Tag: Degrees

  • More 4-year colleges offer 2-year degrees to reach new groups of students (PBS NewsHour)

    More 4-year colleges offer 2-year degrees to reach new groups of students (PBS NewsHour)

    About one in four college students is both first-generation and from low-income backgrounds, making the path to a college degree especially challenging. At Boston College’s Messina College, a new, two-year, fully residential associates degree program, a wide range of support is helping change that. John Yang visited the campus to learn more as part of our ongoing series, Rethinking College.

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  • As the job market tightens, workers without degrees could hit a ‘paper ceiling’

    As the job market tightens, workers without degrees could hit a ‘paper ceiling’

    by Lawrence Lanahan, The Hechinger Report
    December 2, 2025

    DENVER — On a bus headed downtown, Cherri McKinney opened a compact mirror and — even as the vehicle rattled and blinding morning sun filled the window — skillfully applied eyeliner.

    McKinney is a licensed aesthetician. She went into bookkeeping after graduating from high school in 1992, then ran a waxing salon for years. Later she shifted into human resources at a homeless shelter. But stepping off the bus, she started her work day as a benefits and leave administrator for Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment.

    She wouldn’t have made it past some hiring managers.

    “My background is kind of all over the place,” McKinney said. “You might have looked at my résumé and thought, ‘Wow, this girl doesn’t have a college education.’”

    In fact, Colorado’s state government was looking for workers just like her. In 2022, Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing state agencies to embrace “skills-based hiring” — evaluating job seekers based on abilities rather than education level — and to open more positions to applicants without college diplomas. When McKinney interviewed with the state in the summer of 2024, she said, she was asked practical questions about topics like the Family Medical Leave Act, not about her academic background.

    For a decade, workforce organizations, researchers and public officials have pushed employers to stop requiring bachelor’s degrees for jobs that don’t need them. That’s a response to a hiring trend that began during the Great Recession, when job seekers vastly outnumbered open positions and employers increased their use of bachelor’s degree requirements for many jobs — like administrative assistants, construction supervisors and insurance claims clerks — that people without college diplomas had capably handled. The so-called “paper ceiling,” advocates say, locks skilled workers without degrees out of good-paying jobs. Degree requirements hurt employers, too, advocates argue, by screening out valuable talent.

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    In recent years, at least 26 states, along with private companies like IBM and Accenture, began stripping degree requirements and focusing hiring practices on applicants’ skills. A job seeker’s market after Covid, plus labor shortages in the public sector, boosted momentum. Seven states showed double-digit percentage increases in job listings without a degree requirement between 2019 and 2024, according to the National Governors Association. A 2022 report from labor analytics firm Burning Glass (recently renamed Lightcast) found degree requirements disappearing from private sector listings too.

    But less evidence has emerged of employers actually hiring nondegreed job seekers in substantial numbers, and a crumbling economic outlook could stall momentum. Last year, Burning Glass and Harvard Business School found that less than 1 in 700 hires in 2023 benefited from the shift to skills-based hiring. Federal layoffs and other cuts pushing more workers with degrees into the job hunt could tempt employers to return to using the bachelor’s as a filtering mechanism.

    “I think it’s a sort of do-or-die moment” for skills-based hiring, said Amanda Winters, who advises state governments on skills-based hiring at the nonprofit National Governors Association.

    Winters said the shift to hiring for skills requires time-consuming structural changes. Human resource departments must rewrite job descriptions, and hiring managers must be trained to change their approach to interviewing to assess candidates for skills, among other steps. And even then, said Winters, there’s no reason for managers not to prefer applicants with college degrees if they indeed have the skills.

    Related: Students worried about getting jobs are adding extra majors

    Colorado is trying to push employers, both public and private, to make this shift. Polis’ 2022 order devoted $700,000 and three staffers to institutionalizing skills-based hiring in state government. According to a case study by the National Governors Association and the nonprofit Opportunity@Work, the state is working with human resources departments at individual agencies, training them to rewrite job descriptions to spell out skills (for example, “active listening and interpersonal skills”). When posting a job, hiring managers are encouraged to click a box that reads: “I have considered removing the degree requirement for this role.” 

    Polis’ team also built a dashboard to track progress toward “Wildly Important Goals” related to skills-based hiring — like boosting the share of job applicants without a bachelor’s degree by 5 percent by summer 2026. State officials say about 80 percent of job classifications (categories of jobs with specific pay scales and responsibilities — for example, Human Resources Specialist III or Accountant I) now emphasize skills over degrees.

