The Harvard Kennedy School announced a contingency plan for its international students Tuesday in the event that the Trump administration successfully bars the university from enrolling foreign students, according to The Boston Globe.
The Kennedy School, Harvard’s postgraduate college of government, public policy and international affairs, said that both incoming and returning students could study remotely, and returning students would be given the option to finish their degree at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
“We are announcing these contingency plans now to alleviate the uncertainty many students feel, but we will not officially launch these programs unless there is sufficient demand from students who are unable to come to the United States,” Kennedy School dean Jeremy Weinstein wrote in an email Tuesday.
Harvard needs the approval of its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education, to allow students to complete their degrees online, and current students who want to study in Toronto would have to apply for a Canadian visa next month.
The Kennedy School is the first college at the university to release its formal contingency plan; others are working on developing their own. HKS is particularly vulnerable to a foreign student ban: 59 percent of its students are international, compared to 24 percent of Harvard’s total student population.
Harvard is currently suing the Trump administration over multiple attempts to ban its foreign student population, including by revoking the university’s Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification and issuing an executive proclamation. Last Friday, a federal judge granted Harvard a preliminary injunction in one of its court challenges.
Even if the Trump administration’s efforts targeting Harvard specifically are struck down by the courts, other moves—such as revoking Chinese students’ visas en masse or banning nonimmigrant visa holders from a dozen countries—could prevent some of the Kennedy School’s current and incoming students from attending.
In a study of 99,542 donors who supported causes between 2020 and 2024 with gifts totaling less than $5,000 a year (nearly 97 percent of all donors), just 5.7 percent supported education institutions. That’s according to “The Generosity Report: Data-Backed Insights for Resilient Fundraising,” published this April by Neon One, a provider of nonprofit operational technology.
While major gifts will always be a crucial part of higher ed advancement success, it’s important to remember that smaller gifts add up, and during this uncertain time higher ed leaders must prioritize capturing the interest of every could-be donor.
Among the donors studied, nearly 30 percent gave to more than one nonprofit, for a combined average of about $545 in 2024, an increase from $368 in 2020. Many—if they have a good relationship with a nonprofit and are asked—will increase their level of support.
Sharing donation impact stories on a college’s main giving page is an approach not taken enough, in my experience. Typically, the “make a gift” or “give now” link, found prominently on an institution’s homepage, brings a visitor to a form. (“Yes, we’ll take that credit card info now.”) While no one wants to distract anyone from giving online, some colleges are clearly making efforts to inspire and inform giving by sharing how donations are helping students succeed and contributing to research and other efforts benefiting the community or beyond.
In uncovering examples of colleges using engaging narratives on their donation pages, I now have a clear sense of several practices to consider. For anyone asking how an already resource-strapped marketing and comms team is supposed to make time for additional storytelling, here’s some good news: Most institutions are probably already publishing articles that can be gently repurposed for alumni and other friends thinking about making a gift.
Following are three actions to take when the goal is telling impact stories on a main giving page.
Find (and tweak) or create the content.
Do some sleuthing to locate any articles already written about programs and supports made possible at least in part with donor funding. While giving sites can include articles about major gifts that center around the donor, focusing on individuals or communities that are better because of the initiative is more compelling.
Donation-related video content—although probably needing to be built from scratch—is a great way to highlight real student successes, whether it’s a scholarship that opened up access, emergency funds that allowed a student to stay in school or the excitement of commencement. Minnesota State University, Mankato, recorded accepted students finding out they had received scholarships and students who had benefited from emergency funding sharing how the gift had “saved the day.” Gratitude-focused videos, especially when they use student voices, need not reveal specific personal circumstances.
To help find individuals to feature, some giving pages invite students, alumni, employees and donors to suggest or contribute their own impact stories.
Provide a mix of content formats and collections.
Slideshows, blown-up quotes and infographics (individual graphics or numbers-driven stories) are a few visual content tactics spotted on giving pages.
Lewis & Clark College tells succinct stories on its giving page through a slideshow with three students sharing how their financial aid offers allowed them to enroll. The Oregon college’s giving page also includes a collection of five featured stats, highlighting how gifts from the past year have made an “immediate impact on the areas of greatest need.” Rather than just presenting the most obvious numbers, such as giving totals, these data points note, for example, the number of potential jobs and internships sourced by the career center, or how many new titles were purchased by the library.
To make an impact story most effective at inspiring a gift, be sure to take the extra step of adding a call-to-action message and link within each article. Even institutions doing this tend to be inconsistent about it. Try adding an italicized note at the end, a sentence within the text or a box that explains the related fund, as University of Colorado at Boulder does.
Be thoughtful about giving page content organization.
Content-rich giving pages don’t start with a gift form or a bunch of stories. Instead, a single large photo or slideshow featuring students and a short, impactful message seems to be the preferred approach.
As a visitor scrolls down, additional content tiers can offer more detail and giving encouragement—such as students expressing gratitude for support. More comprehensive feature articles and/or collections of impact story content tend to appear toward the bottom of the page, with a few teaser stories and often a link to see more. Larger collections of stories can be broken into categories and made searchable.
Some institutions place links to impact story pages in more than one place and include multiple “make a gift” buttons on the main giving page.
A new focus on giving content should also trigger some tweaks to the gift form itself. Does it include a drop-down menu with specific fund options? Can a donor write in where to direct the gift?
Or consider McGill’s approach: Each of five big ideas listed on its giving stories page takes visitors to a gift form, followed by a description of the meaning of that idea, followed by specific stories that bring it to life.
What inspirational success stories could you be sharing with friends who click to donate?
Wayne State University will offer incarcerated people the opportunity to enroll in a bachelor’s of sociology starting this fall.
Wayne State University
With the reinstatement of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated individuals in 2023, more colleges have launched or restarted prison education programs. Wayne State University in Michigan will join their ranks this fall, offering a bachelor’s degree to incarcerated individuals for the first time.
Twenty-five students will join the inaugural cohort in August, and the university is forging ahead with program plans despite looming Pell Grant cuts.
What’s the need: Twenty-five percent of formerly incarcerated people have no high school diploma, and 20 percent have only a high school diploma, compared to the 91 percent of Americans who have attained at least that credential. “We know that today’s workforce, much of it requires a college education, so it’s almost a necessary criterion to earn a living wage in today’s society,” said Michelle Jacobs, a professor of sociology and Wayne State’s Prison Education Program lead.
