Patricia McGuire has always been an outspoken advocate for her students at Trinity Washington University, a small, Catholic institution that serves largely Black and Hispanic women, just a few miles from the White House. She’s also criticized what she calls “the Trump administration’s wholesale assault on freedom of speech and human rights.”
In her 36 years as president, though, McGuire told me, she has never felt so isolated, a lonely voice challenging an agenda she believes “demands a vigorous and loud response from all of higher education. “
It got a little bit louder this week, after Harvard University President Alan Garber refused to capitulate to Trump’s demands that it overhaul its operations, hiring and admissions. Trump is now calling on the IRS to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The epic and unprecedented battle with Harvard is part of Trump’s push to remake higher education and attack elite schools, beginning with his insistence that Harvard address allegations of antisemitism, stemming from campus protests related to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza following attacks by Hamas in October 2023.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
Garber responded that “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue” — words that Harvard faculty, students and others in higher education had been urging him to say for weeks. Students and faculty at Brown and Yale are asking their presidents to speak out as well.
Many hope it is the beginning of a new resistance in higher education. “Harvard’s move gives others permission to come out on the ice a little,” McGuire said. “This is an answer to the tepid and vacillating presidents who said they don’t want to draw attention to themselves.”
Harvard paved the way for other institutions to stand up to the administration’s demands, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, noted in an interview with NPR this week.
Stanford University President Jonathan Levin immediately backed Harvard, noting that “the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution.”
Former President Barack Obama on Monday urged others to follow suit.
A minuscule number of college leaders had spoken out before Harvard’s Garber, including Michael Gavin, president of Delta College, a community college in Michigan; Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber; Danielle Holley of Mount Holyoke; and SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. Of more than 70 prominent higher education leaders who signed a petition circulated Tuesday supporting Garber, only a handful were current college presidents, including Michael Roth of Wesleyan, Susan Poser of Hofstra, Alison Byerly of Carleton, David Fithian of Clark University, Jonathan Holloway of Rutgers University and Laura Walker of Bennington College.
Speaking out and opposing Trump is not without consequences: The president retaliated against Harvard by freezing $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.
Many higher ed leaders think it’s going to take a bigger, collective effort fight for everything that U.S. higher education stands for, including those with more influence than Trinity Washington, which has no federal grants and an endowment of just $30 million. It’s also filled with students working their way through school.
About 15 percent are undocumented and live in constant fear of being deported under Trump policies, McGuire told me. “We need the elites out there because they have the clout and the financial strength the rest of us don’t have,” she said. “Trinity is not on anyone’s radar.”
Some schools are pushing back against Trump’s immigration policies, hoping to protect their international and undocumented students. Occidental College President Tom Stritikus is among the college presidents who signed an amicus brief this month detailing concerns about the administration’s revocation of student and faculty visas and the arrest and detention of students based on campus advocacy.
“I think the real concern is the fear and instability that our students are experiencing. It is just heartbreaking to me,” Stritikus told me. He also spoke of the need for “collective action” among colleges and the associations that support them.
The fear is real: More than 210 colleges and universities have identified 1,400-plus international students and recent graduates who have had their legal status changed by the State Department, according to Inside Higher Ed. Stritikus said Occidental is providing resources, training sessions and guidance for student and faculty.
Many students, he said, would like him to do more. “When I’m around students, I’m more optimistic for our future,” Stritikus said. “Our higher education system has been the envy of the world for a very long time. Clearly these threats to institutional autonomy, freedom of expression and the civil rights of our community put all that risk.”
Back at Trinity Washington, McGuire said she will continue to make calls, talk to other college presidents and encourage them to take a stronger stand.
“I tell them, you will never regret doing what is right, but if you allow yourself to be co-opted, you will have regret that you caved to a dictator who doesn’t care about you or your institution.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
What if colleges started applying to you instead of the other way around?
The anxiety-inducing college admissions game is changing. With declining birth rates and growing skepticism about the value of a degree, higher education is facing an enrollment cliff, set to hit hard in 2026. That’s 18 years after the Great Recession, when many American families stopped having babies.
As competition for students intensifies, more states desperate for workforce talent and schools dependent on tuition dollars are turning to direct admission – a system in which students receive college acceptance offers and scholarships before they even apply.