    All told, the state says, 25 percent of hires within those job classifications in 2024 — 1,588 in total — were people without degrees, roughly the same share as in 2023, when the state began collecting this information. Similar data from other states on their success in hiring skilled, nondegreed workers is scarce. State officials from Maryland and Pennsylvania, two of the first states with executive orders dropping degree requirements, said they track education levels of applicants but not of new hires. 

    To spark skills-based hiring in the private sector, the Colorado Workforce Development Council, a quasi-governmental group appointed by the governor, encourages local workforce boards to help assess employers’ needs and job seekers’ skills.

    One of those boards — Pikes Peak Workforce Center in Colorado Springs — conducts workshops for local businesses on skills-based hiring and helps them write job descriptions that emphasize skills. When a company registers for a job fair, said CEO Traci Marques, the center asks both what positions are open and which skills are needed for them.

    The center also teaches job seekers to identify their skills and show employers how they apply in different fields. A recent high school graduate who served on student council, Marques said, might discuss what that role taught them about time management, conflict resolution and event planning.

    The goal is for skills to become the lingua franca between employers and job seekers. “It’s really that matchmaking where we fit in,” Marques said.

    One new matchmaking tool is learning and employment records, or LERs. These digital records allow job seekers to verify their degrees, credentials and skills with former schools and workplaces and then share them with potential employers. Two years ago, a philanthropic coalition granted the Colorado Workforce Development Council $1.4 million to create LER systems.

    LERs are still in the early stages of development, but advocates say they could eventually allow more precise matching of employers’ needs with job seekers’ skills.

    Once nondegreed workers get in the door, employers can also see payoffs, said Cole Napper, vice president of research, innovation and talent insights at Lightcast. His research shows that workers hired for skills get promoted at almost the same rate as education-based hires and stay at their jobs longer.

    But as the labor market cools, the question now is whether people without four-year degrees will get in the door in the first place. Nationally, job growth has slowed. Maryland and Colorado froze hiring this summer for state positions.

    At a recent job fair at Pikes Peak, single mother Yvette Stanton made her way around the tables, some featuring placards that read “Skills-Based Hiring.” After a few months at a sober living facility, Stanton had lined up day care and was ready to work. She clutched a green folder with a résumé documenting certifications vouching for her skills in phlebotomy and medication administration. “When you have more certifications, there are better job opportunities,” said Stanton.

    She approached a table for the Colorado Department of Corrections. Human resources specialist Jack Zeller told her that prisons do need workers with medical certifications, and he said she could also apply to be a corrections officer. But, he said — holding out his phone to show her the job application site — she should wait until Jan. 1.

    “If the hiring freeze ends like it’s supposed to,” he said, “there’s gonna be a billion jobs going up on the website.”

    Related: Apprenticeships for high schoolers are touted as the next big thing. One state leads the way      

    Colorado works not just on the demand side, pushing employers to seek out workers based on their skills, but also on the supply side, to arm people who might not choose college with marketable skills and help them find jobs in in-demand industries.

    The Polis administration encourages high schools and community colleges to make available industry-recognized credentials — including certified nursing assistant, certified associate in project management and the CompTIA cybersecurity certification— that can earn students credits while giving them skills for better-paying jobs. The governor is also making a big bet on work-based learning opportunities in high school and community college, especially apprenticeships.

    If employers meet talented workers who lack degrees, they’ll grow more comfortable hiring for skills, said Sarah Heath, who directs career and technical education for the Colorado Community College System. “You’ve got to prove it to people to get them to buy into it,” she said.

    At Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, President Landon Pirius has set a goal of eventually providing a work-based learning experience to every graduate. Earlier this year, the college hired a work-based learning coordinator and an apprenticeship coordinator, and it partners with Northrop Grumman on a registered apprenticeship that lets cybersecurity students earn money while getting technical instruction and on-the-job learning.

    In his frequent discussions with regional employers, Pirius said, “the message is consistently skill-based hiring.” He added: “Our manufacturers are like, ‘I don’t even care about a degree. I just want to know that they can do X, Y, Z skills. So when you’re teaching our students, make sure you teach them these things.’”

