Tag: college

  • Cosmetologists can’t shoot a gun? FIRE ‘blasts’ tech college for punishing student over target practice video

    Cosmetologists can’t shoot a gun? FIRE ‘blasts’ tech college for punishing student over target practice video

    Language can be complicated. According to Merriam-Webster, the verb “blast” has as many as 15 different meanings — “to play loudly,” “to hit a golf ball out of a sand trap with explosive force,” “to injure by or as if by the action of wind.”

    Recently, the word has added another definition to the list. Namely, “to attack vigorously” with criticism, as in, “to blast someone online” or “to put someone on blast.” This usage has become a common expression.

    That’s what Leigha Lemoine, a student at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, meant when she posted in a private Snapchat group that a non-student who had insulted her needed to get “blasted.” 

    But HGTC’s administration didn’t see it that way. When some students claimed they felt uncomfortable with Lemoine’s post, the college summoned her to a meeting. Lemoine explained that the post was not a threat of physical harm, but rather a simple expression of her belief that the person who had insulted her should be criticized for doing so. The school’s administrators agreed and concluded there was nothing threatening in her words.

    But two days later, things took a turn. Administrators discovered a video on social media of Lemoine firing a handgun at a target. The video was recorded off campus a year prior to the discovery, and had no connection to the “blasted” comment, but because she had not disclosed the video’s existence (why would she be required to?), the college decided to suspend her until the 2025 fall semester. Adding insult to injury, HGTC indicated she Lemoine would be on disciplinary probation when she returned. 

    Screenshots of Leigha Lemoine’s video on social media.

    HGTC administrators claim Lemoine’s post caused “a significant amount of apprehension related to the presence and use of guns.” 

    “In today’s climate, your failure to disclose the existence of the video, in conjunction with group [sic] text message on Snapchat where you used the term ‘blasted,’ causes concern about your ability to remain in the current Cosmetology cohort,” the college added.

    Never mind the context of the gun video, which had nothing to do with campus or the person she said needed to get “blasted.” HGTC was determined to jeopardize Lemoine’s future over one Snapchat message and an unrelated video. 

    Colleges and universities would do well to take Lemoine’s case as a reminder to safeguard the expressive freedoms associated with humor and hyperbolic statements. Because make no mistake, FIRE will continue to blast the ones that don’t.

    FIRE wrote to HGTC on Lemoine’s behalf on Oct. 7, 2024, urging the college to reverse its disciplinary action against Lemoine. We pointed out the absurdity of taking Lemoine’s “blasted” comment as an unprotected “true threat” and urged the college to rescind her suspension. Lemoine showed no serious intent to commit unlawful violence with her comment urging others to criticize an individual, and tying the gun video to the comment was both nonsensical and deeply unjust. 

    But HGTC attempted to blow FIRE off and plowed forward with its discipline. So we brought in the big guns — FIRE Legal Network member David Ashley at Le Clercq Law Firm took on the case, filing an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. On Dec. 17, a South Carolina federal district court ordered HGTC to allow her to return to classes immediately while the case works its way through the courts. 

    Jokes and hyperbole are protected speech

    Colleges and universities must take genuine threats of violence on campus seriously. That sometimes requires investigations and quick institutional action to ensure campus safety. But HGTC’s treatment of Lemoine is the latest in a long line of colleges misusing the “true threats” standard to punish clearly protected speech — remarks or commentary that are meant as jokes, hyperbole, or otherwise unreasonable to treat as though they are sincere. 

    Take over-excited rhetoric about sports. In 2022, Meredith Miller, a student at the University of Utah, posted on social media that she would detonate the nuclear reactor on campus (a low-power educational model with a microwave-sized core that one professor said “can’t possibly melt down or pose any risk”) if the football team lost its game. Campus police arrested her, and the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office charged her with making a terroristic threat. 

    The office eventually dropped the charge, but the university tried doubling down by suspending her for two years. It was only after intervention from FIRE and an outside attorney that the university relented. But that it took such significant outside pressure — especially over a harmless joke that was entirely in line with the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric one expects in sports commentary — reveals how dramatically the university overreacted.

    Political rhetoric is often targeted as well. In 2020, Babson College professor Asheen Phansey found himself in hot water after posting a satirical remark on Facebook. After President Trump tweeted a threat that he might bomb 52 Iranian cultural sites, Phansey jokingly suggested that Iran’s leadership should publicly identify a list of American cultural heritage sites it wanted to bomb, including the “Mall of America” and the “Kardashian residence.” Despite FIRE’s intervention, Babson College’s leadership suspended Phansey and then fired him less than a day later. 

    Or consider an incident in which Louisiana State University fired a graduate instructor who left a heated, profanity-laced voicemail for a state senator in which he criticized the senator’s voting record on trans rights. The senator reported the voicemail to the police, who investigated and ultimately identified the instructor. The police closed the case after concluding that the instructor had not broken the law. You’re supposed to be allowed to be rude to elected officials. LSU nevertheless fired him.