Marykate Agnes was directly admitted to Western New England University, and also got a significant amount of financial aid. Credit: Kirk Carapezza
In this episode, hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus break down how we even got to the point at which the traditional college admission process required students to spend time and money with no guarantee of success. And they ask whether direct admission is the solution colleges and students need, or a Band-Aid on a bigger enrollment crisis.
In the basement of the Student Center at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, students play pool and ping pong. At a table in the back, Ndilei Lukulay is taking a break from her studies. She tells me her mother came to the U.S. from Sierra Leone. Growing up in Springfield, Lukulay felt nervous about applying to college.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I was definitely feeling the pressure of being that my mom is an immigrant. She’s very big on going to college and making sure that you get a good career and complete all your studies and so I didn’t know where to start and I was very stressed out about the whole thing.
[Kirk] Then this university in her hometown emailed to say she was admitted and would get a scholarship and she hadn’t even applied. So she was skeptical.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I was, like, is this a scam? Is this real?
[Kirk] It was real. Western New England, a private university with about 2,000 students, offered to admit her and more than 2,000 other students before they even applied. The university tells me the goal is to make college more accessible to low-income students, like Lukulay, who make up about a third of the school’s population.
This is called direct admission, and we’re seeing a lot more schools doing this as they confront a steep decline in the number of 18-year-olds, something economists call the demographic cliff. That’s going to mean a lot fewer college students — or potential customers.
[Jon] And, Kirk, schools in areas of the country like western Massachusetts are the hardest hit.
Here’s how it works. The college tells students they’d get in based on a handful of criteria, like their GPA or intended major. For students like Ndilei Lukulay, that means getting to skip writing essays, going to interviews, and getting letters of recommendation.
[Ndilei Lukulay] I think I received direct admissions offers from about 12 to 15 schools and I was actually very shocked. I just never heard anything about it and I’m like, is that easy?
[Jon] This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Jon Marcus with the Hechinger Report. …
[Kirk] … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH News. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with the Hechinger Report, is here to show you.
In this season, we’re standing on the precipice of the demographic cliff and exploring the changing higher education landscape. And one of the major changes is how people are getting into college. Applying to schools is really stressful. But what if all that went away and colleges applied to you?
Today on the show” Tag, You’re In!”
[Kirk] Direct admission is now used by hundreds of schools across the country. And more than a dozen state systems do this, too, including Oregon, Minnesota, and Connecticut. Idaho was the first state to create a direct admissions program.
[Jennifer Delaney] In Idaho, it was actually the president of the flagship who tried to apply to his own college and found it really hard.
[Kirk] Jennifer Delaney teaches higher ed policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and she studied the direct admissions program in Idaho, where every public institution in the state participates, as well as two private colleges.
[Jennifer Delaney] It was about how do we simplify, how do think about increasing, as a state, overall college enrollment. So every kid in a public high school in Idaho gets a letter. You’re either in everywhere in the state if your GPA is high enough, or you’re into all the open-access institutions, which is every community college plus two public four-years.
[Jon] This is a major shift, Kirk, in how colleges do business. For students, it helps ease the stress of the college search by letting them know they’re in before they even apply. For colleges desperate for students, it’s a way to fill their classroom.
[Kirk] Yeah, and for states, Jon, it’s a way to keep talent close to home and develop a more educated workforce. Susan Makowski is director of admission at Rider University in New Jersey. We heard from her in our first episode this season.
[Susan Makowski] The cliff is coming, so we just will have less students.
[Kirk] At a college fair in Edison, New Jersey, she told me Rider was already admitting nearly 80 percent of those who applied when it decided to offer direct admission to students who’ve uploaded their applications through the Common App. That’s a single application accepted by more than 1,000 schools. So somebody applying to the University of Michigan suddenly gets accepted to other schools, like Rider.
[Susan Makowski] These direct admission programs run the gamut of different ways that a student gets admitted. I may alert them that they look like a great fit for Rider, but they still need to decide — do they feel that way? Whereas the other options, really, I think, sometimes worry students. Like, is this real?
[Jon] Interesting. But does direct admission really help colleges like Rider boost enrollment? And what if a college tags you? We’ll have more on that in a moment, so stay tuned.
But first, how did we get to this point where the college admissions process requires students to spend a ton of time and money with no guarantee of success? And how did the whole process become so anxiety-inducing?
