Tag: Colleges

  • Education Department zeroes in on 4-year colleges for expanded IPEDS collection

    Education Department zeroes in on 4-year colleges for expanded IPEDS collection

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    Dive Brief:

    •  Only four-year institutions would be subject to significantly stepped-up reporting requirements for admissions data disaggregated by race and sex, under a notice issued by the Trump administration on Wednesday.
    • The plan, first introduced in August, would require affected colleges to submit six years worth of application and admissions data — disaggregated by student race and sex — as part of the next reporting cycle. 
    • The updated terms would exempt two-year colleges and open-enrollment institutions that only award aid based on financial need from having to report this data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. 

    Dive Insight:

    The U.S. Department of Education currently only requires institutions to submit data disaggregated by race for enrolled students.

    But under the Trump administration’s proposal, colleges would have to disaggregate data for applicants, those admitted and enrolled students by race and sex. They would also have to cross-reference the data with each individual’s admissions test scores, GPA, family income, Pell Grant eligibility and parents’ educational level.

    Colleges would be required to submit this information for every academic year dating back to 2020-21 for the first IPEDS reporting cycle of the new plan, currently proposed as 2025-26.

    The administration intends to use the data points to “indicate whether institutions of higher education are using race-based preferencing in their admissions processes,” according to the Federal Register notice filed by Ross Santy, data officer at the agency’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious admissions practices in 2023.

    The plan would also mandate that colleges submit their graduation rates from 2019-20 to 2024-25.

    In its August notice, the Education Department said it expected to focus these additional reporting requirements on four-year institutions with selective admissions processes. It said these colleges “have an elevated risk of noncompliance with the civil rights laws,” both in admissions and scholarships, while it considered community colleges and trade schools at low risk for civil rights noncompliance in admissions since they admit all or virtually all of their applicants.

    The department at the time sought public comment on which institutional types should be subject to the new reporting proposal. This week, it made revisions based on that input, according to Santy.

    Since the Trump administration first announced the proposal, higher ed groups and colleges have raised concerns about the administrative burden it would put on institutions and the rapid turnaround time necessitated by a 2025-26 start date.

    Wednesday’s update would bring relief for two-year institutions and many of those with open enrollment policies. But many of the sector’s concerns went unaddressed, including comments about unclear language in the proposal, issues around student privacy and unease that the Trump administration would construe the data with the intent of attacking colleges further.

    Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, the federal government has alleged that colleges supporting diversity efforts or permitting student protests are in violation of civil rights law and has opened numerous investigations on these grounds.

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  • Colleges Expand Basic Needs Support Following SNAP Freeze

    Colleges Expand Basic Needs Support Following SNAP Freeze

    The government shutdown may be nearing its end, but the delayed distribution of food assistance funds continues to pose a threat to Americans, including the basic needs security of college students. For now, the future of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding remains cloudy amid the federal government’s ongoing court battles against releasing the funds.

    Nearly three in five college students experience some form of basic needs insecurity, and two in five experience food insecurity, according to national surveys. In addition, approximately 3.3 million college students are eligible for federal food assistance, according to 2020 data, though a large share do not utilize SNAP due to lack of awareness.

    Financial insecurity is one of the top threats to student retention and persistence in higher education, meaning a lapse in support may impede some students’ ability to remain enrolled.

    Some colleges and universities have established new or expanded measures to plug the gap in food support for students during the shutdown, including expanding the hours of campus food pantries and promoting emergency grant funding.

    University of Minnesota

    Minnesota administrators announced on Nov. 3 that students affected by the lack of SNAP funds would be able to access one free meal a day in the residential dining hall until benefits resume. The university estimates fewer than 1,000 individuals on campus are enrolled in SNAP.

    In addition, the on-campus food pantry, Nutritious U, will offer expanded hours for the rest of the semester, opening one hour earlier to serve more students.

    Franklin Pierce University

    The New Hampshire–based university provides basic needs resources at several campus locations—including the library, counseling center and the Office of Outreach and Engagement—to ensure students can have access to food and hygiene products.

    The pantry, Rations for Ravens, is funded primarily through donations, both monetary and physical products.

    City University of New York

    CUNY chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez announced the university system would allocate additional funding to all campuses “so they can stock extra supplies in their on-site food pantries or provide food assistance in other forms,” he wrote in a Nov. 7 email to students. CUNY students can visit any campus pantry in the system, regardless of their home enrollment, allowing them to access those with the most convenient hours and locations.

    The chancellor also urged students to apply for SNAP benefits for future assistance; students at the Bronx campuses (Lehman, Hostos and Bronx Community College) can also participate in a pilot program for community-based resources.

    Austin Community College

    Nearly half of the students at Austin Community College are food insecure, according to fall 2023 survey data. Since the government shutdown, officials have received up to 500 requests a week for emergency aid from the college’s 74,000 students, as reported by The Austin American-Statesman.