    More examples of universities misusing the true threats standard run the political gamut: A Fordham student was suspended for a post commemorating the anniversary of the Tianneman Square massacre; a professor posted on social media in support of a police officer who attacked a journalist and was placed on leave; an adjunct instructor wished for President Trump’s assassination and had his hiring revoked; another professor posted on Facebook supporting Antifa, was placed on leave, and then sued his college. Too often, the university discipline is made more egregious by the fact that administrators continue to use the idea of “threatening” speech to punish clearly protected expression even after local police departments conclude that the statements in question were not actually threatening.

    What is a true threat?

    Under the First Amendment, a true threat is defined as a statement where “the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” 

    That eliminates the vast majority of threatening speech you hear each day, and for good reason. One of the foundational cases for the true threat standard is Watts v. U.S., in which the Supreme Court ruled that a man’s remark about his potential draft into the military — “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ” — constituted political hyperbole, not a true threat. The Court held that such statements are protected by the First Amendment. And rightfully so: Political speech is where the protection of the First Amendment is “at its zenith.” An overbroad definition of threatening statements would lead to the punishment of political advocacy. Look no further than controversies in the last year and a half over calls for genocide to see how wide swathes of speech would become punishable if the standard for true threats was lower. 

    Colleges and universities would do well to take Lemoine’s case as a reminder to safeguard the expressive freedoms associated with humor and hyperbolic statements. Because make no mistake, FIRE will continue to blast the ones that don’t.

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  • Like private colleges, some public college campuses are beginning to close

    Like private colleges, some public college campuses are beginning to close

    RANDOLPH, Vt. — The thermostat was turned low in the admissions office at Vermont State University on a cold winter morning.

    It’s “one of our efficiencies,” quipped David Bergh, the institution’s president, who works in the same building.

    Bergh was joking. But he was referring to something decidedly serious: the public university system’s struggle to reduce a deficit so deep, it threatened to permanently shutter several campuses after dramatic drop-offs in enrollment and revenue.

    While much attention has been focused on how enrollment declines are putting private, nonprofit colleges out of business at an accelerating rate — at least 17 of them in 2024 — public universities and colleges are facing their own existential crises.

    State institutions nationwide are being merged and campuses shut down, many of them in places where there is already comparatively little access to higher education.

    David Bergh, president of the newly consolidated Vermont State University, in the building where he works at the VTSU campus in Randolph. “Public institutions are not exempt from the challenges” facing higher education, Bergh says. Credit: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

    “Public institutions are not exempt from the challenges” facing higher education, Bergh said. “We are already seeing it, and we’re going to see more of it, and it’s particularly acute in some more rural states, where there’s a real need to balance limited resources but maintain access for students.”

    Vermont is a case study for this, and an example of how political and other realities make it so hard for public universities and colleges to adapt to the problems confronting them.

    “The demographics of fewer traditional-age college students, the over-building of these campuses, the change in the demand for what we need for our workforce in terms of programs — this is something that’s happening everywhere,” said Vermont State Rep. Lynn Dickinson, who chairs the Vermont State Colleges System Board of Trustees.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Public university and college mergers have already happened in Pennsylvania, Georgia, California and Minnesota, and public campuses have closed in Ohio and Wisconsin. A merger of public universities and community colleges in New Hampshire is under study.

    When state university and college campuses close, the repercussions for communities around them can be dire.

    Until this month, local students had a college “in their backyard,” said Thomas Nelson, county executive in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, where the two-year Fox Cities outpost of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh this spring will become the sixth public campus in that state to be shuttered since 2023, after a long enrollment slide. “We’ve had this institution for 60 years in our community, and now it’s gone.”

    Not only students are affected. In many rural counties, “there really isn’t a lot beyond the university,” Nelson said. “So that’s going to be devastating for the economy. It’s going to kill jobs. It’s going to be one more strike against them when they are competing with other communities with more amenities.”

    Attempts to close these campuses attract the intervention of politicians, who have more control over whether public than private nonprofit colleges in their districts close. After all, “they own the place,” said Dan Greenstein, former chancellor of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education, who — after that state’s enrollment fell by nearly one-fifth — led a reconfiguration that resulted in six previously separate public universities there being merged into two systems.

    Even trying to rename a public university can have political consequences. When Augusta State University in Georgia was combined with Georgia Health Sciences University to become Georgia Regents University, there was a local outcry over the fact that “Augusta” was no longer in the name. Within two years, the merged school had yet another new name: Augusta University.

    “Public institutions are complex structures,” said Ricardo Azziz, who led that consolidation, served as president of the resulting institution and now heads the Center for Higher Education Mergers and Acquisitions at the Foundation for Research and Education Excellence. “They’re influenced by politics. They’re influenced by elected officials.”

    Related: ‘Easy to just write us off’: Rural students’ choices shrink as colleges slash majors

    When the proposal to close campuses in Vermont was met with public and political resistance, state planners backed down and decided instead to merge them, laying off staff and cutting programs. That did not go well, either, and resulted in raucous public meetings, votes of “no confidence,” plans that were announced and then rescinded and a revolving door of presidents and chancellors. Only now, in its second year, has the process gotten smoother.

    Alarm bells started sounding about problems in Vermont’s state universities before the Covid-19 pandemic. With the nation’s third-oldest median age, after Maine and New Hampshire, according to the Census Bureau, the state had already seen its number of young people graduating from high school fall by 25 percent over the previous decade.