    Colorado community colleges also see opportunities to equip students with skills in fields like aerospace, quantum computing, behavioral addiction treatment and mental health counseling, where there’s a growing demand for workers and some jobs can be handled without a four-year degree. In 2022, Colorado gave its community college system $15 million to create pathways to behavioral health careers that don’t require a Master of Social Work degree or even a B.A.

    Related: ‘Not waiting for people to save us’: 9 school districts combine forces to help students

    Colorado’s skill-based talent pipeline extends to high school. In a “Computer Science and Cybersecurity” class at Warren Tech, a high school in Lakewood, Zachary Flower teaches in-demand “soft skills” like problem solving, teamwork and communication.

    “The people who get hired are more often the ones who are better communicators,” said Flower, a software developer who was a director of software engineering and hiring manager for a travel company before he started teaching. Communication skills are half of the grade in Flower’s capstone project: Students communicate independently throughout the year with local industry sponsors, and at the end they present to a panel of engineers and developers.

    Despite the emphasis on skills-based hiring, a 2023 study projected that more than 4 in 10 job openings in Colorado from 2021 through 2031 would require at least a bachelor’s degree — the second-highest proportion of any state in the country — because many industries there, like engineering, health care and business services, require higher education, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.“But there’s still a significant amount of opportunity for people with less than a bachelor’s degree,” said Nicole Smith, chief economist at the center.

    People, in other words, like Cherri McKinney, who couldn’t afford college and didn’t want to spend four years finding her path. McKinney plans to stay in state government, where she believes she can develop more skills and advance without a college degree. Indeed, a 2023 executive order demanded that every state agency develop at least two work-based learning programs by the end of this year.

    Gov. Polis, who championed workers like McKinney, ends his second term in January 2027 and cannot run for reelection. State budgets are fragile in the Trump era. McKinney’s colleagues call often, nervous about their benefits in a time of hiring freezes and government shutdowns.

    McKinney isn’t worried.

    “When I made my first career switch from bookkeeping to aesthetics, what I realized was I am the eye of this storm,” she said. “Things swirl around me, and if I bring myself in my way that I do to my jobs, that’s what is going to create the stability for me.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about job skills was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/no-college-degree-no-problem-not-so-fast/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Strategic Planning for Legacy Programs: Rejuvenating Degrees

    Strategic Planning for Legacy Programs: Rejuvenating Degrees

    Don’t Let Legacy Programs Stall Your Growth

    In higher education today, generating buzz around new program launches is often viewed as the key to growth and market relevance. While there’s nothing wrong with investing in new programs when it makes sense, institutions tend to do so at the expense of existing offerings — including those that built their reputation. Yet legacy programs, when strategically audited and repositioned, can become some of the strongest assets in an institution’s portfolio.

    The challenge is that these programs often don’t receive the same level of attention or investment as new launches. Over time, many become overshadowed — not necessarily because they’ve lost relevance, but because the institution’s focus has shifted. Without consistent evaluation and modernization, the programs may begin to stagnate — enrollments flatten, marketing efforts diminish — while they continue to drain resources and faculty energy.  

    At the same time, legacy programs often hold unique advantages that newer offerings lack: established reputations, loyal alumni networks, and faculty with deep expertise. When they’re reexamined and repositioned through a strategic lens — leveraging internal data, market insight, and refreshed messaging — legacy programs can drive renewed growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace. 

    Auditing Programs for Their Growth Potential 

    A deliberate, data-informed audit of an institution’s programs can be the first step toward revitalizing those that are underperforming. A well-designed audit doesn’t just identify weaknesses — it also can uncover opportunities for renewal and growth. 

    A program life cycle audit assesses the current health of existing programs and tracks their performance over time. Key metrics in an audit might include:

    • Enrollment and retention trends, to gauge the program’s long-term viability
    • Course completion and graduation rates, as indicators of students’ satisfaction and support
    • Employment outcomes, to measure the program’s industry relevance and career alignment
    • Faculty-learner ratio, to ensure efficient use of instructional resources
    • Program search demand trends, to gauge the market’s interest in the program

    This process helps institutions identify whether their legacy programs are declining, stable, or experiencing renewed interest. These insights enable academic leadership teams to direct resources toward the programs that are most likely to drive growth — or sunset programs that no longer advance the institution’s goals.