[Kirk] Well, Jon, it wasn’t always this way.
[Archival newsreel sound] There were a group of congressmen with long memories who were in the last war. They knew that when a man gets out of the Army or Navy or Marines, he’s worried most about a job, an education, and a home. And that’s why Congress, led by the president, passed the law, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights.
[Kirk] Some quick history. After World War II, most of the students applying to college applied to a single school. And by the 1970s, it was maybe two schools. Today, one in three students applies to seven or more places. That shift has created a lot of uncertainty for colleges hoping to fill their seats and a lot anxiety for students and their families. To get a sense of why colleges push this system, I reached out to a long-time admissions insider.
[John Burdick] My name is John Burdick. I was, until 2023, the vice provost for enrollment at Cornell University in New York.
[Kirk] Burdick was in the game for nearly four decades. Since he left Cornell, he’s been working on international college access in Africa. So technically he’s still in the game. I asked him what drove us here?
[John Burdick] This is basically just a classic arms race. The more rejection letters we can send, the more prestige we have, the more likely people will be willing to spend money on our services. And then students follow along behind that by a year or so and say, ‘I don’t know that I’m going to get in there or the other nine, 10, 19 prestigious places that I am applying to. So I better apply to all of them.’
[Kirk] Burdick says everybody in the game has a perverse incentive — students to increase the number of applications they send, and colleges to increase the number of applications they get.
[John Burdick] Now the Ivies will by and large say, ‘Oh, we don’t want more applications. We’re already only admitting 5 percent and it’s terrible and we’d just as soon not see applications.’ They’re lying through their teeth. They would freak out if they suddenly weren’t among the most selective universities on the planet.
[Kirk] And on this planet, most colleges — 80% — admit more than half the students who apply. Still, selective or elite college admission drives the national narrative.
Jon, you’ve reported on the fact that it’s getting easier to get into college and with the demographic cliff coming it’ll only get easier at certain schools, right?
[Jon] Yeah, not at Princeton and Yale, but despite public perception, and for the first time in decades, acceptance rates at most colleges and universities are going up.
[Kirk] Where are acceptance rates going up the most?
[Jon] Well, Bucknell, George Washington, Marquette, Oberlin, Gonzaga, Brigham Young — the list goes on and on. These universities want you to think it’s impossible, or at least hard, to get in. But the fact is, on average, universities are admitting a larger proportion of their applicants than they did 20 years ago. In fact, the median acceptance rate at four-year universities was about 8 percentage points higher in 2022 than it was in 2012.
[Kirk] Many students think it’s increasingly hard to get into college, and they see the whole process as a mystery. Even as you gather up your transcripts and test scores and then add some final touches on your personal essays, the question remains: Exactly what happens after your application goes out into the unknown? At the college fair in New Jersey, I asked high school juniors Masiambou Saysay and Harmony Roundtree what they think happens behind closed doors.
[Masiambou Saysay] They just have a lot of applications, they’re like, declined, oh yeah, I don’t know.
[Harmony Roundtree] I feel like a big pile of letters being stacked on top of each other and you just gotta pick, yeah.
[Kirk] And what do you think it looks like?
[Harmony Roundtree] Hmm. Like, a million emails and then, like, three different computers
[Kirk] I got a glimpse into one of those computers and the black box that is the admissions process — the mystery of who gets in, the secrets of what really matters. After I reached out to a bunch of schools, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester agreed to give me access and a behind-the-scenes look at the admissions processes. Full disclosure, Jon, I’m a graduate of Holy Cross.
[Jon] Oh, really, Kirk? You never mention it. So the only school that would let you in is the only school that would allow you to observe the process?
[Kirk] That’s pretty much how this went down. The college let me sit in on one early decision committee meeting. Behind closed doors, inside a tiny conference room, I saw how the process historically went down.
[Woman’s voice] Nice program, good testing.
[Man’s voice] Yeah, a lot to like.
[Woman’s voice] People like him?
[Kirk] What’s most surprising is how quickly the committee reviews the candidates, spending about two minutes on each before deciding whether to accept, hold, or deny. To speed things along, the committee uses a lot of jargon, like LBB — that’s ‘late blooming boy’ — and RJ for ‘rejection.’
[Woman’s voice] Academically has everything. I wonder if a counselor call might be enlightening.