While many incarcerated individuals express an interest in postsecondary education, college often gets placed on the back burner after they leave prison as they focus on more pressing challenges, such as meeting basic needs and providing for themselves, Jacobs said. Higher education–in–prison programs help students get a head start on reclaiming their lives after they are released.
The initiative also ties into Wayne State president Kimberly Andrews Espy’s Prosperity Agenda for the Detroit area, which includes supporting economic mobility for students, improving the health of urban neighborhoods and fostering innovation in the local economy.
Individuals who participate in postsecondary education programs while in prison are 48 percent less likely to be reincarcerated than those who don’t, and they are more likely to get a job after their release. Research also shows that education-in-prison programs not only benefit the individual but also increase safety in prison settings and can improve families’ socioeconomic mobility.
“One of our goals for the program is to empower families in low-income communities that have been disproportionately impacted [by mass incarceration],” Jacobs said.
How it works: Wayne State’s Prison Education Program will enroll 25 incarcerated men at the Macomb Correctional Facility in Lenox, Mich., about 35 miles northeast of the university.
To be considered, applicants have to be at least five years from their earliest release date, giving them time to finish the program, and they must complete an essay outlining why they want to participate.
All courses will be delivered in person and the university will provide any school supplies or resources the students need for their coursework, including pens, paper and dictionaries. Students have to complete paper applications and FAFSA forms, so staff will assist with that process.
Program participants will complete a degree in sociology, as well as a range of general education courses, similar to their on-campus peers. Students can also opt in to an entrepreneurship and innovation minor.
Both programs are designed to support the unique experiences of incarcerated people, Jacobs said.
“I’m extremely biased towards sociology, and I think that benefits everyone,” Jacobs said. “I think that incarcerated individuals can benefit so much, not only in terms of understanding the broader structures that have impacted their own realities, but also on that interactional level … I think that’ll be really helpful for them as they’re navigating their lives postrelease.”
Faculty members from across the university will serve as instructors.
Facing headwinds: Since beginning the project, Wayne State has encountered various challenges.
The initial plan was to use donor funding to kick off the program, but officials had to pivot to relying on Pell dollars and money from the Michigan Department of Corrections to cover student tuition. Then, reorganization at the federal Department of Education and a lack of staff stalled approval of the program. Changes to the Pell Grant may further impede the program’s future.
Despite the obstacles, Jacobs and her team are pushing on.
“Once we started working on it, I couldn’t let it go,” Jacobs said. “I deeply believe in the transformative power of education, and I also deeply believe that there is an amazing among of talent and wit and love and humor and expertise already in carceral settings … I just made a decision that we will forge ahead regardless of what is happening at the federal level—while, of course, paying attention to it.”
Wayne State staff received advice and support in establishing the program from the Michigan Consortium for Higher Education in Prison. “It’s very collaborative instead of competitive, which is unique for academic spaces, and I appreciate it so much,” Jacobs said.
Next steps: Jacobs and her team are currently reviewing student applications to select the inaugural cohort, with plans to enroll another cohort in fall 2026.
Before classes start this August, participating faculty and students will both complete an orientation. The faculty orientation will provide instructors with professional development that helps prepare them to teach inside a prison, supported by a student organization on campus focused on criminal justice reform.
Students will be given college-readiness support, as well as access to academic and support resources similar to those offered on campus.
If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.
The number of assessments set by universities is steadily rising, but there are worries this could result in student burnout and prove counteractive if implemented without centering learning.
A recent report by the U.K.-based Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) and Advance HE found that assessments at U.K. institutions have risen to 5.8 summative assignments and 4.1 formative assignments per semester in 2025, compared to five summative assessments and 2.5 formative assessments in 2020.
Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi and co-author of the report, said the advent of AI is “reducing the accuracy of assessments as a measure of students’ performance,” prompting universities to re-evaluate their examination methods.
“It’s possible that course organizers are assessing students more to improve the confidence they have in their assessments,” he said.
“It’s also possible that, as they redo assessment models, which may have remained the same for a long time, they are switching to alternative models of assessment—for example, those that assess students on an ongoing basis, rather than simply once at the end of the year.”
However, rising numbers of exams risks universities “overassessing” students, he added, as “students now face an intense battle over their time,” noting that the number of hours that students spend studying has fallen.
“[Many are making] sacrifices around social activities, sports and societies. These ‘extra’ activities are the first to go when students are squeezed and would probably be cut further if the academic elements of university become more demanding.”
Michael Draper, a professor in legal education at Swansea University and chair of the university’s academic regulations and student cases board, said that some universities have begun supplementing assessments with “some form of in-person assessment” to counteract AI “credibility concerns.” But “that of course does lead to perhaps overassessment or more assessments than were in place before.”
“Students have got so many competing claims on their time, not just in relation to work, but care responsibilities and work responsibilities, that you run the risk of student burnout,” he continued.
“That is not a position you actually want to be in. You want to make sure that students have got a fair opportunity to work consistently and get the best grade possible. You want students to have a chance to reflect upon their feedback and then to demonstrate that in other assessments, but if they’re being continuously assessed, it’s very difficult to have that reflection time.”
However, Thomas Lancaster, principal teaching fellow in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, speculated that a rise in the number of exams could be a sign that assessments are being “split into smaller stages,” with more continuous feedback throughout the process, which could also simultaneously have benefits for counteracting AI use.
“This is something I’ve long recommended in response to contract cheating, where it’s good practice to see the process, not just the final product. So I do hope that the revised assessment schedules are being put in place to benefit the students, rather than purely as a response to AI.”
While breaking assessments down could prove beneficial to student learning, Drew Whitworth, reader at the Manchester Institute of Education, questioned, “How does one count what constitutes ‘separate’ assessments?”
“If a grade is given partway through this process … this is actually quite helpful for students, answering the question ‘How am I doing?’ and giving them a pragmatic reason to show [their work and that they are working] in the first place.
“But does this count as a separate assessment or just part of a dialogue taking place that helps students develop better work in response to a single assessment?”
The publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in early June 2025 emphasised a whole-of-society approach to defence and recognised the importance of societal engagement and resilience-building.
But there was also an element of missed opportunity – the review should also have been a moment to highlight the role of the network of 19 regional military education committees (MECs) which exist to foster good relations between universities and the armed forces, and their associated university service units (USUs).