    Audits shouldn’t rely solely on internal data. Comparing a program’s performance results with market demand data — such as regional job growth projections and competitors’ offerings — can clarify what the program’s challenges are and whether they stem from internal execution or broader shifts in the field. 

    Measuring Program-Market Fit 

    Analyzing a program’s market fit is just as important as evaluating its internal performance. It can help institutions decide which legacy programs need retooling, which ones are suitable for scale, and which ones should be phased out.   

    A program’s market fit analysis doesn’t have to be overly complex. It can begin with three fundamental questions:

    • Is there still demand?
      The analysis should start with a review of labor market data, industry trends, search trends, and alumni outcomes to determine whether a particular field remains robust or if demand is shifting toward other subjects or credentials.
    • How does our program compare?
      The next step is to assess what other institutions are offering in terms of delivery format (such as in-person versus online learning), curriculum, and pricing for similar programs. Understanding the competitive landscape helps identify areas where an institution’s program overlaps with others and where there may be opportunities to differentiate.
    • Does the program align with our institutional strengths?
      Legacy programs often reflect areas where the institution already has deep expertise or established credibility. If those strengths still align with current market demand, they can serve as a solid foundation for a program’s revitalization rather than a reason for its retirement. 

    Evaluating these three dimensions helps determine whether a program needs a full-blown relaunch or a more subtle refresh. The goal isn’t to reinvent for the sake of reinvention. It’s to make sure that each offering continues to serve students while also supporting the institution’s objectives. 

    Relaunching Programs With Purpose: Marketing Strategies 

    When a legacy program still holds value but needs renewed visibility, a structured relaunch can help ensure its continued relevance. Effective relaunches align academic updates, marketing strategy, and admissions communication so that all teams are working toward the same goal: positioning the program for growth. 

    A comprehensive relaunch checklist can help guide this process. Elements to consider include:

    • Program curriculum and delivery updates that reflect today’s learning preferences — such as hybrid or online models to accommodate adult learners — and industry expectations
    • Consistent messaging across marketing and admissions, ensuring that both internal and external audiences understand what’s new
    • Refreshed and tested marketing materials, including program pages and collateral materials that articulate outcomes, flexibility, and value to prospective students

    Refreshing a program’s branding and positioning is a crucial step. Students’ needs evolve, so the program’s story should evolve too. Simple adjustments — such as updating program names for clarity, refining messaging to align with search trends, or highlighting regional workforce connections — can make legacy programs more discoverable and relevant.

    Faculty also play a vital role in rebranding. Leveraging their expertise lends authenticity and authority to program relaunches. Featuring their research and industry partnerships in marketing materials reinforces the program’s real-world impact and signals that it’s grounded in experience, not just theory. 

    Key Takeaways

    • New program launches aren’t the only pathway to growth. Sustainable success also stems from repositioning existing programs.
    • Strategic audits of legacy offerings that assess their long-term performance and market fit enable your institution to relaunch them with intention.
    • Institutions that regularly review and refresh their degree portfolios are better positioned to achieve scalable, market-responsive growth while honoring the programs that built their foundation. 

    Reinvigorate Your Programs — and Your Growth Strategy

    Archer Education partners with dozens of institutions to help them launch new programs and revitalize existing ones to amplify their visibility and drive real growth. In a competitive market, data-driven program strategies enable greater institutional alignment and better market fit. 

    Contact our team today and let us help you rejuvenate your degree portfolio.

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  • How degrees got so expensive – Campus Review

    How degrees got so expensive – Campus Review

    Australians think students are being asked to pay far too much for their degrees.

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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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  • Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades.

    Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades.

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    The number of education degrees awarded in the U.S. steadily decreased in the nearly two decades between 2003-04 and 2022-23, according to a new analysis of federal data by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

    Bachelor’s degrees in education dipped from 109,622 annually to 90,710 while master’s degrees declined from 162,632 to 143,669 in that time span, AACTE said in its report on data from the U.S. Department of Education.

    On Thursday, AACTE released a data dashboard based on these findings as well as two related reports. One covers the degrees and certificates conferred in education and the other highlights teacher preparation program trends.

    As the Trump administration seeks to dismantle the Education Department and limit funding for federal education research, Jacqueline King, a co-author of the reports and an AACTE consultant, called for the agency to continue publishing research on teacher preparation programs. 

