lectures and really hard, useful exams.
There are fads in teaching, and over the past 20 years, I have seen and tried plenty of them. We prize teaching innovation, highlighting new techniques as smashing successes. But sometimes we learn that our best-laid plans don’t work out, that what students really want is to hear from an expert, someone who can help them sort through the overwhelming crush of information to find a narrative that is relevant and meaningful.
The students in our classrooms are not the same students we were, but maybe there is still a way to spark their enthusiasm for our subjects by simply asking them to be present. As debates about the value of higher education swirl around us, maybe caring about our students and their learning means asking them to put away their screens, take out a notebook and be present for our lectures, discussions and occasional gallery walk. For my part, I’m reminding myself that some students aren’t all that different than I was—curious, excited, eager to learn—and that I owe it to them to keep showing up committed to their learning and, maybe, prepared with a fewmorelight-on-text lectureslides.
Rebecca Vidra is a senior lecturer at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