Although universities were prominently featured in the SDR, the focus was narrowly confined to their ability to serve as a talent pipeline and to provide technology to support “warfighting” and “lethality”.
What’s missing is a more engaged understanding of the broader value universities provide for defence, particularly the role of MECs in fostering this relationship, building on Haldane’s earlier vision of a civic university with strong links to the armed forces.
We see a need to outline a broad vision for MECs that builds on the SDR but also looks beyond it, offering a future-focused perspective for leaders in the armed forces and academia.
Universities and civil-military relations
Universities play a crucial – though often overlooked – role at the interface of civil-military relations. Our graduates are the officers of the future, and with seven per cent of UK households including a veteran, and over 180,000 currently serving, many of our students’ university experiences are inherently shaped by military life, whether as part of service families or as future personnel.
Established as part of the Haldane Reforms of the armed forces in 1908, MECs were initially created to ensure that officer cadets received a balanced education, combining academic study with military training.
Today, MECs are a vital bridge between two distinct worlds: academia and the military. They offer a unique forum where these cultures meet, enabling universities to better understand the particular pressures facing students in university service units and students from service families, while helping the military appreciate the academic environment through the eyes of those teaching their officer cadets.
Military education committees and the student experience
MECs support students serving in university service units by helping them navigate the dual demands of academic study and armed forces activities. These officer cadets face unique pressures and challenges, but also gain valuable opportunities for skills development, leadership training, and even paid experiences through social and sporting activities including overseas trips and training deployments. For those interested in an armed forces career, scholarships are available which provide a crucial route to higher education, often for those who would otherwise find it financially prohibitive.
A recent commentary from the Royal United Services Institute underscores the importance of these activities, particularly the role of the University Officer Training Corps (UOTCs) in the British Army’s officer training pipeline. The authors warn against proposals to centralise all training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which they argue would undermine the historical and practical value of UOTCs as springboards for leadership and national resilience. They argue that UOTCs are vital for building the skills and networks needed for future mobilisations and for sustaining the Army Reserve’s capacity.
This vital role underscores how the meeting of minds facilitated by MECs is more than just symbolic. In practical terms, MECs bring together universities and university service units for events ranging from Remembrance Sunday commemorations, to officer cadet-led debates on topical issues, to high-profile guest lectures, like Newcastle’s annual defence lecture.
It has also helped bridge defence and the lecture hall. For example, through the Hacking 4 MoD module, facilitated by the Common Mission Project, where students tackle real-world challenges set by the Ministry of Defence. To date, this is run in over 20 universities across the UK, and is often led by MEC members, whose insights into defence make it easier for academics with no military background to teach and engage confidently in this space to better support students.
Pluralism, oversight, and civic values
The relationship between academic and the military is not without its critics. Some argue that engagement with the armed forces risks the militarisation of academic spaces, threatening academic freedom and raising ethical concerns.
Yet universities have never been entirely “de-militarised” spaces. The concept of the “military-university nexus” is useful here in that it challenges any simplistic binary between civilian and military spheres, requiring us to consider each relationship on its own merits.
MECs provide essential civilian oversight of USUs, establishing lines of communication that build trust and mutual understanding. As autonomous institutions, universities thrive on debate and competing viewpoints – this pluralism is vital if they are to remain places of innovation and critical thought.
Challenges and opportunities ahead
Looking to the future, MECs face the challenge of adapting to a rapidly changing educational and geopolitical landscape – one in which the UK will increasingly rely on societal resilience, whether to counter misinformation or respond to threats against NATO allies. Universities therefore have a crucial role in national security, not as talent pipelines alone, but as civic institutions producing future leaders, both civilian and military.
The national security landscape outlined in the SDR echoes Haldane’s idea of a “nation in arms”, fostering closer ties between the army and society to mobilise civilian resources during wartime.
The risk of the SDR, however, is that it frames universities too narrowly, as talent pipelines supporting STEM innovation in service of “lethality”, rather than recognising the wider civic contribution they make. In a democracy, we expect the armed forces to reflect the society they serve, in both composition and leadership values. Tomorrow’s officers are shaped in part by their university experiences – ignoring this reality is a missed opportunity.
Moreover, the emphasis in the SDR on AI, cyber warfare, and space defence requires a re-evaluation of MECs and their engagement with USUs. This sits alongside a broader shift from civic universities to a more regionally-engaged model – globally connected but rooted in local innovation and committed to addressing societal challenges. Universities and their respective MECs will need to foster adaptability and technological literacy, preparing students and staff for non-conventional challenges, whether in warfare or not.
Diversity and inclusive leadership
Taking a whole society approach to defence, MECs will need to redouble their efforts to champion inclusivity and diversity, fostering lesson-sharing between universities and USUs.
The armed forces struggle to be representative of the society they serve – with a level of ambition set for 30 per cent intake of women by 2030 (currently at 11.6%) and only incremental improvement in ethnic minority representation (currently 15.3 per cent).
Many USUs in contract already achieve or approach gender balance, though challenges remain in recruiting ethnic minority cadets, and translating the gender balance into those who chose to go through the full officer selection process. That said, MECs need to focus efforts to ensure the offer from USUs is inclusive, addressing barriers to participation and creating welcoming environments for all. At the Northumbrian Universities Military Education Committee, for example, we have a standing agenda item for USUs to report on the status of women within their units. This has led to several collaborations between university colleagues and their military counterparts to tackle the issue head-on.
The civic role, reimagined
The civic role of universities in supporting societal resilience – essential for an effective defence, through fostering informed debate, critical thinking, and understanding – is too important to lose. MECs remain central to this mission, ensuring that universities continue to be spaces of pluralism and partnership, bridging military and academic worlds for the benefit of both.
As universities reimagine their civic role, it is crucial that engagement with the armed forces remains anchored in inclusivity and democratic values, rather than reduced to recruitment pipelines or simply extracting STEM expertise in service of “lethality”. MECs have a key role in this, bringing together academic and military leaders to create spaces for reimagining civil-military partnerships – championing diversity, civic leadership, and mutual understanding in all areas of their work.
A long time ago, in a European country far, far away, the notion was stirring that learning might get you somewhere in life. (This was already known in other parts of the world, as my posts on Taxila, Nalanda, Fez and Al-Azhar show.) One place in which there were plenty of learned men from who to learn was Bologna, and it is to there that we travel today.