    “These reports provide a valuable check-up on the supply of new educators, and it is exciting that this year we can offer readers the opportunity to customize how they view the data through our new data dashboards,” King said in a Thursday statement. “It is essential that the federal government continue to provide the field — and the broader public — with this important information.”

    Here are some standout figures on AACTE’s findings on the state of teacher preparation programs nationwide.

    By the numbers

     

    -3%

    The one-year decline in bachelor’s degrees awarded in education from 2021-22 to 2022-23, the most recent year with available data.

     

    -5%

    The one-year decline in master’s degrees awarded in education from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

     

    407,556.

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2022-23 academic year.

     

    611,296

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2012-13 academic year.

     

    124,428

    The number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at an alternative teacher preparation program — ones not based at colleges — during the 2022-23 academic year. In the 2012-13 academic year, that number was just 43,099

     

    112,913

    The number of students who completed a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive college or university in the 2022-23 academic year. During the 2012-13 academic year, that number stood at 163,851.

     

    16,899

    The number of students who completed an alternative teacher preparation program not based at a college during the 2022-23 academic year. In 2012-13, that number was 15,550.

     

    +9%

    The growth in students completing alternative teacher preparation programs not based at higher education institutions between 2012-13 and 2022-23.

     

    +44%

    The growth in students who completed alternative teacher preparation programs based at colleges between 2012-13 and 2022-23.

     

    29%

    The share of education bachelor’s degrees awarded to non-White graduates in 2022-23, up from 23% in 2016-17.

     

    33%

    The percentage of education master’s degrees that went to non-Whites in 2022-23, up from 28% in 2016-17.

     

    42%

    The portion of education doctoral degrees earned by non-Whites in 2022-23, up from 37% in 2016-17.

    Correction: A previous version of this article stated the wrong number of students enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a comprehensive higher education institution during the 2022-23 academic year. The correct enrollment figure is 407,556 students.

     

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  • Students told degrees revoked in WSU hack – Campus Review

    Students told degrees revoked in WSU hack – Campus Review

    Western Sydney University (WSU) has been warned it may be in breach of its data safety obligations by the university watchdog after thousands of students and graduates received scam emails claiming their qualifications had been stripped.

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  • Global demand for US master’s degrees plunges by 60%

    Global demand for US master’s degrees plunges by 60%

    The data, collected from January 6 to September 28, aligns closely with the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term and the ensuing uncertainty around student visas and post-graduation work opportunities. It is based on the search behaviour of over 50 million prospective students on Studyportals.  

    “Prospective international students and their families weigh not only academic reputation but also regulatory stability and post-graduation prospects,” said Studyportals CEO Edwin van Rest: “Right now, those factors are working against institutions.”  

    Studyportals said the steep decline – dropping more than 60% in less than nine months – corresponds to proposed and enacted policy changes impacting student visa duration, Optional Practical Training (OPT) and H-1B work authorisation in the US. 

    Last week, the Trump administration shocked businesses and prospective employees by hiking the H-1B visa fee to $100,000 – over 20 times what employers previously paid. Days later, the government announced proposals to overhaul the visa system in favour of higher-paid workers.  

    Sector leaders have warned that OPT could be the administration’s next target, after a senior US senator called on the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem to stop issuing work authorisations such as OPT to international students.  

    Such a move would have a detrimental impact on student interest in the US, with a recent NAFSA survey suggesting that losing OPT reduces enrolment likelihood from 67% to 48%.  

    Meanwhile, roughly half of current students planning to stay in the US after graduation would abandon those plans if H-1B visas prioritised higher wage earners, the survey indicated.  

    “Prospective students are making go/no-go enrolment decisions, while current students are making stay/leave retention decisions,” said van Rest. 

    “Policy changes ripple through both ends of the pipeline, reducing new inflow and pushing out existing talent already contributing to US research, innovation and competitiveness,” he added.  

    Data: Studyportals

    The search data revealed a spike in interest at the beginning of July, primarily from Vietnam and Bangladesh, and to a lesser extent India and Pakistan. Experts have suggested the new Jardine-Fulbright Scholarship aimed at empowering future Vietnam leaders could have contributed to the rise.  

    Meanwhile, Iran, Nepal and India have seen the steepest drops in master’s demand, declining more than 60% this year to date compared to last.  

    While federal SEVIS data recorded a 0.8% rise in international student levels this semester, plummeting visa arrivals and anecdotal reports of fewer students on campus suggest the rise was in part due to OPT extensions – individuals who are counted in student totals but who are not enrolled on US campuses or paying tuition fees.  