    The college has pantries on every campus, called River Food Bites, which now have extended hours to meet students’ needs. ACC also allocated $25,000 in emergency funding to purchase gift cards to the H-E-B grocery store, and staff plan to create meal kits to support students over winter break.

    Long Beach City College

    The California college expanded services at its food pantry locations, called Viking Vaults, by increasing food options and offering food cards to students who have been impacted by suspended SNAP benefits. Students can also apply for emergency aid, and the college outlined a list of FAQs to address their concerns during the shutdown.

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    UNC offers a variety of basic needs resources during a typical academic year, some of which have been expanded to meet the current surge in demand.

    Undergraduate and graduate students can access any of the six on-campus food pantries or nine gardens around campus to pick up food. Eligible students can also receive a free campus dining meal card through a referral form. In addition, the university is piloting a meal swipe donation program for the end of the term so students can share their unused meals with others.

    Students can also receive push notifications of events and other free resources through campus events.

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  • Week in review: Trinity Christian closes as other colleges make cuts

    Week in review: Trinity Christian closes as other colleges make cuts

    Most clicked story of the week: 

    Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $387 million in unrestricted funds to eight historically Black colleges and universities in recent weeks. Each institution described their donation as one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in their history. Scott, who is largely out of the public eye, does not announce donation values unless the recipients do.

    Number of the week: 900+

    The number of layoff notices the University of Southern California has issued since July. The private institution’s leadership said last week that it is “on track” to eliminate its longstanding deficit by the end of the fiscal year, following the significant cost-cutting measures.

    Cuts and Closures

    • Trinity Christian College, in Illinois, announced it will shutter at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year, citing ongoing financial issues such as persistent budget deficits and falling enrollment. In addition to establishing teach-out and transfer pathways, the private liberal arts college is allowing students to go over course load maximums with the goal of graduating as many as possible before closing.
    • Another religious college in Illinois, the University of St. Francis, is taking steps to address budgetary issues. The university has laid off 18 staff and administrators following a $9 million deficit in fiscal 2024. It also notified “a number of faculty” that it was not renewing their contracts, which Joliet Patch reported as affecting another 18 employees.
    • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is facing pushback against its chancellor’s proposal to eliminate six academic programs. An internal advisory group voted to oppose ending four of the programs and raised concerns with the methods and pace UNL’s leadership used to decide which degrees should be on the chopping block.

    Guidance for college leaders

    • Colleges undergoing significant restructuring must be prepared to “craft a positive narrative” about it and their involvement, according to the latest edition of the regular opinion series Merger Watch. Throughout mergers, acquisitions and even closures, college leaders need to own these narratives — or others will craft them instead, writes Ricardo Azziz, a consolidation expert who pens the series.
    • A federal judge on Thursday ruled the Trump administration must fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown — a decision the government has already appealed. Given the legal back-and-forth, it’s unclear when SNAP recipients will get their benefits, warned The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a resource and policy center at Temple University. The center is offering administrators and campus leaders a toolkit to help support food-insecure students during this “period of uncertainty.”

    Quote of the Week:

    This is the end of an era. Even if things settle out, the damage has already been done.

    Michael Lubell

    Physics professor at City College of New York

    Under an August presidential order, Trump administration political appointees at federal agencies now have the power to ensure grant awards align with the federal government’s “priorities and the national interest” and don’t promote undefined “anti-American values.”

    Academics and researchers like Lubell are raising alarms that the change — yet another significant departure from scientific funding norms — will erode U.S. research.

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  • How colleges can help students affected by SNAP disruption

    How colleges can help students affected by SNAP disruption

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    As the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history drags on, student advocates are urging colleges to step up and support those affected by a loss of food benefits.

    The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the government’s largest anti-hunger program, supports about 1 in 8 Americans in an average month. And its funding has never before lapsed during a government shutdown.

    However, the Trump administration refused to use emergency funds to sustain SNAP this time, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in October claiming that “the well has run dry.”

    Last week, two federal judges ordered the federal government to fund SNAP, at least in part, via emergency reserves during the shutdown. Then on Thursday, one of those judges issued another ruling requiring the administration to fully fund the program by Friday.

    But when SNAP recipients will actually receive their benefits is unclear.

    The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a resource and policy center at Temple University, estimated that 1.1 million college students are affected by the lapse in SNAP, citing 2024 data from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

    Colleges seeking to support affected students should expand their services and regularly communicate updates to their campuses, according to a toolkit published by the center.

    Where colleges can make a difference

    The Hope Center warned that the recent court rulings ordering the Trump administration to keep SNAP running with contingency funds will not immediately solve the hunger crisis for recipients, who receive their benefits once a month. 

    “It may take weeks for November benefits to arrive in SNAP recipients’ accounts,” the center’s toolkit said.

    The document, which the center is regularly updating, outlines some programmatic changes colleges can undertake to help mitigate the “damaging effects on student basic needs security during this delay and period of uncertainty.”