This is the eleventh century (that is, years beginning with 10xx CE) and Bologna was a centre for the study of law, because it was itself the centre of some controversy. Having been part of the Carolingian empire, it seems that the city – and others like it – were wanting more autonomy. (After all, there were some alps between them and Aachen, so out-of-sight, out-of-mind, I guess.) But it was also in the buffer zone between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor. So they needed to grow lawyers to try to keep disputes in courts and not on battlefields.
Students travelled to Bologna to study under these men, in what were private arrangements (that is, not under forms established by the state). Now, at that time, Bologna’s laws included collective punishment for crimes committed by foreigners (that is, if a foreigner committed a crime, all of those in Bologna from that nationality were liable for punishment.) Students – to protect themselves – formed collectives, known as nations; and these nations then became the groups who hired professors to teach.
The students were definitely in charge, policing teachers’ attendance and punctuality in delivering lectures and requiring of teachers an oath to obey the students. Eventually the nations grouped together still further, forming what was known as a studium. From this position of strength they were able to negotiate collectively with the city itself, and collective punishment was dropped.
It seems, by the way, that the studium was established in 1088; this is the date now mostly used for the establishment of the university, although charters and so forth didn’t come until later. And after the studium had been established, the teachers also sought to rebalance the power, and formed collegia doctorum, or doctors’ committees in each subject area. This enabled them to assert the right to set examination fees and to determine the criteria for admission to a degree. The different elements of a university were beginning to come into place.
Now, I’m not a historian, and I’m definitely not a historian of the Holy Roman Empire, so to be honest the to-ing and fro-ing at this point gets a bit much for me. There were contests – some bloody, some wordy – between the papacy and the empire; sometimes one was on top, sometimes the other; the city states in the north of Italy grew in strength and autonomy; there were changes in leaders, plots and all sorts. Guelphs and Ghibellines, that sort of thing. Suffice to say that the University of Bologna was ultimately a beneficiary, gaining the emperor’s protection, and a charter (1158). And so the de facto university became one de jure.
In 1219 the Pope – Honarius III – muscled in, insisting that the archdeacon of Bologna was the only office empowered to award the licentia docendi, or permission to teach. By 1278 the city of Bologna became part of the papal states – no longer under the Holy Roman Emperor – and in 1291 the licentia docendi of Bologna was ruled as being valid anywhere. At this time only law graduates could get a licentia docendi; as a few years later arts graduates could also gain the license to teach.
Also at this time, the students of the other faculties – rhetoric, notary, medicine and philosophy – set up their own university in the city. No conditions of registration for them!
In the following century there was yet more strife, and the politics impacted upon Bologna. This is the period when there was a Pope in Avignon and an Anti-Pope in Rome. To cement power, the Pope sent a legate who ruled in Bologna, and ruled despotically. Ownership of the city changed hands several times, but the influence of the university continued: teachers were often selected for fulfilling government and religious office. And in 1381 the city took action against the studium. Four Reformers of the Studium were to be elected each year, who would agree the contracts with teachers; the curricula and the subjects to be taught, and who would appoint the Punctator, the person in charge of ensuring the proper functioning of the university. The university had very much become a civic creature. And, for those so minded, there are some splendid role titles to consider resurrecting.
Bologna was changing. As new forms of government were enacted in the late 1300s, the city became more self-confident, and also more insular. University teachers were put on the public payroll, and with a very few exceptions only Bolognese citizens could teach at the university. This led over time, inevitably, to a decline in the quality of the teaching and education at Bologna.
One feature of the University Bologna at this stage which, to modern minds seems very odd, is that it didn’t have central premises. Teaching took place in private houses or rented halls – a throwback to the days of students hiring professors. This changed in the mid-16th century, as part of the more general rebuilding of the centre of Bologna. But is also enabled greater control over the university by the city authorities.
Over the next couple of centuries the university was also drawn into the counter-reformation, with scholars leaving the university, and more timid academic appointments being made (Galileo Galilei passed over for the professorship of astronomy, for instance.)
In the 1600’s, the university went further into a decline. Professorships salaries increased, and they became even more seen as a sinecure for local noble families. It is suggested by the University’s own history that at one point there were four professors for each student. But not many of them were any good. As the university ossified, and teaching stagnated in line with the doctrinal positions of a very conservative church, a few students sought to change things. The Academy of the Restless was established – a private club for discussion. In time this became part of the Academy of Sciences of the institute of Bologna: intellectual life was thriving, despite the university!
Fast forward to the late 1700s, and revolution was in the air. Failed, in Bologna, but alive in France. In 1796 French troops entered Bologna, overthrowing the existing government. Reform of the university and its curriculum followed, as well as a move to new buildings. Italy was having a turbulent century, but as the modern state gradually coalesced, the University adopted more and more modern practices, with new faculties covering more branches of knowledge.
The University was ingloriously fascist led during Mussolini’s reign; and the later twentieth century was also marked by disputes and unrest. But it was also a time for intellectual ferment and reinvention. In 1988, at its 900th anniversary celebrations, hundreds of university presidents, vice-chancellors and rectors from around the world signed the Magna Charta Universitatum; and the process of harmonization of European university qualifications is named the Bologna process in part after the university.
This is an inadequate telling of the university’s story, but it isn’t, I think, fundamentally wrong. The University’s website has much detail, and probably reads better in Italian.
And a positive note: despite its being overwhelmingly male for most of its history, the university hasn’t been entirely so. In 1237 Bettisia Gozzadini graduated in law from the university, and in 1239 was appointed lecturer. And in 1732 Laura Bassi became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in science, and only the second to be awarded a PhD.
One final thing to say: matriculation at Bologna looks a lot more fun than enrolment at most UK universities is today. A basket of hats! A lion! Minerva! No wonder they’re all queuing nicely.
The card was sent ‘Alla Gentil Signorina Lina Mattia, via S Stefano 36, Bologna” in the most wonderful copperplate. It was sent in the days before split-back cards so there’s no message, or anything to indicate who it is from. If I can read the postmark correctly, it was posted on 28 September 1899. Here’s a jigsaw of the card – hope you enjoy it.
The recent decision by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation to simplify the classification of research universities may have been well meaning, but it represents a serious misstep with consequential results.