    Beyond the immediate financial concerns of declining international enrolments for some schools, van Rest warned: “The policies we adopt today will echo for years in global talent flows.”

    The UK and Ireland have gained the most relative market share of international interest on Studyportals – both up 16% compared to the same period in 2024. Australia, Austria, Sweden and Spain all experienced a 12% increase on the previous year.  

    In the US, international students make up over half of all students enrolled in STEM fields and 70% of all full-time graduate enrolments in AI-related disciplines, according to Institute of International Education (IIE) data.  

    The policies we adopt today will echo for years in global talent flows

    Edwin van Rest, Studyportals

    What’s more, universities with higher rates of international enrolment have been found to produce more domestic STEM graduates, likely due to greater investment in these disciplines, National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) research has shown.  

    Last year, graduate students made up 45% of the overall international student cohort (including OPT), compared to undergraduate which comprised roughly 30%, according to IIE Open Doors data.  

    Universities with higher proportions of overseas students have been found to produce more domestic STEM graduates, likely due to greater investment in these disciplines, National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) research has shown. 

    The news of plummeting international demand comes as domestic enrolments are declining, with less high school graduates entering college education and an overall demographic shrinking of university-age students.  

    In a recent survey by the American Council on Education (ACE), nearly three quarters of college leaders said they were concerned about enrolment levels this semester, with 65% moderately or extremely worried about immigration restrictions and visa revocations.  

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  • Bachelor’s Degrees Unaffordable for Most Low-Income Students

    Bachelor’s Degrees Unaffordable for Most Low-Income Students

    The high cost associated with college is one of the greatest deterrents for students interested in higher education. A 2024 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 68 percent of students believe higher ed institutions charge too much for an undergraduate degree, and an additional 41 percent believe their institution has a sticker price that’s too high.

    A recent study by the National College Attainment Network found that a majority of two- and four-year colleges cost more than the average student can pay, sometimes by as much as $8,000 a year. The report advocates for additional state and federal financial aid to close affordability gaps and ensure opportunities for low- and middle-income students to engage in higher education.

    Methodology: NCAN’s formula for affordability compares total cost of attendance (tuition, fees, housing, etc.) plus an emergency reserve of $300 against any aid a student receives. This includes grants, federal loans and work-study dollars, as well as expected family contribution and the summer wages a student could earn in a full-time, minimum-wage job in their state. Housing costs vary depending on the student’s enrollment: Bachelor’s-granting institutions include on-campus housing costs, and community colleges include off-campus housing rates.

    A graphic by the National College Attainment Network demonstrating how the organization calculated affordable rates for the average college student.

    National College Attainment Network

    Costs that outweigh expected aid and income are classified as an “affordability gap” for students.

    A recent Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab survey of 5,065 undergraduates found that 9 percent of respondents said an unexpected expense of $300 or less would threaten their ability to remain enrolled in college.

    The total sample size covered 1,137 public institutions, 600 of which were community colleges.

    Majority of colleges unaffordable: Using these metrics, 48 percent of community colleges and 35 percent of bachelor’s-granting institutions were affordable during the 2022–23 academic year. In total, NCAN rated 473 institutions as affordable.

    Comparative data from 2015–16 finds slightly more community colleges were affordable then (50 percent) than in 2022–23 (48 percent), but that the average affordability gap, or total unmet need, has grown from $246 to $486.

    Among four-year colleges, more public institutions were affordable in 2022–23 than in 2015–16 (29 percent) and the average affordability gap shrank slightly, from $1,656 to $1,554. The data indicates slight improvement in affordability metrics but highlights challenges for low-income students interested in a bachelor’s degree, according to the report.

    NCAN researchers believe the $400 increase in the maximum Pell Grant in 2023 helped lower costs per student at bachelor’s-granting institutions, but community colleges appear less affordable due to the loss of HEERF funding and the increase in cost of attendance due to rising housing costs.

    Affordability ranges by states: Access to affordable institutions is also more of a challenge for students in some regions than in others. NCAN’s analysis found that 14 states lacked a single institution with an affordable bachelor’s degree program for low-income students. In 27 states, 65 percent of public four-year colleges were unaffordable.

    For two-year programs, five states lacked an affordable community college. Some states had a small sample (fewer than five) of community colleges analyzed; Delaware and Florida had no community colleges in NCAN’s sample.