    Colleges that have campus food pantries should extend those services’ hours and work to increase the food available, the center said. They should also host donation drives on campus and expand support for emergency aid programs.

    To aid these efforts, the center recommended tapping into alumni networks and advancement campaigns.

    Institutions can offer direct financial assistance to students, such as through grocery gift cards. And campus dining services can provide discounted or free meals for SNAP recipients, the toolkit said. They can also establish or expand programs that allow students to donate unused meal plan dollars.

    At the administrative level, bursars can offer relief by pausing collections on institutional debts or offering waivers to affected students, The Hope Center said. 

    College leaders can also partner with local businesses, asking that the establishments provide discounts or free meals to affected students and their children, the center said.

    While the Trump administration has continued to fund WIC — a federal hunger program specifically for children under age five and women who are pregnant, breastfeeding and recently postpartum — college fathers and students parenting older children are not eligible. 

    However, it may be difficult for colleges to partner with grocery stores to offer affected students a break on their bill.

    The USDA last week warned grocery stores against offering discounts to SNAP recipients amid the lapse in benefits. Doing so without a waiver from the agency could result in the stores losing their ability to accept SNAP funds — a crucial source of income for small grocers and those in low-earning areas.

    Communication confusion

    Throughout the shutdown, the executive branch’s chaotic messaging about SNAP funds has added confusion for students and colleges.

    On Tuesday, after the initial court orders, USDA told state and regional leaders overseeing SNAP said it would fund the program with recipients getting at most 50% of their benefits. The agency then said the following day that they would receive up to 65% of their benefits. Neither update gave a timeline for distribution.

    But President Donald Trump broke from his administration’s message via social media.

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  • Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Dive Brief:

    • The average tuition and fees paid by students and their families after aid rose slightly for the 2025-26 academic year but remain well below historic peaks, according to the latest higher education pricing study from the College Board. 
    • At public four-year colleges, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students increased just 1.3% to $2,300 from last year, when adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board’s estimates. That figure is down 48.3% from the peak in 2012-2013. 
    • At private nonprofits, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students rose 3.7% annually to $16,910 in the 2025-26 year, when adjusted for inflation. By comparison, that’s down 14.6% from the peak for private colleges in 2006-07.

    Dive Insight:

    Despite widespread debate over the cost of college, in real terms those costs have largely decreased for students over the past two decades. Grants from both public and institutional sources can defray those costs and often significantly reduce college sticker prices. 

    In 2024-25, grant aid rose an inflation-adjusted 5.4% to $173.7 billion, according to the College Board. Much of that increase comes from a 19% spike in Pell Grant aid, which went to nearly 1 million more students during the 2024-25 year. Enrollment in the program rebounded and eligibility expanded under the FAFSA Simplification Act. 

    Last year’s 7.3 million Pell recipients still fell well below the program’s height of 9.3 million in 2010-11. Total government spending on Pell, at $38.6 billion in 2024-25, was down about one-fourth from its peak in 2010-11 after inflation. 

    Institutional aid plays a significant role in reducing sticker prices as well, and increasingly so as colleges wrestle with enrollment pressures and competition. Grant aid from colleges made up 33% of the $205.2 billion in total student aid, which includes federal loans, for undergraduates in 2024-25. That’s compared to 23% a decade earlier, according to the College Board study. 

    That has reduced the burden for students. Average student debt for bachelor’s degree recipients in 2023-24 was $29,560, about $6,000 less than it was 10 years prior, according to the report.

    While sticker prices have been rising, adjusting for inflation tempers the price growth. Before inflation, tuition and fees for residents rose 2.9% at four-year public colleges in 2025-26, while sticker prices rose 4% at private nonprofits. After factoring in inflation, those sticker price increases were 1% and 1.4%, respectively. 

    Still, the public often focuses on sticker price, and tuition discounting often muddies the college cost picture. Although tuition discounting often helps colleges recruit students, some experts say high sticker prices can scare off those not attuned to the complexities of college pricing and can distort the public conversation around cost. 

    The College Board also found that college enrollment has rebounded from a pandemic-era dip. Fall enrollment hit 18.9 million students in 2023, up from 18.5 million in 2022 and 18.6 million in 2021. However, that figure is down 9.6% from peak enrollment in 2011. 

    Enrollment pressures are likely to increase amid projected declines in high school graduates in the coming years.

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  • Colleges build environmental lessons into degrees

    Colleges build environmental lessons into degrees

    by Olivia Sanchez, The Hechinger Report
    November 5, 2025

    LA JOLLA, Calif. — On a Thursday this fall, hundreds of students at the University of California, San Diego, were heading to classes that, at least on paper, seemed to have very little to do with their majors. 

    Hannah Jenny, an economics and math major, was on their way to a class on sustainable development. Angelica Pulido, a history major who aspires to work in the museum world, was getting ready for a course on gender and climate justice. Later that evening, others would show up for a lecture on economics of the environment, where they would learn how to calculate the answer to questions such as: “How many cents extra per gallon of gas are people willing to pay to protect seals from oil spills?”