[Woman’s voice] I mean, honestly, it sounds like maybe he could work on it or be cognizant of it. I mean I don’t know, and he’s strong academically, I think he’s okay.
[Man’s voice] I think his classmates would bring him down to reality.
[Jon] Kirk, that’s just one small private college. So to get a broader sense of the admissions landscape and how it’s changing, we reached out to Jeff Selingo.
[Kirk] Yes, Selingo teaches higher ed leadership at Arizona State University, and he’s author of the book Who Gets In and Why. For his research, he spent a year inside three college admissions offices at Emory in Atlanta, Davidson in North Carolina, and the University of Washington in Seattle. So I asked him, how did he end up at those schools?
[Jeff Selingo] In some ways, it’s a lot like admissions. I approached 24 schools and asked them to get inside their admissions process. And most said no. And only three said yes. So it’s kind of like I applied to 24 schools. I only got into three.
[Kirk] And what do you think people imagine it’s like inside a college admissions office and what’s it actually like?
[Jeff Selingo] First of all, I think they think that the admissions officers are spending a lot more time with college applications than they really are. Emory had something like 40,000 applications. And so as a result, they’re like looking at these applications sometimes in just a couple of minutes. Probably the most they would take with an application might be 12 or 13 minutes. And meanwhile, you know, these kids are putting their heart and soul into it for years.
[Kirk] Selingo says the biggest change in the college admissions game is the lack of signals around what it takes to get in. Schools that used to require test scores, for example, have gone test-optional since the pandemic.
[Jeff Selingo] You know, some colleges have gone back, But that lack of a signal, like, if I got a 1400 or 1300 on the SAT, I kind of knew where that would place me in a class and I would not even apply to most of these schools. But now with test optional, it gave me the opportunity to potentially apply and get in. And so every year now you see just increasing number of applications again to these highly selective schools. And then you hear stories, ‘Oh, I didn’t, you, know, my kid didn’t get in or my cousin didn’t get in,’ and so the following year, kids get really nervous. And what do they do? They apply to not only those same set of schools, but then they apply to five more at the same time. And so you just see this vicious circle that just keeps going around and around again, particularly around these top schools.
[Kirk] How do you think the demographic cliff and the shortage of 18-year-olds will change this game?
[Jeff Selingo] I think the competition for student is going to intensify. And so you’re seeing that already. You see programs like direct admission, where students are getting accepted to colleges without even applying. You’re going to see a lot more marketing to students even earlier than they do now, in terms of buying their names and sending them information. The other thing, though, is on the financial aid side. I think the discounts and the merit aid that [colleges] are going to give, I think they’re just going to lean even more into that. And you’re just going to see more and more money flowing to students to try to persuade them to come to school X instead of school Y.
[Kirk] How else are these colleges handling these seismic shifts, and what’s the tone inside of the admissions office now? Is there a sense of desperation?
[Jeff Selingo] It’s interesting around enrollment. Even though we’ve known this cliff has been coming forever, admissions is really, like, especially at most of these schools that are tuition dependent and are really enrollment driven, it’s about butts in seats tomorrow, not a year from now. So, I mean, they’re kind of short sighted. They haven’t been doing very much to prepare for this. No, they haven’t, because they basically think ‘I just need to, I need to make this class for next year. I need to come in on budget. I need to. Make enrollment.’ They’re not really worried about two years down the road.
[Kirk] You mentioned direct admission. What do you make of this trend, and do you think we’ll see more schools and states adopt it?
[Jeff Selingo] Oh, I think you will, because there’s something in admissions where everybody kind of follows the leader. I’m a little skeptical of direct admission. Well, what happens when more and more schools adopt direct admissions and suddenly, now, Kirk, you’re getting, instead of, like, one or two direct admissions offers, now you’re get eight or nine, right? Like, how does that really help you, at the end of the day, make a decision, or from the college’s point of view, know who’s really interested and who’s coming?
[Jon] So Jeff Selingo is pretty skeptical of direct admission. But does it help colleges boost enrollment?
[Kirk] Well, sometimes, says Jennifer Delaney. She’s the researcher we heard at the top of this episode who looked at the first-in-the-nation program in Idaho.
[Jennifer Delaney] It’s not always able to move the needle on the enrollment side of things.
[Kirk] Delaney’s research found direct admission helped to increase full-time undergrad enrollment by at least 4 percent, and it boosted in-state enrollment by at least 8 percent.