By reducing a comprehensive system of research metrics down to just two—in order to gain coveted R-1 status, an institution must now spend $50 million annually on research and award 70 research doctorates per year—ACE has fundamentally changed what it means to be a top-tier research institution. The shift away from more holistically evaluating research activity risks distorting public understanding and perception of university excellence while incentivizing behavior that undermines long-term research creativity and innovation.
To most effectively appreciate the importance of this change, it is helpful to trace the history of the Carnegie classification system. Initially conceived in 1973 by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, the system was intended as a tool to support research and policymaking by categorizing U.S. colleges and universities according to their missions and output.
Over the decades, the classification system has become a trusted compendium for the public, media and higher education community. Designations such as “R-1” (which historically stood for “Doctoral University—Very High Research Activity”) and “R-2” (“Doctoral University—High Research Activity”) gained prominence, indicating robust levels of scholarly productivity, research funding, doctoral education and infrastructure.
The methodology used for the 2021 classifications (the most recent until this year) involved a suite of indicators that aimed to quantify research excellence, with partial normalization for institutional size. These included total research expenditures in science and engineering, research expenditures in non–science and engineering fields, science and engineering research personnel size (postdoctoral appointees and other nonfaculty Ph.D. researchers), and the number of doctoral degrees awarded annually in humanities, social sciences, STEM fields and other fields like business and education.
A principal components analysis then allowed for the creation of indices representing both total and per-capita research activity, enabling close and equitable comparisons across different institutions. This methodology was, in many ways, one of the most comprehensive and encompassing frameworks to date, providing a statistical assessment of American research universities founded on publicly available data.
For the 2025 classifications, however, the landscape changed. With ACE’s leadership, the Carnegie Foundation developed a new framework that substantially simplifies the standards for achieving flagship research status. The revised criteria focus on just the two metrics mentioned above: Institutions must spend at least $50 million annually on research activities and award at least 70 research doctorates per year. Institutions qualifying on both criteria are R-1; those that fail to qualify but spend at least $5 million on research activities and award at least 20 research doctorates are R-2. These terms now stand for very high and high “spending and doctoral production,” respectively, and not the previously used very high and high “research activity.”
This change may appear technical, but it removes numerous subtle measures of academic involvement and output and represents a profound shift in values. Under the previous activity-based framework, institutions were rewarded for building a diverse research ecosystem across a range of disciplines. Now, the metric has been reduced to total money spent and degrees awarded—inputs and outputs that do not necessarily equate to research excellence.
Moreover, this move opens the door for institutions to “teach to the test.” Rather than pursuing organic growth in their research missions, universities may instead make tactical investments to reach the magic numbers needed for R-1 status. This situation is a textbook case of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
By selecting just two metrics to assess national standing, the classification system invites institutions to game the criteria, boosting research spending and degree output not necessarily through improved research performance but administrative and accounting shifts. This oversimplification of a complex and holistic evaluation tool can have unintended consequences, such as distorting institutional priorities and stifling the motivation to invest in long-term, mission-driven scholarship.
Unfortunately, proof of this phenomenon is already visible. A cursory search of the internet will reveal multiple universities that have recently announced their elevation to R-1 status: More than 40 new institutions gained R-1 status under the revised criteria. While many have made commendable progress, it’s worth noting that their elevation to “elite” research status occurred not as a result of a significant shift in scholarly output, but because they met the two quantitative benchmarks.
The concern is not that these institutions shouldn’t be proud of their growth—it’s that the public will now assume parity between these universities and others whose research footprints are significantly deeper, broader and more globally impactful. ACE has effectively redefined what it means to be an “R-1” institution without clearly communicating that this designation no longer reflects the same type of achievement it once did.
To prevent confusion and preserve the integrity of the classification system, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation should consider rebranding the new categories to reflect their true nature. Rather than continuing to use the historically meaningful “R-1” and “R-2” terms, a more accurate labeling system might be RS-1 and RS-2, signifying “research spending.” This small change would clarify for stakeholders that these categories are now based largely on spending thresholds, not a holistic measure of research activity.
Whereas simplification may make the classifications more politically appealing and easier to administer, it does so at the cost of such vital ingredients as analytical comprehensiveness, contextual responsiveness and evaluative accuracy. To appropriately recognize and support genuine centers of research excellence, it is imperative to adopt a multidimensional evaluative framework—one that ideally encompasses not only research expenditures and doctoral degree program productivity, but also incorporates measures of scholarly impact, the quality of research publications, the development of research infrastructure and the extent of faculty engagement in research activities.
Also, to balance the structural advantages of larger institutions, appropriate normalization factors—such as costs per faculty member, publications per capita and doctoral degrees per research-active department—must be factored in. The 2021 classification model better reflected such a comprehensive and equitable approach, in contrast to the more reductive orientation observed in the 2025 iteration.
In order to preserve the integrity of American research universities as engines of discovery and innovation, their evaluation should be grounded in objective scholarly metrics that meaningfully reflect institutional excellence in research. Given the multifaceted nature of research excellence, our classification systems should be equally nuanced and comprehensive.
G. Dale Wesson is the dean and director of land-grant programs at Florida A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Food Science. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Michigan State University, an M.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.
Over 820,000 undergraduates are connected to the U.S. military, including those who are actively serving or enlisted in the National Guard, former service members and spouses, or dependents of military service members.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, located in Military City USA, serves over 5,000 military-affiliated students, including veterans, service members and their families, in a region that has the largest concentration of military bases in the country.
In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Michael Logan, UTSA’s senior director for veteran and military affairs and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, about supporting military-affiliated students through their transition into higher ed and the role of community in student veteran retention.
An edited version of the podcast appears below.
Q: Can you set the playing field for people who might not be familiar with San Antonio and the region and how that impacts your military-affiliated students?
Michael Logan, senior director for veteran and military affairs.
University of Texas San Antonio
A: It’s interesting, because the branding of the city, or the trademark, is Military City USA, and that’s not hyperbole when you consider not just the active-duty components that are here, but how many veterans retire to this area.
It’s not just the folks that are here because [the Department of Defense] is making them be here, but it’s a destination. In the county alone, there are about 100,000 veterans. If you expand into the Alamo area, Council of Governments region, it gets up to about 250,000 veterans. So you have to think, it’s not just the veterans, it’s the veterans’ spouses, all the dependents, all the family members. And so the number is probably three times that that we’re actually serving.