    Enrollment at the public four-year and community college campuses — not including the flagship University of Vermont, which is separate — was down by more than 11 percent. A fifth of the rooms in the dorms were empty. And with the birthrate in the state lower than it was before the Civil War, there was no rebound in sight.

    These trends have contributed to the closings of six of Vermont’s in-person undergraduate private, nonprofit colleges and universities since 2016.

    “We’d be keeping our head in the sand if we didn’t think that those same forces were going to affect our public higher education system,” said Jeb Spaulding, who, as chancellor at the time, merged two of Vermont’s five state colleges, in Johnson and Lyndon, in 2018.

    The red ink continued to flow. Two years later, just after Covid hit, Spaulding recommended that three of the five public campuses be shut down altogether — Johnson and Lyndon, plus Vermont Technical College in Randolph.

    Related: Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?

    “What we needed to do was save the Vermont State Colleges System as a whole,” which has 145 buildings for fewer than 5,000 students, Spaulding recalled. That same problem of excess capacity is affecting higher education nationwide.

    “It was well known that we had too much bricks and mortar for the number of traditional-type students that were going to be available in Vermont,” Spaulding said. “We saw all that coming, and we had started a process of educating people and working on what would be a realistic public-sector consolidation plan so that we could actually put our resources into having a smaller constellation, but well financed and up to date.”

    The reaction to the plan was explosive, even in the midst of a pandemic. At socially distanced drive-by protests, critics brandished signs that said: “Start Saving: Fire Jeb.” Within four days, the proposal to close campuses was withdrawn. A week after that, Spaulding resigned.

    “I guess I didn’t realize that in the public realm, you can’t make the kind of difficult decisions that if you were at a private institution you would have to make,” he recounted. “When the politics got involved, then it became clear to me that there was no way that I was going to be able to get that through.”

    Instead of closing the campuses, the state decided to combine them with the other two, in Castleton and Williston, all under one umbrella renamed Vermont State University, or VTSU. In exchange, the blended institutions would be required to cut spending to help reduce a deficit estimated at the time to be about $22 million.

    That decision was almost as contentious. As in Georgia, even the name was controversial. Alumni petitioned in vain for the new system to be called Castleton University instead of Vermont State, to preserve the legacy of the state’s oldest and the nation’s 18th-longest-operating higher education institution, founded in 1787, instead of demoting it to “Castleton Campus.”

    Related: A trend colleges might not want applicants to notice: It’s becoming easier to get in

    Beth Mauch, who as chancellor has overseen VTSU and Vermont’s community college campuses since January, said she gets this kind of sentiment. “There are community members who have had these institutions in their community. There are folks who are alumni of these institutions who remember them in a certain way,” said Mauch. “Really, they are in the fabric of a community.”

    Beth Mauch, chancellor of the Vermont State University system and the state’s community college campuses. “Really, they are in the fabric of a community,” Mauch says. Credit: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

    That close relationship between the universities and their communities only resulted in additional friction when 23 full-time faculty positions were cut, out of the then-existing 208. So were an equal number of administrators and staff. Not only were there more beds and buildings than were needed for the number of students, there were too many faculty compared to other comparably sized universities, a planning document said.

    Neighbors of the campuses, and their elected representatives, didn’t see it that way.

    “The people that work at the colleges are local. Everyone knows people that work at these colleges,” said Billie Neathawk, a librarian at what was formerly Castleton University for more than 25 years, and a union officer. “They’re related to people. Especially in a small state like Vermont, everybody knows everybody.”

    The layoffs went through anyway. There were also cuts to majors. Ten academic programs were eliminated, 10 others changed locations and still others were consolidated. That meant students at any campus could take the remaining courses in a format combining in-person and online instruction that the system dubbed “In-Person Plus.”

    Lilly Hudson is a junior at Vermont State University, whose consolidation means some programs are being offered online. Hudson prefers learning in a classroom but liked being able to take a class online from another campus that wasn’t available on hers. Credit: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

    Lilly Hudson, a junior at Castleton, said she prefers learning in a classroom. “It’s just such a difference to be able to see people and meet your professors and go in person,” said Hudson, who is majoring in early education. But she was also able to take a class online from another campus that wasn’t available on hers.

    That can be an underappreciated upside to mergers, said Greenstein, now managing director of higher education practice at the consulting firm Baker Tilly. “You can only run as many programs, majors and minors as you can enroll students into,” he said. But by merging institutions and letting students take courses from other campuses online, “now they can go from 20 programs to 80 or 90.”

    While that seemed a step forward, the consolidated university’s inaugural president, Parwinder Grewal, next announced that, to cut costs, its libraries would go all-digital and give away their books, the Randolph campus would no longer field intercollegiate sports teams, and athletics on the Johnson campus would move from the NCAA to the less prestigious U.S. Collegiate Athletic Association.

    Related: Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

    This proved another blunder in a state so fond of its libraries that it has the nation’s highest per-capita number of library visits, and where rural communities rally around even Division 3 athletics. Faculty and staff unions and student government associations on every campus voted “no confidence” in the university’s administration. Athletes transferred away. Grewal was loudly booed when he met with students.

    “There was a hot streak there where, every email, we were, like, now what’s going on?” said Raymonda Parchment, a student who was halfway toward her bachelor’s degree at the time.