    Although most of these students don’t aspire to careers in climate science or advocacy, the university is betting that it’s just as important for them to understand the science and societal implications of climate change as it is for them to understand literature and history, even if they’re not planning to become writers or historians. UCSD is perhaps the first major public university in the country to require all undergraduate students to take a class on climate change to earn their degree. 

    The requirement, which rolled out with first-year students last fall, came about because UCSD leaders believe students won’t be prepared for the workforce if they don’t understand climate change. Around the globe, global warming is already causing severe droughts, water scarcity, fires, rising sea levels, flooding, storms and declining biodiversity; leaders at UCSD argue every job will be affected. 

    And even as President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax and cancels funding for research on it, other colleges are also exploring how to ensure students are knowledgeable about the subject. Arizona State University began requiring that students take a class in sustainability last year, while San Francisco State University added a climate justice class requirement to begin this fall. 

    “You can’t avoid climate change,” said Amy Lerner, a professor in the urban planning department at UCSD. “You can’t escape it in the private sector. You can’t escape it in the public sector. It’s just everywhere.” Students, she said, must be made ready to engage with all of its likely consequences.

    Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.

    UCSD, a public university that serves roughly 35,000 undergraduate students, is not demanding that everyone sign up for Climate Change 101. Instead, students can fulfill the requirement by taking any of more than 50 classes in at least 23 disciplines across the university, including sustainable development, the course Jenny is taking. 

    There’s also psychology of the climate crisis, religion and ecology, energy economics, and several classes in the environmental science and oceanography departments, among others. And leaders at the university are working to develop more classes that satisfy the requirement, including one on the life cycle of a computer.

    Bryan Alexander, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of a book on higher education and the climate crisis, said that while colleges have long taught about climate change in classes related to ecology, climatology and environmental science, it’s only been in the last decade or so that he’s seen other disciplines tackle the topic. 

    Climate change, Alexander said, “is the new liberal arts” — and colleges should take it seriously. 

    K. Wayne Yang, a UCSD provost who served on the original group that advocated for the requirement, said every industry and career field will experience the effects of climate change in some way. Health care providers need to know how to treat people who have been exposed to extreme heat or wildfire smoke; psychologists need to understand climate anxiety; and café owners need to know how the price of coffee changes in response to droughts or other natural disasters in coffee-growing regions.  

    Jenny, the senior taking a class on sustainable development, is eager to get answers to a question that has, in their three years as an economics and mathematics major, become difficult not to ponder: How can economic growth be the silver bullet of societal change if it has so many negative consequences for the planet?

    “It’s definitely my hope that this is a class that will teach me something new about how to consider humanity’s path forward without destroying this earth, without destroying each other, without sacrificing quality of life for any person on this planet,” Jenny said. 

    Jenny isn’t subject to the requirement because they entered college before it rolled out. But they said they like the idea of encouraging students to step outside their comfort zones and fields of study and, in many cases, consider their future career paths in the context of the changing climate.

    Other students, like junior Pulido, don’t see a specific link between climate change and their future careers. Pulido, who has spent the last few years working in the visitors center at San Diego’s Balboa Park and aspires to work in museums, said she signed up for the gender and climate justice class simply because it sounded interesting to her. She believes climate change is important, and she’s hoping that taking this class will help give her a better idea of how its role in history and might play into her career.

    Related: How colleges can become ‘living labs’ for combating climate change  

    Colleges are taking different approaches to teaching their students about climate change, with some requiring a course in sustainability, a broad discipline that goes beyond the specific scientific phenomenon of climate change.

    At Arizona State, sustainability classes can cover anything about how human, social, economic, political and cultural choices affect human and environmental well-being generally, said Anne Jones, the university’s vice provost for undergraduate education.

    Dickinson and Goucher colleges have had such requirements since 2015 and 2007, respectively. 

    At San Francisco State University, leaders said they instead chose to require climate justice for all students, beginning with the class of 2029, because of the urgency of understanding how climate change affects communities differently. 

    Students need to understand broader systems of oppression and privilege so that they can address the unequal effects of climate change for “communities of color, low-income communities, global south communities and other marginalized communities,” said Autumn Thoyre, co-director of Climate HQ, the university’s center for climate education, research and action.

    Yang and other UCSD leaders believe that, despite the increased politicization of climate change under Trump, they’ve received little pushback on the new requirement because of the university’s reputation as a climate-concerned institution. (It descended from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, initially founded in 1903.) But this model may not work as well on other campuses. 

    In communities where people’s livelihoods depend on activities that contribute to climate change, like coal mining or oil production, educators may have to modify their approach so as to not come off as offensive or threatening, said Jo Tavares, director of the California Center for Climate Change Education at West Los Angeles College. 