Q: That’s crazy, just the sheer number of people. I wonder if you can tie into this population of military-affiliated students at the university. Obviously you have veterans and then those, like you mentioned, family members, dependents. But then there’s also students who are currently engaged in the military.
A: You’ll notice if you look at our website, we lean away from using “veteran” in our terminology even in our center for military-affiliated students, and that’s intentional. Because we have so many different military-connected students that are not specifically in that veteran category. We do have a lot of National Guard and military reserve members; we do have a lot of activity duty. In fact, the family members probably outnumber the veterans and active duty two to one.
So for us, it was very important that the entire military-connected population understood that we were here to support everybody and not just that narrow swath of just those who had previously worn the uniform.
Q:When we are thinking about those students who are associated more directly with military service, so student veterans, ROTC or currently enlisted, can you talk a little bit about some of those challenges or opportunities when military-affiliated learners engage with higher education and how they look different from maybe your traditional learner on campus?
A: That’s a very good question, and I learn something every day, too. Even as someone who did time on active duty, I wasn’t doing those things simultaneously.
But what’s very interesting to me is having to articulate to folks who are not vets or not military-connected that military is a culture. So when we’re talking about validating everybody’s experiences in the classroom and making sure that we’re digging into the full richness and depth of experiences to really give everyone the best possible collegiate experience, we can’t discount military service as a separate and distinct culture.
I think what has happened previously is that there was concern where maybe a student was reframing things they were learning in their military context, and the instructor might have been thinking, “Well, you’re not getting it. I’m trying to get you to think this certain way, but you keep defaulting it back to your military context.” And then that leads to a conversation that I’ll eventually have with the instructor that talks about, “Well, the reason why this is happening is because categorically and demonstrably military service is a culture.”
I actually did research on that back in 2019, and again in 2024, we did a quantitative study. I did it with some student veterans who were graduate students here at the university, where we were able to empirically demonstrate that veteran itself is a culture.
You are all your intersectional identities, but once you’ve served and once you’ve had that military service experience, you experience all of those pieces of yourself through the lens of that military service. And so of course, when you’re teaching somebody something, when they contextualize it, it’s going to be through the lens that they see everything else, including their own identity.
Q: I’m the daughter of two veterans, and it’s funny, I remember being in high school, and the word “squad” was really trendy with young people at that time, and my mom was like, “Squad? That’s a military term. Like, what do you mean, your squad? Like, your squadron? What’s happening?” Even in the daily words that we use, there’s this affiliation that’s always going to come back to people.
So when we talk about supporting students that are military affiliated on campus, can you walk us through some of the programs and offerings that you all have?
A: There’s many, and some of them are more focused on traditional academic outcomes; we’ve got resources specific for individual tutoring.
We recognize that we have a very large relative population of veterans using what’s called veteran readiness and employment, which means they’re disabled veterans. We have over 430 of those on our campus, so we have more just from that group than most campuses have veterans. So we’re very intentional about providing services that are, first of all, diverse enough to cover all the different conditions, visible and invisible, that might be barriers to success academically.
The activities that I’m most proud of are the ones that are more impactful and [contribute] directly toward sense of belonging and community building. Because I think if you don’t have a strong sense of belonging, and you don’t have a visible and established community, then you’re not going to get true engagement. You’re just going to get a veteran or a family member that shows up, goes to the class, absorbs the information, goes home, but they’re not really engaging with their peers on campus, or campus culture. They’re not getting the other 50 percent of why you go to college, which is to develop social capital and be exposed to ideas that are new and different than your own.
Some of the programs that we’ve put together on that front are something we call Coffee With Vets, which is a very informal mixer that we do every second Wednesday of the month. When I say Coffee With Vets, you’ll notice I didn’t say with student vets, right? Because it’s for the entire veteran community. We have over 200 employees that wore the uniform as well, and it’s not uncommon to see students, employees, people from the community, stakeholders, that use that event as an opportunity to just be seen and get to know people.
I think what we’re guilty of, myself included, is that a veteran might look at a resource and think, “I don’t need that today, so it’s not relevant to me,” and then when they do need it, then there’s this issue with trust: “I’m only going to engage with something I trust.” And so Coffee With Vets is an opportunity for someone like me to maybe engage with VA [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs] staff. And even though I may not need what they’re doing right now, I may need it in six months or a year, and I’m going to remember that person that I commiserated with over a bacon-covered doughnut and some Black Rifle coffee. I’m much more willing to engage in whatever that support is.
That’s just one example. And the reason why we do that, the reason why we emphasize community building and building that trust is because when you look at some of the barriers to completion and matriculation, a lot of them are vets putting something off or not engaging with something. So if we can minimize hesitation and maximize trust, then we can get those vets to fully utilize the wraparound services that we provide and ultimately be successful, not just in school, but beyond school, because they’re only here for a little while. And what we’re trying to do is set them up for success in the future.
Q: I’m so glad that you mentioned that role of helping students see that resources might be useful later on. Because one of the common barriers that we hear from student veterans is that the military is so structured and that there’s so much told to them about what your next step is and where you’re going to go and what your job is, that when you come to higher ed, you really have to find a sense of self-advocacy and start finding things on your own that might just be unfamiliar or different.
I love that you all provide a space for students to explore but also be connected with people who think like they do and understand that it might be a totally different culture change to have somebody like you have to ask for help sometimes.
A: The two things you bring up are advocacy and what I like to call cultural considerations. I don’t like to say cultural competency, because that implies incompetency. It’s not incompetency, it’s just cultivated.
Advocacy is a big thing. There’s a significant amount of my time spent doing that, sometimes at the request of veterans, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s because I need to help the veteran figure out how to learn to live in the world that they’re in now. But it’s not uncommon for me to have a veteran reach out and say, “I want to have this conversation with an instructor, but I don’t know how to do it without coming across as just super aggressive or knife handing or using the F-word as a comma,” which sometimes they’re still in the habit of doing. But they’re self-aware, right? So they’re coming in, they’re asking, “I don’t want the message to get lost in how I’m delivering it. So please help me.” And we’ll do that.
But the other side of that is also the self-advocacy piece, which I’m glad you mentioned, too, because there’s just, like you said, when you’re on active duty, there’s somebody who’s responsible for you. As you mentioned, you’ve got a squad leader, you’ve got a battle buddy, you’ve got somebody, even when you check into a base, somebody walks you around and shows you everything. And that’s just not the case in higher ed.