    Raymonda Parchment, who just graduated from Vermont State University, is grateful that a plan to close some public campuses was reversed. “If you can’t afford to go out of state for college, and you can’t afford to pay for maybe a dorm for a couple of years, where does that leave you if there’s no school within commuting distance?” she asks. Credit: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report

    The library and athletics decisions were eventually reversed, too, and Grewal was out before he’d served a full year. But the damage was done. When the new university finally debuted, at the start of the 2023-24 school year, freshman enrollment was down by about 14 percent from what it had been at the separate campuses the year before.

    “I know a lot of friends whose programs were consolidated and shuffled around,” said Parchment, in an otherwise empty study room on the snow-covered Johnson campus. “That was probably the biggest change for students that had direct impact on them. Some people’s programs don’t exist anymore. Some people’s programs have been moved to a different campus.”

    Vermont is still working out the kinks, said Bergh, the system’s current president, who was the president of private, nonprofit Cazenovia College in New York when it closed in 2023.

    Although first-year enrollment went up about 14 percent this fall, he said, “We’re still surfacing places where our systems aren’t talking to each other as well as they should be, and that we need to correct.”

    Parchment likes that it’s easier now to move from one campus in the system to another, without having to go through the red tape of the transfer process. She graduated at the end of the fall semester after moving from Castleton to Johnson to be closer to an internship.

    And no campuses were ultimately closed, as had been proposed — a relief to students, prospective students and community members, Parchment said. “Because if you can’t afford to go out of state for college, and you can’t afford to pay for maybe a dorm for a couple of years, where does that leave you if there’s no school within commuting distance?”

    Hudson, the Castleton student, whose father is a sixth-generation farrier — a specialist in trimming, cleaning and shoeing horses’ hooves — agreed.

    The campuses are “in the middle of an area where there’s a lot of rural towns,” she said. Keeping them in operation means that students nearby who want to go to college “don’t have to pick up their lives and move.”

    But Spaulding, the former chancellor, warned that public higher education budget and enrollment problems aren’t likely to subside, in Vermont or many other states.

    “I don’t think the storm is over by any stretch of the imagination.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or [email protected].

    This story about public college closings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Liam Elder-Connors. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • College Financials 2022-23 | HESA

    College Financials 2022-23 | HESA

    StatsCan dropped some college financial data over the XMAS holidays.  I know you guys are probably sick of this subject, but it’s still good to have some national data—even if it is eighteen months out of date and doesn’t really count the last frenzied months of the international student gold rush (aka “doing the Conestoga”).  But it does cover the year in which everyone now agrees student visa numbers “got out of control,” so there are some interesting things to be learned here nonetheless.

    To start, let’s look quickly at college income by source.  Figure 1, below, shows that college income did rise somewhat in 2022-23, due mainly to an increase in tuition income (up 35% between the nadir COVID year of 20-21 and 22-23).  But overall, once inflation is taken into account, the increase in college income really wasn’t all that big: about a billion dollars in 2021-22 and about the same again in 2022-23, or about 6-7% per year after inflation.  Good?  Definitely.  Way above what universities were managing, and well above most sectors internationally?  But it’s not exactly the banditry that some communicators (including the unofficial national minister of higher education, Marc Miller) like to imply.

    Figure 1: College Income by Source, Canada, 2017-18 to 2022-23, in Billions of $2022

    Now I know a few of you are looking at this and scratching your heads, asking what the hell is going on in Figure 1.  After all, haven’t I (among others) made the point about record surpluses in the college sector?  Well, yes.  But I’ve only ever really been talking about Ontario, which is the only province where international tuition fees have really taken flight.  In Figure 2, I put the results for Ontario and for the other nine provinces side-by-side.  And you can see how different the two are.  Ontario has seen quite large increases in income, mainly through tuition fees and by ancillary income bouncing back to where it was pre-COVID, while in the other nine provinces income growth is basically non-existent in any of the three categories.

    Figure 2a/b.  College Income by Source, Ontario vs Other Nine Provinces, 2017-18 to 2022-23, in Billions of $2022

    (As an aside, just note here that over 70% of all college tuition income is collected in the province of Ontario, which is kind of wild.  At the national level, Canada’s college sector is not really a sector at all…their aims, goals, tools, and income patterns all diverge enormously.)

    Figure 3 drills down a little bit on the issue of tuition fee income to show where they have been growing and where they have not.  One might look at this and think its irreconcilable with Figure 2, since tuition fees in the seven smaller provinces seem to be increasing at a rate similar to Ontario.  What that should tell you, though, is that the base tuition from which these figures are rising are pretty meagre in the seven smallest provinces, and quite significant in Ontario.  (Also, remember that in Ontario, domestic tuition fees fell by over 20% or so after inflation between 2019-20 and 2022-23, so this chart is actually underplaying the growth in international fees in that province a bit.)

    Figure 3: Change in Real Aggregate Tuition Income by Province, 2017-18 to 2022-23, (2017-18 = 100)

    Now I want to look specifically at some of the data with respect to expenditures and to try to ask the question: where did that extra $2.2 billion that the sector acquired in 21-22 and 22-23 (of which, recall, over 70% went to Ontario alone) go?