    In Kentucky, Maine and New Mexico, 100 percent of the two-year colleges analyzed were found to be affordable for students, along with at least 80 percent of the bachelor’s degree–granting institutions in those states.

    Students pursuing a bachelor’s degree in New Hampshire ($8,239), Pennsylvania ($8,076) and Ohio ($5,138) had the largest affordability gaps. For community colleges, students in New Hampshire ($11,499), Utah ($7,689) and Pennsylvania ($4,508) had the greatest unmet need.

    Conversely, some states had aid surpluses, which can help address other expenses associated with college, including textbooks and transportation.

    Cost isn’t the only barrier to access, however. “For many students who live in rural or remote areas, far from the postsecondary institutions in their state, college may remain inaccessible,” the report noted.

    Based on the data, NCAN supports additional funding for higher education at all levels, federal, state and local, to provide students with financial aid.

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  • Cut Degrees in Low Demand

    Cut Degrees in Low Demand

    In the past, lawmakers have pressured colleges and universities to cut the number of degrees they offer through measures such as publicly criticizing institutions or simply slashing funding and letting institutions figure out where to cut.

    But at least three Republican-dominated states—Indiana, Ohio and Utah—passed specific laws this year that push institutions to eliminate degree programs that graduate few students. In a similar vein, Texas passed a law going after academic minors and certificate programs with low enrollments. It worries faculty and scholarly groups, who stress that the number of majors in a program isn’t the only or best way to gauge its worth.

    “Campuses are forced to respond to legislative mandates that have arisen from a narrow understanding of what higher education is,” said Paula Krebs, executive director of the Modern Language Association. Students who pursue public higher education will be “getting a reduced version of what a degree should be,” she said.

    Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, said the move reflects the broader trend of “legislatures getting more involved in academic affairs issues that have historically been either done through shared governance or done through institutional leadership.”

    “It’s just another sign that the era of ‘trust the universities, they’re doing the right thing’ has long since passed,” Kelchen said.

    And Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), said these laws are “driven in part by the need to direct scarce resources to higher-demand programs in order to meet state workforce needs.” He said some humanities programs may be targeted for political reasons, but the laws are also the latest evolution of a long-standing discussion in higher ed over what programs to offer.

    “It’s a very difficult conversation to have, but what we’ve seen over this legislative session is that the state legislators have been more aggressive in trying to shape this conversation,” Harnisch said. “More states have been involved in the inner workings of academia—more so than any time in recent memory.”

    Minimum Requirements

    Ohio’s sprawling new public higher education overhaul law, Senate Bill 1, mandates a lot—from requiring institutions to post undergraduate course syllabi online to banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices. But amid its pages detailing requirements for faculty evaluations, post-tenure review and more lies a short section that could have an even bigger impact on faculty jobs and which degrees students can pursue.

    “A state institution of higher education shall eliminate any undergraduate degree program it offers if the institution confers an average of fewer than five degrees in that program annually over any three-year period,” the law says.

    Colleges and universities can appeal to Ohio’s higher education chancellor to save these programs, but even if the chancellor—appointed by the Republican governor—grants a waiver, he gets to set the terms under which the program “may conditionally continue.” Well before SB 1 took effect last month, the University of Toledo announced in April that, in order to comply, it will stop offering bachelor’s degrees in Africana, Asian, Middle East, religious, disability and women’s and gender studies, as well as degrees in Spanish, philosophy and data analytics.

    A month after Ohio’s General Assembly passed SB 1 in March, Indiana’s Legislature passed a state budget bill filled with higher ed provisions—including one similar to its Midwest neighbor’s. The Indiana law sets minimum thresholds for different degree programs to avoid termination. Associate programs must graduate an average of at least 10 students annually over three years, while the threshold is 15 students for bachelor’s degree programs, seven for master’s degree programs and three each for education specialist programs and doctorate programs.

    While the law, House Bill 1001, says institutions can ask the Indiana Commission for Higher Education for exceptions, that agency said universities already plan to eliminate or consolidate more than 400 programs—roughly one-fifth of their degree offerings statewide. The list of programs being cut at various institutions includes multiple K–12 teacher training programs, foreign languages and Africana, religious and women’s and gender studies degrees, as well as economics, math and electrical, mechanical and computer engineering.