    “Messaging is so important, and education cannot be done in a way that just forces facts upon people,” Tavares said. 

    Related: One state mandates teaching about climate change in almost all subjects — even PE

    At UCSD, to meet the graduation requirement, a course must be at least 30 percent about climate change: For example, a class that meets twice a week for a 10-week term must have at least six of its 20 sessions be about climate change. And the course syllabus must address at least two of the following four categories: the scientific aspects; human and social dimensions; project-based learning; or solutions.

    The first time Lerner, the urban studies professor, applied for her sustainable development course to count toward the requirement, in July 2024, the committee told her she needed to better explain how the class addressed climate change. It wasn’t enough to simply have “sustainable” in the course name, committee members told her; she had to better articulate the role of climate change in sustainable development, a course she’s been teaching some version of for nearly 20 years. 

    Her students helped her go through the syllabus and identify all the points where she was teaching about how development contributes to climate change, even if she wasn’t explicitly putting those words to paper. After Lerner revised the descriptions of the class topics and made a few additions, the class was approved, she said. 

    On that fall Thursday, Lerner walked around her large glass-walled classroom while discussing development and globalization with the 65 undergraduate students in her sustainable development class. They covered how to balance equity, economy and environment in development, as well as various ways to measure the well-being of societies, including gross national income, food security, birthrate and infant mortality, happiness, fertility, education and lifespan. Lerner peppered her lecture with jokes and relatable examples, asking, for example, how many siblings students had before explaining the role of fertility and birth rate in a healthy society. (One student had 12, but the average was closer to two.)

    Lerner, who now chairs the committee that decides which classes meet the requirement, said most of her students come in with the understanding that climate change is caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and some have even used an online tool to calculate their own carbon footprints. Often, their education has been focused on the hard science aspect of climate change, but they haven’t learned about what society has experienced as a result of climate change, she said. 

    When she asks them what can be done about climate change, she said, “they’re deer in the headlights.”

    Related: Changing education could change the climate

    Across campus, economics professor Mark Jacobsen teaches a lecture class every Thursday night on the economics of the environment. It meets the climate change requirement, but it also covers a core economics idea, he said: achieving efficiency. 

    Jacobsen is teaching students the formulas and methods they’ll need to answer questions like whether it’s worth it to spend $1 billion now to build renewable energy sources to avoid $10 billion in natural disaster cleanup in 30 years.

    Though Jenny hasn’t taken Jacobsen’s class, this is exactly the type of dilemma they’re worried about. 

    Jenny, a public transit enthusiast so dedicated that they got a commercial driver’s license just to drive for Triton Transit, the campus bus system, said the requirement encourages students to face the climate crisis rather than shy away from it. 

    “It can be easy to kind of put your head down and be like, ‘That is too big for me to think about, and too scary,’” Jenny said. But it’s imperative, they added, that students be “forced to reckon with it and think about it and talk about it, to have that knowledge kind of swirling around in your head.” 

    Contact staff writer Olivia Sanchez at 212-678-8402 or [email protected]. 

    This story about climate literacy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our climate and education newsletter and for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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  • Colleges Pay Students to Participate in Events on Campus

    Colleges Pay Students to Participate in Events on Campus

    Since 2020, faculty, staff and administrators have noticed a trend among incoming college students: They don’t know how to make friends. Data affirms this—fewer students said they studied with classmates, volunteered or participated in clubs or organizations in 2023 than in 2019, according to a 2025 report from the Student Experience in the Research University Consortium.

    At the same time, student engagement and belonging correlate with academic success. Past surveys show that students who engage in extracurricular activities are more likely to feel that they belong on campus and that it’s easier to make friends. Extracurriculars can advance students’ career skills such as leadership and communication, as well as develop their professional interests.

    The challenge for institutions, therefore, is how to reverse the trend toward disengagement and emphasize on-campus connections.

    Some colleges are moving beyond offering free T-shirts and raffle prizes to encourage event attendance and moving straight to giving out cash, recognizing that finances are often the biggest barrier to student participation.

    State of play: An August 2025 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 36 percent of students have not participated in an extracurricular or co-curricular activity on campus. About one-third of students said they were involved in a few activities, and 17 percent said they were very involved in one activity.

    Adult learners (65 percent) and two-year students were least likely to say they’ve participated in campus activities (64 percent), as were students who had dropped out for a semester (63 percent), students working at least 30 hours per week (55 percent), first-generation students (49 percent) and Hispanic students (48 percent).

    The biggest hang-up for students: finances. As the costs of attending college continue to rise, a greater share of students work while enrolled. Seventy percent of Student Voice respondents said they hold a job in a typical semester, and 30 percent of those students work full-time.

    When asked their top source of stress while in college, students pointed to balancing academics with other financial and personal obligations (50 percent) or paying for college (38 percent). An additional 22 percent indicated that paying for personal expenses was a top stressor.