    Figure 4 answers this question in precise detail, and once again the answer depends on whether you are talking about Ontario or the rest of the country.  The biggest jump in expenditures by far is “contracted services” in Ontario—an increase of over $500M in just two years.  This is probably as close a look as we will ever get at the economics of those PPP colleges that were set up around the GTA since most of this sum is almost certainly made up of public college payments to those institutions for paying the new students had arrived in those two years.  If you assume the increase in international students at those colleges was about 40,000 (for a variety of reasons, an exact count on this is difficult), then that implies that colleges were paying their PPP partners about $12,500 per student on average and pocketing the difference, which would have been anywhere between about $2,500 and $10,000, depending on the campus and program.  And of course, most of the funds spent on PPP were spent one way or another on teaching expenses for these students.

    Figure 4: Change in Expenditures/Surplus, Canadian Colleges 2022-23 vs 2020-21, Ontario vs. Other 9 Provinces, in millions of 2022

    On top of that, Ontario colleges threw an extra $300 million into new construction (this is a bit of an exaggeration because 2020-21 was a COVID year and building expenses were abnormally low), and an extra $260 million (half a billion in total) thrown into reserve funds for future years.  This last is money that probably would have ended up as capital expenditures in future years if the feds hadn’t come crashing in and destroying the whole system last year but will now probably get used to cover losses over the next year or two instead.  Meanwhile, in the rest of Canada, surpluses decreased between 2020-21 and 2022-23, and such spending increases as occurred came mostly under the categories “miscellaneous” and “ancillary enterprises.”

    2022-23 of course was not quite “peak international student” so this analysis can’t quite tell the full story of how international students affected colleges.  We’ll need to wait another 11 months for that data to show up.  But I doubt that the story I have outlined based on the data available to date will not change too much.  In short, the financials show that:

    • Colleges outside Ontario were really not making bank on international students.
    • Within Ontario, over a third of the additional revenue from international students generated in the 2020-21 to 2022-23 period was paid out to PPP partners, who would have spent most of that on instruction.
    • Of the remaining billion or so, about a third went into new construction and another 20% was “surplus,” which probably meant it was intended for future capital expenditure.
    • The increase in core college salary mass was miniscule—in fact only about 3% after inflation. 

    If there was “empire building” going on, it was in the form of constructing new buildings, not in terms of massive salary rises or hiring sprees. 

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  • How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Caitlin Zaloom)

    How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Caitlin Zaloom)

    This audiobook narrated by Kate Harper examines how the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families The struggle to pay for college is one of the defining features of middle-class life in America today. At kitchen tables all across the country, parents agonize over whether to burden their children with loans or to sacrifice their own financial security by taking out a second mortgage or draining their retirement savings. Indebted takes readers into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life. 

    Caitlin Zaloom gained the confidence of numerous parents and their college-age children, who talked candidly with her about stressful and intensely personal financial matters that are usually kept private. In this remarkable book, Zaloom describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty—providing their children with opportunity—and shows how parents and students alike are forced to take on enormous debts and gamble on an investment that might not pay off. 

    What emerges is a troubling portrait of an American middle class fettered by the “student finance complex”—the bewildering labyrinth of government-sponsored institutions, profit-seeking firms, and university offices that collect information on household earnings and assets, assess family needs, and decide who is eligible for aid and who is not. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, revealing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.

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  • Get College Credit For Free

    Get College Credit For Free

    OPPORTUNITY FOR STUDENTS TO EARN FREE COLLEGE CREDIT

    A new, high-quality path to free college credit was launched in 2017.
    The goal of the program, dubbed “Freshman Year for Free,” is to make
    college more accessible and affordable for high school students, college
    students and adult learners, including active duty military personnel,
    their families, and veterans.

    WHO IS MAKING THIS POSSIBLE?

    Modern States, the New York-based charitable organization behind the
    effort, has funded production of online courses taught by college
    professors. The courses prepare students for introductory College Level
    Examination Program (CLEP) exams in Economics, Sociology, Algebra, and
    other areas.

    HOW DOES THIS LEAD TO COLLEGE CREDIT?

    The CLEP exams, administered by the College Board, are accepted for
    credit by more than 2,900 colleges and universities. Modern States is
    partnering with high schools and colleges that are making students aware
    of the opportunity.

    WHY PARTICIPATE?

    This is the first time there have been courses (see list below)
    taught by top quality college professors for CLEP subjects. Also, Modern
    States is paying the CLEP exam fee and scheduling fee for students who
    enroll in the courses and take the exams. The benefit for participating
    institutions is that this creates a free on-ramp to college that
    facilitates learning and earning credits.

    WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW?

    Modern States will pay for you to take the CLEP exam. After you complete the coursework and practice questions, request a CLEP voucher
    code from the Modern States website. There are no prerequisites for the
    32 courses that are available, and all of them are self-paced. Some of
    the courses stem from a partnership between Modern States and edX, the
    online education platform created by Harvard and MIT.

    HOW DOES IT WORK?

    Modern States Education Alliance™ offers free, high-quality online
    courses taught by college professors that prepare you for the CLEP
    exams, which are well-established and widely-accepted. Solid performance
    on the exams (each participating college decides what scores you need
    for credit) can earn you college credits and enable you to save tuition
    dollars. You can take one course or many; if you do well on eight exams,
    you can potentially earn Freshman Year for Free™.

    HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED?

    Sign up today by clicking here – it’s free!

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  • The value of having a National Learning Framework incorporating school, college and higher education

    The value of having a National Learning Framework incorporating school, college and higher education

    By Michelle Morgan, Dean of Students at the University of East London.

    In the UK, we have a well-established education system across different levels of learning including primary, secondary, further and higher education. For each level, there is a comprehensive structure that is regulated and monitored alongside extensive information. However, at present, they generally function in isolation. 

    The Government’s recent Curriculum and Assessment Review has asked for suggestions to improve the curriculum and assessment system for the 16-19 year study group. This group includes a range of qualifications including GCSEs, A-levels, BTECs, T Levels and apprenticeships. The main purpose of the Review is to

    ensure that the curriculum balances ambition, relevance, flexibility and inclusivity for all children and young people.

    However, as part of this review, could it also look at how the different levels of study build on one another? Could the sectors come together and use their extensive knowledge for their level and type of study, to create an integrated road map across secondary, further and higher education where skills, knowledge, competencies and attributes (and how they translate into employability skills) are clearly articulated? We could call this a National Learning Framework. It could align with the learning gain programme led by the Office for Students (OfS).

    The benefits of a National Learning Framework

    There would be a number of benefits to adopting this approach:

    • It would provide a clear resource for all stakeholders, including students and staff in educational organisations, policymakers, Government bodies, Regulators and Quality Standard bodies (such as Ofsted, the Office for Students and QAA) and business and industry. It would also help manage the general public perception of higher education. 
    • This approach would join up the regulatory bodies responsible for the different sectors. It would help create a collaborative, consistent learning and teaching approach, by setting and explaining the aims and objectives of the various types of education providers.
    • It would explain and articulate the differences in learning, teaching and assessment approaches across the array of secondary and further education qualifications that are available and used as progression qualifications into higher education.  For example, A-Levels are mainly taught in schools and assessed by end-of-year exams. ‘Other’ qualifications such as BTEC, Access and Other Level 3 qualifications taught in college have more diverse assessments.
    • It would help universities more effectively bridge the learning and experience transition into higher education across all entry qualifications.  We know students from the ‘Other’ qualification groups are often from disadvantaged backgrounds, which can affect retention, progression and success at university as research highlights (see also this NEON report).  Students with other qualifications are more likely to withdraw than those with A-Levels. However, as this recent report Prior learning experience, study expectations of A-Level and BTEC students on entry to university highlights, it is not the BTEC qualification per se that is the problem but the transition support into university study that needs improvement.
    • It would also address assumptions about how learning occurs at each level of study. For example, because young people use media technology to live and socialise, it is assumed the same is the case with learning. Accessing teaching and learning material, especially in schools, remains largely traditional: the main sources of information are course textbooks and handwritten notes, although since the Covid-19 Pandemic, the use of coursework submission and basic virtual learning environments (VLEs) is on the increase.
    • If we clearly communicate to students the learning that occurs throughout each level of their study, and what skills, knowledge, competencies and attributes they should obtain as a result, this can help with their confidence levels and their employability opportunities as they can better articulate what they have achieved.

    What could an integrated learning approach across all levels of study via a National Learning  Framework look like?

    The  Employability Skills Pyramid created for levels 4 to 7 in higher education with colleagues in a previous university where I worked could be extended to include Levels 2/3 and apprenticeships to create a National Learning Framework. The language used to construct the knowledge, skills and attribute grids used by course leaders purposely integrated the QAA statements for degrees (see accompanying document Appendix 1) .

    By adding Levels 2 and 3, including apprenticeship qualifications and articulating the differences between each qualification, the education sector could understand what is achieved within and between different levels of study and qualifications (see Figure 1).

    Key stakeholders could come together from across all levels of study to map out and agree on the language to adopt for consistency across the various levels and qualifications.

    Integrated National Learning Framework across Secondary, Further and Higher Education

    Alongside the National Learning Framework, a common transition approach drawing on the same definitions across all levels of study would be valuable. Students and staff could gain the understanding required to foster successful transitions between phases.  An example is provided below.

    Supporting transitions across the National Learning Framework using similar terminology

    The Student Experience Transitions (SET) Model was designed to support courses of various lengths and make the different stages of a course clearer. It was originally designed for higher education but the principles are the same across all levels of study (see Figure 2). Students need to progress through each stage which has general rules of engagement. The definitions of each stage and the mapping of each stage by length of course are in the accompanying document in Appendix 2.

    Figure 2: The Student Experience Transitions Model. Source: Morgan 2012

    The benefits for students are consistency and understanding what is expected for their course. At each key transition stage, students would understand what is expected by reflecting on what they have previously learnt, how the coming year builds on what they already know and what they will achieve at the end.

    Taking the opportunity to integrate

    The Curriculum Review provides a real opportunity to join up each level of study and provide clarity for all stakeholders. Importantly, a National Learning Framework could provide and help with the Government’s aims of balancing ambition, relevance, flexibility and inclusivity for all learners regardless of level of study.

    Appendices

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  • College Students Guide to Mental Health (ABC News)

    College Students Guide to Mental Health (ABC News)

    According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, nearly one in three young adults 18 to 25 have experienced a mental illness. Psychologist Mia Nosanow joins “GMA” for more.