    Utah took a more complex, but still blunt, approach. In March, its GOP-controlled Legislature passed House Bill 265, which cut 10 percent of public institutions’ state-funded instructional budgets—$60 million in total. But the law said colleges and universities could win the money back for “strategic reinvestment” in programs based on their enrollment, completion rates and “localized and statewide workforce demands,” among a few other factors.

    Last month, the flagship University of Utah, which says it’s shouldering more than a third of the initial $20 million in statewide cuts, announced it’s planning to cut 94 programs across 10 colleges and schools. According to a slideshow posted by the university, the losses will include master’s degrees in Middle East studies, educational psychology, modern dance, audiology, marketing, neurobiology and bioengineering.

    To earn back money from the Legislature, the university says it will reinvest in the “high impact” and “workforce-aligned” areas of biotechnology, engineering, “responsible AI,” behavioral health, nursing and simulation, and “civic engagement”—which the presentation described as including “new initiatives focused on American federalism and civic responsibility, and another on civic discussion and debate.”

    Utah Valley University, which offers traditional community college programs along with higher-level degrees, said in its presentation that it’s cutting a bachelor’s in aerospace technology management and an associate degree in cabinetry and architectural woodwork, among other offerings. At the same time, it’s reinvesting in an “applied AI institute,” engineering, chemistry, health, accounting, construction management, written communication and more.

    In Texas, the Legislature has passed the least direct of the laws targeting programs. Senate Bill 37 doesn’t demand that institutions make cuts to traditional majors, but it requires that they review minors and certificate offerings every five years “to identify programs with low enrollment that may require consolidation or elimination.”

    Weeding Out

    Mark Criley, a senior program officer in the Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance at the American Association of University Professors, said the laws are “part of a growing trend among state legislatures to insert themselves in university governance in ways that go beyond their expertise.”

    Criley compared these laws—which push program cuts without requiring faculty input on what should be cut—to someone walking into a garden and saying they’re going to pull up every plant under a certain height. He said some of those shorter plants may be important to the health of the whole garden, or “about to bloom into something fantastic.”

    “Without the opportunity for faculty involvement, what you’re doing then is, essentially, you’re pulling up all those plants while the gardener’s away,” Criley said. This “blunt instrument we’re talking about here isn’t a way of responsibly ensuring that universities serve their mission to the state.”

    But Ohio senator Jerry Cirino, who filed SB 1 and now chairs the state’s Senate Finance Committee, told Inside Higher Ed that circumventing shared governance and faculty unions is part of the law’s point. Shared governance slows changes, he said, and Ohio faculty unions are so committed to protecting their members that they rarely cooperate with institutions trying to cut classes or programs that aren’t graduating enough students in order to justify employing faculty—often tenured faculty.

    “How could the faculty be objective when it comes to making decisions that reduce faculty?” Cirino said, adding that more “business principles” should be practiced in universities.

    “It’s supply and demand,” he said. “All we’re asking is for our institutions to practice what they teach in their business schools.”

    But others criticized using simple metrics such as enrollment and number of graduates to decide which programs should be on the chopping block. Ohio and Indiana’s laws are based on average graduate numbers, while the Texas and Utah laws require institutions to look at enrollment.

    “If the major is the coin of the realm, then languages are an easy target,” said Krebs, the Modern Language Association executive director.

    Kelchen, the UT Knoxville professor of higher education, said that from a financial standpoint, what really matters is whether classes are full. A program with few majors could still attract students who are earning a minor or taking the classes for other reasons, such as to satisfy general education requirements.

    Kelchen and Krebs both pointed out that universities in other states have cut programs even without legislative mandates; they noted West Virginia University, where the administration and Board of Governors ordered degree programs slashed in 2023.

    “I think we can trace it back to West Virginia University and before, where it wasn’t a legislative mandate,” Krebs said of cuts to foreign language and other humanities programs.

    Harnisch, of SHEEO, suggested it goes back even further, noting “deep program cuts” amid the Great Recession of 2008. Over the past decade, he said, states have tried to keep college affordable, and a growing economy and COVID-19–related aid packages helped.

    But now, Harnisch said, multiple financial pressures are leading to “sharper program cuts and tuition increases.” After all, Indiana universities volunteered to eliminate 19 percent of degree offerings without requesting exemptions from the state, according to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

    “I only see this trend increasing in the years ahead,” he said.

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