    Rather than ask students to choose between work or campus activities, administrators are creating avenues to pay students for certain university-led activities, such as attending workshops, engaging with support resources or investing in their health.

    Points for participation: Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., is launching a points-based incentive program next spring, called Blueprint Rewards, that translates on-campus participation into scholarship dollars and discounts at the campus store. The initiative builds on previous investments in co-curriculars including a student-facing app, Blueprint, and digital badging, which were implemented in 2018 and 2021, respectively.

    Under Blueprint Rewards, some campus events are designated as points-bearing in Blueprint, denoted by the abbreviation SET, for Student Engagement Transcript.

    Each SET event is worth between one and 10 points. After reaching 20 points connected to a given theme, students unlock a badge. The six badges are loosely modeled on the National Association for Colleges and Employers’ career competencies: leadership, accountability, problem-solving, growth mindset, collaboration and adaptability.

    For example, activities that count toward the growth mindset badge include participating in a mindfulness event (worth one point), attending a fitness center training (five points) or becoming a wellness educator on campus (10 points).

    After completing one badge, students also earn $500 in scholarship dollars, which is applied to the following year’s tuition, making the program a retention strategy as well.

    Students unlock scholarships and other rewards as they complete various badges in the Blueprint Rewards program.

    Students can redeem up to $1,000 in badge dollars toward tuition each academic year. Administrators elected to cap badge scholarships at two per academic year to ensure students are juggling their academic and other responsibilities with campus participation, according to a FAQ page.

    If they finish all six badges, students can opt to enroll in a no-tuition graduate-level course after their senior year, a value of $2,250.

    If they complete three badges by the end of their junior year, students can gain an additional $1,500 toward participation in a faculty-led experience in the U.S. or abroad. The goal is to encourage study-away experiences, and the badges (adaptability, problem-solving and accountability) help make sure the student is adequately prepared for travel.

    The program was announced Oct. 29, and full-time undergraduate students can start earning rewards in January. Since launching the digital badges in 2021, the university has seen the number of student engagements in co-curricular activities grow 65 percent, President Kevin Ross said.

    “Blueprint Rewards builds on that momentum—helping students lower tuition costs while earning résumé-boosting credentials and scholarships that recognize their engagement and career readiness,” Ross said.

    Another model: Administrators at Lynn aren’t the only campus officials using financial incentives to get students out of their dorm rooms and gaining life skills.

    The University of Kentucky’s UK Invests both rewards students for engaging in health and wellness activities and provides financial literacy and investment education. The university dedicated $1 million for the first year and has received philanthropic support to continue awarding students money.

    UK students who open a Fidelity savings account and deposit $25 are given $50 by the investment firm; each event they attend could be worth as much as an additional $50 in their accounts.

    Student behaviors are tracked on three platforms—Handshake, SUMO and BBNvolved—and participation data is used to establish how much money the student earned, which is then deposited into the student’s Fidelity account. The university processes payments to student accounts every other Friday.

    There is no cap on how much money a student can earn in a given year under UK Invests, but there is a limit to which events have financial incentives attached. For example, a student who uses the gym is paid $5 for visiting the gym three times in one week, but the student isn’t eligible to earn money after six weeks.

    The goal for the university, in addition to encouraging students to take advantage of the various offerings on campus, is to ensure graduates leave with a return on investment for their degree and some cash in savings.

    We bet your colleague would like this article, too. Send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter on Student Success.

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  • Trump Partially Funds SNAP, Colleges Scramble

    Trump Partially Funds SNAP, Colleges Scramble

    In the last week, campuses scrambled to shore up resources as 42 million Americans, including over a million college students, prepared to lose federal assistance to buy food. Payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, didn’t go out on the first of the month as they normally would amid the ongoing government shutdown.

    Now the Trump administration plans to dole out some of the benefits this month—but not all—in response to two federal court orders.

    In court filings Monday, the Trump administration agreed to expend emergency reserves to issue partial benefits this month, but also said the funds will only cover half of eligible households’ current benefits. And for at least some states, payments could take months to come through because of bureaucratic hurdles.

    Erika Roberson, senior policy associate at the Institute for College Access and Success, said she worries students who rely on SNAP will still get less food than they need.

    “Some food is not nearly enough food—especially when students are left to decide between finding their next meal and studying for an exam,” Roberson said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “Food should not be a luxury, but today, sadly, many college students are finding themselves in a position where that’s their reality.”

    And while partial benefits are better than none at all, some questions remain unanswered. It’s unclear whether all SNAP recipients will get half of their benefits or whether some will get less than others this month, said Mark Huelsman, director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University. He also expects payments to be delayed.

    “I think that it still holds that campuses and food pantries and community organizations are going to be stretched pretty thin in the coming weeks,” Huelsman said, “even if the courts did the right thing here and stepped in and made sure that people’s benefits weren’t completely withheld.”