You may not know what Student Disability Services is. You may not know that if you have a 50 percent or higher [disability] rating, you get free [ADA] surface parking. So here you are paying for it. Or testing accommodations—just all these different things that vets are leaving on the table, and it’s hurting them in some form or fashion, because they’re not able to maximize their potential.
It’s a weird tightrope where we’re trying to figure out, “How do we give them all this information, but in a way where it’s not like sipping water from a fire hose or this is going to be information dumped five minutes later?” We have to be very, very intentional about parceling out that information.
We kind of do it in layers. First, here’s who we are, then if you have an interest in these things categorically, and then it eventually it gets into the into the weeds of things. But that’s actually been very successful for us.
As a matter of fact, we asked some of our vets, “Hey, what do you wish you would have known the first day, now that you’re here towards the end, what do you wish you would have known?” And they actually put together a booklet that has everything that they all said: “Here’s what would have been super helpful on day one to know.” So now that’s turned into something that our student vets maintain.
My transition off of active duty was—I’m going to date myself here—over 20 years ago, probably over 25 years ago. My experiences and my needs are very, very different than a service member becoming a veteran in the year 2025. So it’s very important that we maintain that close connection with these subsequent cohorts of veterans that are showing up on our campus and giving them the agency to drive—“Here’s the information we need, so hey, please provide it.”
That requires a lot of psychological safety on behalf of my staff, because you get that thought about, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But at the same time, something that was relevant two years ago may not be relevant to the folks that are getting out in a very different environment.
Q: You touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think just having that staff that has military experience or military affiliation as well can be really helpful. And like you said, translating to higher education, but also understanding, like, even if it’s not right now, what service members might need, but having a little bit of empathy for that circumstance and what they might be transitioning through.
A: I agree with that 100 percent. All of the staff members that I have today in summer of ’25 I had in fall of 2018, every single one of them. I haven’t lost anybody through COVID—if you’re in Texas, Snowvid—or the great resignation.
I think that is a very clear indicator of the orientation of my staff. We’re all military connected, either veterans or family members themselves, and they’re here because the work that we do here is what fills our cup.
As a matter of fact, we have a purpose statement that is taped up everywhere, and it’s derived from an old story about President Kennedy visiting NASA. He sees a janitor, and he asks the janitor, “Hey, what do you do here?” And the janitor says, “I’m helping put someone on the moon.”
We’ve adapted that, and if you were to walk into UTSA Center for Military Affiliated Students and you see somebody shredding paper or filing or helping a student all across the range of things we could be doing, and you ask them, “Hey, what are you doing here?” The answer is going to be “I’m trying to provide a level of support for students that I wish I would have had for myself.”
Q: I wanted to talk a little bit about careers, because military students often come in with lots of life and career experience, but often enter higher education as a pivot or as an exploration of doing something else. I wonder if you can talk about navigating that space and understanding where higher education is a bridge for military-affiliated students.
A: That’s a tricky one in that you’re right, some of them come in and that pivot sometimes is intentional. If you look at our chief information officer [Kendra Ketchum], who was a Navy corpsman, and then postmilitary pivoted into, she’s our CIO.
But I think what’s very important when trying to help a service member navigate what they’re going to do with their higher education experience is you have to ask almost the five whys. If you’re familiar with Lean, you know what the five whys are. If you have a toddler, you know what five whys are.
But if you ask a vet, “Hey, why are you here?” The first answer you’re probably going to get is, “Because you’re supposed to use the GI Bill.” That’s what you’re told. You leave active duty, you go to college, you use the GI Bill.
“So what do you want to get out of it?”
“I wanted to get a degree and get a good job.”
But really, what it comes back to is trying to get them to be reflective on who it is you want to be, rather than what it is you want to do. What we uncover is that most veterans are looking for two things: to continue serving and community.
So once we figure out what that piece is for them, it’s a lot easier to guide them through the process and not just tell them all, “Here’s the major you should take, or which classes or which instructor,” but actually provide opportunities for academic inquiry.
I mentioned earlier that we did research for sense of belonging and identity. It started years ago when a veteran came to me, and she was frustrated because she had this great idea for doing a study to create a rubric based on positive psychology to figure out what motivates a veteran, what makes them tick, what fills their cup. Because she wanted to focus on that, not on the deficit discourse: What’s wrong with you and how do we address your problem today?
She had gone to different places and couldn’t get any traction because nobody was studying that; that wasn’t a topic that anyone was researching. And I said, “Well, I’m not a psychologist, but I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
Fast-forward to the end of that story: She did the study, and then she got accepted to two national conferences to talk about it, and she graduated with her master’s in social work and has returned to our university as an internship coordinator to start our first-ever veteran case management program. We’re going to pilot it under her watch. She invented the rubric.
That’s one example and I can give you many more. But again, it’s very nontraditional. We’re not just talking about advising students, we’re talking about providing opportunities for students to develop and cultivate their inquiry so they don’t lose that through the college process and then end up being something other than what they intended when they graduate.
Q: Regarding sense of belonging, I think it’s natural for student veterans to fall in step with each other. But then there’s also the wider campus community and finding that sense of belonging just on campus as well. I wonder if you can talk about those two avenues, one connecting like-minded, military-affiliated students, and the other encouraging them to get out, explore and see what else the campus has to offer?
A: That’s an excellent point, and it is a strange kind of rut that we fall into where we want to gravitate towards what we know. We show up on a campus and everything’s weird, and people are different, and so we’re looking for other people that are like us, and that’s kind of missing the point.
What I do to try and encourage engagement outside of just vets hanging out with vets is I will encourage vets to cultivate the thing that they want to keep doing, which is continue serving, but expand that vision beyond vets.
For example, our local Student Veteran Association chapter, they were doing a lot of programming that was vet-focused, vet-centric. And I said, “You know who doesn’t have a lot of support on this campus is military family members, like the kids in the center for military families. So maybe we connect with them and we look for a broader opportunity to support where there’s a gap.”
We had vets that would ask me, “How come I’m having trouble getting nonvets to see the value in us, or not look at us sideways or appreciate our presence in the classroom?” And I said, “Well, why don’t we look at service projects that benefit them, and not necessarily just y’all?”