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  • Why Men Are Disappearing from College Campuses (American Institute for Boys and Men)

    Why Men Are Disappearing from College Campuses (American Institute for Boys and Men)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Why Men Are Disappearing from College Campuses (American Institute for Boys and Men)




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  • College holiday videos feature mascots, movie references

    College holiday videos feature mascots, movie references

    It’s been another challenging year in higher ed, and colleges are unsure what 2025 could bring, especially with the Biden administration coming to an end and former president Trump returning to the White House. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to celebrate this holiday season, whether it’s increased enrollment, new awards and recognitions, a close-knit campus community—or just the fact that there are students on campus willing to star in a silly holiday video.

    Here are Inside Higher Ed’s favorite greetings of this holiday season, including five presidential cameos, four mascot stunts, three live music performances, two Die Hard references … and a partridge in a pear tree.

    University of Wisconsin–Superior

    Since when can yellowjackets ice-skate? Google tells me that wasps need to find somewhere warm to hide away when temperatures drop below 40 degrees—but Buzz the Yellowjacket, the University of Wisconsin at Superior’s mascot, appears to be the exception. In this holiday greeting video, Buzz not only makes an impressive ice hockey goal but also displays some figure skating prowess, pulling off a top-rate arabesque. Could Buzz become the nation’s first ever apian Olympian?

    Riverland Community College, Austin, Minn.

    In this video from Riverland Community College in southern Minnesota, different groups of students wish viewers a happy holiday in turn. Their greetings give glimpses into the unique programs, clubs and spaces on campus, from cosmetology students giving pedicures in a salon to handy welders- and electricians-in-training showing off their skills.

    Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

    Iowa State’s Cyclone Marching Band comes together in perfect harmony in this artfully choreographed video, marching across campus to provide some brassy musical accompaniment for the campus’s tree lighting. From what I could find in my research, the group first plays the university’s alma mater, “The Bells of Iowa State,” which was written in 1931 by Iowa State English professor Jim Wilson, followed by a rousing rendition of ISU’s fight song.

    Georgia State University College of the Arts, Atlanta

    Coniferous trees spring from sidewalks and dance studios in this collage-like animation by a GSU alumnus, featuring background music by a current undergraduate student. The video concludes with punny well-wishes for the holidays: “May the arts spruce up your season with good cheer!”

    Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Wash.

    This sketch from Washington’s EWU opens with the university’s president, Shari McMahan, jokingly bemoaning the fact that she had run out of acorns on which to use her large collection of nutcrackers. But the campus community takes that joke seriously and shifts into high gear, with each department researching how to help her get her hands on more “nutcracker food.” I hope those math students were able to finally solve for the numeric value of acorn!

    Howard University, Washington, D.C.

    Howard president Ben Vinson III highlights the university’s 2024 achievements in this holiday message, including the D.C. university’s record-breaking freshman class and its 100th homecoming. “As we prepare for the holidays, I look forward to all that lies ahead. I wish everyone a joyful and restful break and a successful start to the new year,” Vinson said.

    Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.

    Rhythmic choral music rings out through Whitman College’s Memorial Building before the singers are eventually joined by an instrumental septet in this distinctive holiday video. What makes this video so unusual is the choice to use not a well-known holiday carol but a choral song by living composer Jeff Newberry with lyrics by Malcolm Guite, a poet and Anglican priest, that nevertheless speak to the gratitude and peace of the holiday season: “Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime / Is richness rising out of emptiness, / And timelessness resounding into time.”

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

    MIT’s video this year is a short animated sequence that shows what happens after it magically begins snowing inside one of the university’s academic buildings. A student walks through the snow-dusted hallway, eventually happening upon an atrium where her classmates are playing instruments crafted from ice, sledding and crafting a snow beaver in the image of the institution’s mascot.

    University of North Carolina at Charlotte

    What a beautiful message for this holiday season: the importance of friendship across differences. When Norm the Niner, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s gold-mining mascot, orders goose on a food delivery app, he’s expecting dinner to arrive. But instead, he finds a live goose at his door at ready to move onto UNC-Charlotte’s campus. At first, the goose only wants to cause chaos, but eventually he mellows out, learning to enjoy college basketball, fine art and taking selfies before eventually departing south for the winter.

    Tarrant County College, Tarrant County, Tex.

    In this heartfelt video from one of Texas’s largest counties, members of the Tarrant County College community join together at a beautifully set table for what looks to be a homemade holiday dinner, reminding TCC students that they will always “have a seat at the table.” Joining them is college chancellor Elva Concha LeBlanc and Toro the Trailblazer, the college’s blue bull mascot, which is dancing in the background.

    Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Okla.

    Hot takes abound in this video of Oral Roberts students answering Christmas-related questions, like their favorite holiday songs and films. Is Home Alone 2 superior to the original? Does the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special really qualify as a Christmas movie? Does anyone actually know the words to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”? If you and your family don’t have enough to argue about this holiday, these are some questions you could bring up to really cause a ruckus.

    Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

    Why does it seem like there’s a trend this year of rebuffing all the classic carols in favor of introducing new songs to represent the spirit of the season? I’m not complaining; apparently the song in this video is from Frozen 2, a movie I have never seen, but Yale’s student performers make it sound as loved and lived-in as a warm woolen sweater. This video also features Handsome Dale, Yale’s bulldog mascot, and Angus, the university’s First Puppy.

    Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, Ore.

    One of two institutions returning to this list from last year, Clackamas Community College in Oregon is back with another parodic holiday heist. This year, the college took inspiration from Die Hard. It stars Adam Hall, a math instructor at the college, in the role of John McClane, having to fight against a plot to “encrypt the digits of pi to ruin their holiday joy.” I’ve never seen Die Hard, but I have to assume that’s extremely accurate to what happens in the movie.

    Oakland Community College, Oakland County, Mich.

    Oakland Community College is the second to make another appearance on this list from last year. In this year’s self-aware video, chancellor Peter Provenzano decides to use ChatGPT—one its few, if only, appearances in any of these videos!—to gather ideas for a Christmas movie parody that Talon, OCC’s owl mascot, could star in. The AI spits out It’s a Wonderful Life, Die Hard, A Charlie Brown Christmas and more, but none satisfy Provenzano. The moral of the story? “There are a lot of stories Talon can tell to capture the season’s joy, but none better than the story we tell at OCC,” he says. (And stick around to the end for bloopers!)

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  • Audit sheds light on state-issued credit card misuse in the Connecticut college system

    Audit sheds light on state-issued credit card misuse in the Connecticut college system

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    Dive Brief:

    • A state audit of employee spending practices at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system found several financial transactions that broke university policies or lacked adequate documentation. 
    • Comptroller Sean Scanlon detailed over $19,000 in spending on food by system Chancellor Terrence Cheng in fiscal years 2022 through 2024, by far the majority of spending on his institutional credit card. Violations included missing receipts, missing guest lists and purchases of restricted items like alcohol.
    • Scanlon’s probe came at Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s request after CT Insider reported Cheng spent lavishly on meals with a state-funded credit card over the past few years.

    Dive Insight:

    The report from CT Insider alleged that Cheng had spent as much as $1,114 at restaurants in a week, and paid for private chauffeurs despite having access to a state-provided car at the time. Once, he spent nearly $500 for the service, the outlet reported.

    Scanlon’s office concluded that “while not technically violating state or university policy, we found that, in the absence of sound, comprehensive policies, the Chancellor utilized poor [judgment] when making P-Card purchases that were especially troubling given the financial stress on the CSCU system.”

    The audit zeroed in on spending on food and transportation by the chancellor. Meals designated as business meetings accounted for 70% of the spending on the official’s card, and some transactions exceeded the $50 meal limit for system employees, the audit found. It also found 18 food purchases with tips deemed excessive — above 22% — which the report noted “is not a policy violation but a questionable use of university funds.” 

    Of the chancellor’s food-related transactions reviewed by the comptroller’s office, 43% had either no itemized receipts or were missing receipts entirely. 

    Among other violations were 30 instances where Cheng paid sales tax. That’s a violation of policy because institutional credit cards — also known as P-cards — are exempt from sales tax but must go through a process with vendors to credit those taxes.

    However, the comptroller found that Cheng did not technically violate policy because as chancellor he can “override the policy at his own discretion.”

    As for chauffeur use, the report noted three times when Cheng — who lives in New York state — paid for a private car service with his P-card, including two trips even more expensive than the one reported by CT Insider. Scanlon determined that these services did not represent violations but said that they “are of note as the Chancellor was provided with a state vehicle for their use.”

    In an emailed statement Thursday, Cheng said that he appreciated the audit’s thoroughness and that the system is “committed to implementing stronger controls, policies, and comprehensive training.”

    The system review also found issues with P-card use by other leaders, including the interim president of Southern Connecticut State University, Dwayne Smith. The audit found that Smith’s P-card “shows a wide variety of infractions spanning almost every category of restricted purchasing and failure to follow many of the policy requirements for documentation and reporting of transactions.”

    Specifically, the comptroller’s office faulted Smith for failing to keep receipts, as well as purchasing tickets to an outside football game without stating its business purpose, among other issues. 

    In an emailed statement, Smith thanked the comptroller for his analysis and recommendations, adding that many of his office’s P-card transactions relate to his community engagement activities. 

    “These meetings have yielded significant support for our scholarship programs, internships, mentoring, and ultimately, enhanced job opportunities for our graduates,” Smith said.

    Scanlon’s audit found many other issues across the Connecticut college system’s staff. His office’s report lists 10 recommended changes the system should make, including reinstating internal audits, establishing a central policy for P-card use, creating accountability measures for card misuse and establishing a policy for vehicle use. 

    “Unfortunately, this audit revealed troubling gaps in oversight and questionable spending practices,” Scanlon said in a Wednesday statement. “Our recommendations provide a clear path forward with more comprehensive policies, consistent enforcement, and greater overall accountability.”

    In his statement, Cheng said the recommendations would “support the goal of accountability and transparency across the system.”

    He added, “The system has begun to take steps in this direction and over the next 100 days, I’ve instructed my team to implement recommendations to improve compliance and reporting.”

    The system’s governing board this fall moved to increase oversight of spending in its central office. As part of that process, the system recently hired a new chief compliance officer and legal counsel.

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