    Campuses ‘Plan for the Worst’

    Colleges and universities across the country have been furiously stocking up their campus pantries and expanding on-campus food programs in preparation for a pause in SNAP.

    Southeast Community College in Nebraska typically runs a food drive in November for the food pantries on its three campuses. But this year, the college started its drive a month early, predicting a surge of students in need. Already, the Lincoln campus’s pantry went from serving 49 students two years ago to 505 students this September, said Jennifer Snyder, communications specialist at Southeast Community College. That number is only expected to grow. The college also plans to run a fundraising campaign for its emergency scholarship fund in case more students need aid than usual.

    Ramping up these supports comes with challenges, Snyder said. Campus pantries used to be able to stock up by buying items at a low price from local food banks, but food banks are holding on to more of their goods as they also prepare for increases in demand. As campus pantries become harder to fill, Snyder worries staff members will have to make difficult decisions about how much food students can take.

    “The need is there, and the demand is there, but the supply just keeps dwindling,” Snyder said. “So, how do you make it even? How do you make it fair for everybody so that everybody has access?”

    Snyder said the Trump administration’s promise to partially fund SNAP this month hasn’t changed the college’s plans.

    “If it’s partial funding, that’s a benefit,” she said. But “you just don’t know when it’s going to be taken away, so we should plan for the worst.”

    Keith Curry, president of Compton College in Los Angeles, also sprang into action when he realized his students’ SNAP benefits were at risk.

    The college already offers students one free meal per day through a partnership with the nonprofit Everytable. Starting Wednesday, the college is upping the number to two free meals daily for students participating in CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, and CalWORKs, a state benefit program for low-income families. CalWORKs students will also get $50 in grocery vouchers per week, and students in either program get an extra $20 in farmers market vouchers per week.

    Compton College also has a data-sharing agreement with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services that helps the college identify students who are eligible for CalFresh and CalWORKs to offer them extra supports, if students sign a waiver allowing it. The college plans to lean on that partnership to verify more students participating in these programs who are now eligible for Compton College’s new supports. The college and Everytable are splitting the costs of the additional free meals, and the college plans to reassess the political situation every Friday to determine whether the extra measures are still needed.

    “We’re moving forward, because we don’t know what the impact will be to our students,” Curry said. “We don’t know how much they will actually receive. And our students need us more now than ever before. People are waiting for their benefits, and they’ve got to figure it out. Students are in a precarious position where they already have other needs.”

    The Foundation for California Community Colleges expects more than 275,000 students in the system will be affected by SNAP payment delays, according to an emergency fundraising campaign launched Monday.

    Grant Tingley, 41, is one of those students. He’s a student at Cypress College and an ambassador for the foundation whose job is to spread information about student food and housing resources. He’s also a SNAP recipient himself. In preparation for SNAP’s lapse, he’s been working with community organizations and other students to create a database of local food pantries and is pushing his campus food pantry to expand its hours.

    Tingley emphasized that hunger makes it harder for the most vulnerable students to focus on their schoolwork. He’s also a student worker at Rising Scholars, a support program for formerly incarcerated students, students with incarcerated family members or students recovering from substance use, like himself. He fears these students in particular are at risk of losing academic momentum.

    “They’re a group of people that have been beaten down repeatedly, time after time, and sometimes a small roadblock can really be a huge impediment for them going forward and continuing on their path,” he said. “Every little roadblock that we put in front of these students is almost make or break.”

    Huelsman, of the Hope Center, encouraged colleges and universities to keep pushing forward plans to bolster student food supports and emergency aid as students divert funds they use for housing and other necessities to groceries. The Hope Center also put out a guide to help colleges navigate how to support students through disrupted SNAP benefits.

    Even with partial benefits flowing, “every contingency plan and every preparation that institutions were making to help students weather this is still live,” he said. “Students are going to still feel a pretty severe disruption. And there’s just general confusion about what’s next.”

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  • 4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

    4 Weeks Into Shutdown, Colleges, Students Running Out of Options

    The government has been shut down for a month and Congress remains locked in a stalemate. Students are going hungry, veterans have been deserted and vital research has been left in the lurch. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more harm it will do to higher education.

    Most urgently, the USDA will not use emergency funds to help cover the costs of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. More than a million college students who rely on SNAP for their basic needs won’t have that support starting Saturday. Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, said the situation will force students and colleges into “an impossible situation” and could lead to many students dropping out.

    The crisis extends beyond food insecurity into student support programs, with the shutdown throwing veterans’ education into limbo. Nobody is answering the GI Bill hotline that thousands of veterans use each month to get information on tuition, eligibility and housing allowances. Staff at Veterans Affairs regional offices are furloughed, putting an end to career counseling and delaying GI Bill claims.

    As direct services to students falter, colleges are moving into mitigation mode. Gap funds, meant to serve institutions in these circumstances, are dwindling. Inside Higher Ed reported last week that institutions are limiting travel, research and job offers in order to preserve cash while hundreds of millions in research funds are on pause. A training program funded by a grant from the Labor Department is on hold because a federal program officer isn’t at work to approve the next tranche of cash.