So a group of vets got together, and they came up with this great idea to provide golf cart shuttle service for folks with mobility issues. It was the vet group that was like, “All right, we’re going to write the grant, we’re going to get the golf cart, we’re going to drive it, but it’s going to be available to anyone who’s got any kind of mobility issue.” They didn’t even say disability, just mobility. It could be a sprained ankle.
And it’s a service that they were going to leverage their capital. Because vets can go and they can ask for these things and get these donations, but [they] make it available to the entire campus population and that lines up exactly with their values. They enlisted to serve, and they served folks. This was kind of a microcosm of that.
It’s great to see how, when they’re thinking it through and they’re ideating, all of a sudden, that light bulb goes off, and it makes sense that we don’t have to circle the wagons because we’re in a strange environment. What we need to do is do what we’ve always been doing and leverage everything that we bring to the table to lift everyone else around us.
Q: You’re a veteran and a veteran in this space in higher education. For those who might be unfamiliar with working with military-affiliated students or looking to do more on their campus to support these students, what’s a point or two you would give for someone who wants to do better?
A: First and foremost, I think that there might be a misconception out there that vets maybe see themselves as apart from or maybe even above [others]. You hear about Billy Madison syndrome: “I’m older and I know more things.”
While that might be true for some vets, vets are typically not looking for differential treatment—especially in the classroom or among their peers or from instructors or even from staff; they’re just looking for their experiences to be as validated as anybody else’s. So it’s very important that we’re aware that there are some things we can do and say that will be received as microaggressions. The issue is, when a vet experiences a microaggression, they don’t get aggressive. I think some people think, “Oh, man, they’re about to snap and lose their minds,” and that’s not what they’re going to do. What the vet’s gonna do is absolutely shut down, and they will disengage, and you will have lost any opportunity going forward to regain their trust and to have them feel a part of the community.
So first and foremost, just if one could shift their mindset and understand veteran [experiences] is a culture, and think of it as any other culture you support on campus. No. 1, that’s going to help you as the nonvet to really inform your perspective.
Then second of all is listen and don’t be prescriptive. And that applies not just for nonvets, but for people like me as well. Like I mentioned, my [military] experience was a long time ago versus what people are experiencing now. And as much as I’m tempted all the time to say, “I know what you’re going to need, I know what’s going to happen to you in six months and in two years, and the stages of going from active duty to civilian and the wall you’re going to hit. I know all these things are coming, so I’m going to set all these things up, and I’m gonna expect you to do them.” Every vet is sitting there saying, “Oh, that’s not me. You don’t know me.” And I know, because I was that guy that did the same thing.
It’s important to kind of push down my own impulses and stay very, very actively engaged and just constantly ask, “What is it you need? What is it I can do to support you?” By doing that, you’re building that trust, so that when those other [challenges] inevitably do happen, you don’t have to go find them and save them from it. They’re going to come to you and ask you, “Hey, can you help me through it?”
That’s the difference between, I think, being effective and going through the motions, is when they’re asking for it and they want to engage with it. But those are the two biggest things. Vets aren’t all that different. They’re just actually, weirdly, looking to be part of the crowd.
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An estimated 57 percent of college students cannot complete their degree on time because their institution does not offer required courses during days and times—or in a format, such as online—that meet their needs, according to data from Ad Astra.
A recently published study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that female students are more likely than their male peers to be shut out of a college course, which can have long-term implications for their success and outcomes.
The findings point to the role course shutouts can play in students’ major and career choices, with those unable to enroll in science, engineering, math or technology courses in their first term less likely to attempt a STEM course at any point during college.
The background: A common way for colleges to navigate budget cuts is to reduce course offerings or academic majors. But that can increase the number of students who are unable to enroll in, or find themselves shut out of, courses they want to take. Students at community colleges in particular are less likely to remain enrolled if they face a shutout, choosing instead to take zero credits that term or to transfer.
Federal funding cuts by the Trump administration have ramped up some institutions’ existing budget woes, requiring them to reduce program offerings. Some groups have advocated for minimizing costs via course sharing, which allows students to meet requirements and earn credits for their home institution while enrolling in a shared online course.
Methodology: The research, authored by faculty from Purdue and Brigham Young Universities, analyzed registration processes at Purdue in fall 2018, when first-year students were enrolled using a batch algorithm. Researchers considered a student shut out of a course in their first year if their primary request was not met or the student enrolled in a different, secondary course instead.
The data: Among the 7,646 first-year students studied, only 49 percent received their preferred schedule, meaning 51 percent were shut out from at least one of their top six requested courses. Eight percent of shutouts made it into their course eventually, according to the report.
Of the 241 courses that were oversubscribed, required English and communications courses were most likely to shut students out; the other overbooked courses represented a variety of subject areas.
The effects of a student not taking a preferred course in the first term were seen throughout their academic career. First-year students who were initially shut out from a course were 35 percentage points less likely to complete the course while enrolled and 25 percentage points less likely to ever enroll in a course in the same subject.
While a student’s first-term GPA was not impacted by the shutout, by senior year, students had a GPA two hundredths of a point lower compared to their peers who enrolled in their preferred classes. The study also found that each course shutout led to a 3 percent decrease in the probability of a student graduating within four years, which is economically meaningful but statistically insignificant.
Registration barriers also made it less likely that students would choose STEM majors, which researchers theorize could be due to a lack of substitution options to meet major prerequisites. Each shutout a student faced in a STEM course decreased the probability that a student majored in STEM by 20 percent.
The impact was especially striking for female students. For each course a female student was unable to enroll in during her first year, her first-semester credits dropped by 0.4, cumulative GPA by 0.05 and the probability of her majoring in a STEM field by 2.9 percentage points. The long-term effects extended into life after college: A shutout female student’s probability of graduating within four years dropped 7.5 percent and had an expected cost of approximately $1,500 in forgone wages and $800 in tuition and housing costs.
“In contrast, for male students, shutouts do not have a significant effect on credits earned, cumulative GPA, choosing a STEM major or on-time graduation,” researchers wrote.
Male students who didn’t get into their top-choice courses first semester were more likely to switch to a major in the business school and have a higher starting salary as well. “At this university, men are 19 percent more likely than women to major in business and this entire gender gap can be explained by course shutouts,” researchers wrote.
Researchers therefore believe finding ways to reduce course shutouts, particularly in STEM courses, can improve outcomes for women and others to widen the path to high-return majors.
Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.