    Ironically, part of Democrats’ resistance to reopening the government is serving to protect higher ed funding. Democrats are trying to prevent Republicans from clawing back approved funding through the rescissions process, like they did this summer with grants to public broadcasting and USAID. The risk to education funds that don’t align with the White House’s priorities is real. In a potentially illegal move of impoundment, the Department of Education has canceled or rejected funding for at least 100 TRIO programs affecting more than 43,000 disadvantaged students. Last month it reallocated $132 million in funds away from minority-serving institutions to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges.

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration—never one to let a good crisis go to waste—is using the shutdown to further gut the Education Department. Most of the department has been furloughed, and 10 days into the shutdown the administration fired nearly 500 more Education Department staff. A federal judge indefinitely blocked the layoffs this week, but the administration will likely challenge the ruling. If the cuts happen, the department will have fewer than half the employees it started with in January. The offices that handle civil rights complaints, TRIO funding and special education will be decimated.

    The staff cuts set the stage for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reiterate her plans to shutter the department. In a post on X two weeks into the shutdown, she said the fact that millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid and schools are operating as normal during the shutdown “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states.”

    “The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” she added.

    Policy experts predict the shutdown will end around mid-November, when enough people feel the pain of not getting a paycheck and start to complain to their senators and representatives. But colleges won’t pick up where they left off. A significant pause in funding derails education journeys for disadvantaged students and throttles valuable scientific research. Subject matter expertise and human resources will be lost through Education Department staffing cuts. Already on the defense after nearly a year of attacks on DEI, academic freedom and research funding by the administration, higher ed will struggle to recover from yet another blow.

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  • Higher ed groups push for colleges to be exempt from $100K H-1B visa fee

    Higher ed groups push for colleges to be exempt from $100K H-1B visa fee

    Dive Brief:

    • Nearly three dozen higher education organizations are urging U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to exempt colleges from the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa petitions, arguing in an Oct. 23 letter that these employees do work “crucial to the U.S. economy.”
    • President Donald Trump caught the higher education sector by surprise when he announced the large fee last month. Large research universities heavily rely on the H-1B visa program to hire international scholars. 
    • Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said in the Thursday letter that colleges’ H-1B workers educate domestic students for “high-demand occupations, conduct essential research, provide critical patient care, and support the core infrastructure of our universities.” 

    Dive Insight: 

    Trump shocked the higher ed world sector on Sept. 19 when he declared that new petitions for H-1B visas must come with a $100,000 payment to be processed. Yet colleges were left unsure which of their workers would be impacted amid scant details on the new policy and mixed messages from administration officials. The federal government is facing at least two lawsuits over the fee.

    In the days and weeks since the fee was announced, the Trump administration has released additional information about the new policy. Just last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released guidance that said the new fee wouldn’t apply to visa holders inside the country who are requesting a change of status or extension of stay — potentially exempting international students who recently graduated and have H1-B sponsorship. 

    Mitchell’s letter asked Noem to confirm that the new USCIS guidance includes those on F-1 or J-1 visas — both of which cover international students — converting to H-1B status. He also asked if the government would return the $100,000 fee if a petition is denied and how USCIS would process H-1B applications in a timely manner given the new requirements. 

    The letter points out that the proclamation included language that allows DHS to issue exemptions for workers if government officials deem hiring them is in the nation’s interest and doesn’t pose a security risk. 

    “The continuing education of our postsecondary students is in the national interest of the United States,” Mitchell wrote. 

    He cited recent CUPA-HR data showing that 7 in 10 faculty on H-1B visas in the U.S. are in tenured or tenure-track positions, with the largest shares in business, engineering and health disciplines. 

    Mitchell contended that exempting colleges from the new fee would be similar to the higher education sector’s current exemption from the cap on H-1B visas, which are awarded via a lottery process. The cap limits annual H-1B visa awards to 65,000 workers, with an additional 20,000 for international students who finished U.S. graduate programs. 

    Congress exempted higher education from the cap in recognition “of the special role that institutions of higher education play in hiring H-1Bs on our campuses,” Mitchell wrote. 

    ACE also took issue with a recent proposal that would change how the lottery system works. Under the new proposal from USCIS, visas for higher-wage applicants would be given more priority. 

    Mitchell urged USCIS to withdraw the rule in a public comment submitted Friday on behalf of ACE and 19 other higher education groups. He argued the change would harm international enrollment, as foreign students entering the workforce after completing their degrees at U.S. institutions would have much lower access to the H-1B visa program. 

    “A central reason for the excellence of our postsecondary institutions is their ability to attract and enroll talented, motivated, and curious students, whether born in this country or abroad,” Mitchell wrote. “This proposed rule will limit the ability of our institutions to recruit and retain these students, especially those that wish to remain in the United States.”

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