[Jennifer Delaney] Having a bird in the hand in Idaho meant that you stayed in Idaho for school, and you didn’t go out of state.
[Kirk] And what about low-income students?
[Jennifer Delaney] Admission isn’t enough. You’ve got to be admitted and be able to pay for it.
[Kirk] And that’s why more schools are adding direct financial aid offers up front, too.
[Jon] Kirk, to compete, more and more community and four-year colleges are offering — quote, unquote — free tuition. We have a whole episode about that called “The Real Cost of Free.” You can find it in our second season.
At Western New England University, Marykate Agnes says she accepted the direct admission offer, but not before she reached out to increase her financial aid award. Agnes was admitted through direct admission, and she also received generous financial
[Marykate Agnes] I got the $32,000 scholarship, then I got another $2,000 for early action, and then I asked for more money and I got it. So I think I’m paying around $10,000. I think that it’s just an awesome thing, and it takes stress off of the students.
[Jon] Agnes says she doesn’t worry about attending a less selective school.
[Marykate Agnes] I don’t think it reflects the value of the education at all. I mean, at the end of the semester, I have more work than my friends at more selective schools do, and it’s harder, more rigorous, and the professors are absolutely amazing, and it is so personable. And I think that’s what you’re not getting at the more selective schools.
[Kirk] All of this change is putting pressure on colleges to develop a strategy. That’s where people like Kathy Ruby come in. She works with colleges to shape financial aid strategies to help them compete with other schools for students.
[Kathy Ruby] It’s a competitive market, and it’s going to get more competitive depending on where you are and the type of institution you are. I think not all institutions will experience the cliff in the same way.
[Kirk] Ruby says families are more cost-conscious than ever. Students and parents are more averse to debt, so schools are trying to make themselves seem cheaper. The goal is to attract middle-income families who don’t qualify for federal and state but also don’t have the means to pay the full price.
[Kathy Ruby] Certainly institutions are starting to focus on what can we do for those middle students, because that also can often be a good place to build. But it can be more expensive for the institution, because there’s no federal dollars to help.
[Kirk] Schools are focusing on scholarships that are offered up front and meet more students’ financial needs. Ruby’s advice to students and families? Shape a college list with your reach, target and safety schools, but also understand what that means for you.
[Kathy Ruby] Because if you’re a very bright student and your likely schools might be actually still pretty selective and not offer much in the way of merit aid, you have to do your homework on understanding what the college actually offers. Use their website, use their net price calculator, talk to people.
[Jon] And, as we always say on this podcast, ask questions and understand what your financial aid package might look like, even if you can’t get an exact figure.
[Kirk] The reality is there are tons of solid schools and programs out there. So try not to worry so much about that bumper sticker on the back of your neighbor’s SUV. And remember, getting into those bumper-sticker schools is often not about you. It’s about the college’s agenda. Factors like building a class, budgets and yield. You know, whether a student will even enroll if they’re accepted. Students and parents have a lot to gain if they change their perspective on what really qualifies as a quote,unquote good college.
[Jon] That’s right, Kirk. It’s easy to think a degree from a selective institution is the best insurance policy you can buy for your kid’s future. And if they’re not accepted, they’ll end up on the wrong side of this country’s economic divide.
But as we approach the demographic cliff, in many ways, that is simply not true. For many students, it’s a buyer’s market now.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH. …
[Jon] … and I’m Jon Marcus from the Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza, and it was edited by Jonathan A. Davis.
Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim.
[Kirk] Our fact checker is Ryan Alderman.
Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott.
All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT.
The demographic cliff was set to sound for us by James Trayford of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in England.
Mei He is our project manager. And head of GBH Podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Jon] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report, and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Most Americans would probably rather forget the Great Recession that began in 2007. But as long ago as it may seem, it triggered something that is about to become a big problem: Americans started having fewer babies, and the birth rate hasn’t recovered since.
That means a looming decline in the number if 18-year-olds. Since those are the traditional customers for universities and colleges, enrollment is projected to fall dramatically and campuses to close.
In this episode, we tell you the surprising benefits of this for students and their parents — and the scary prospects for the economy, which will suffer shortages of workers just as baby boomers retire.
Brody Scully is a high school student looking at colleges. “There’s a lot of pressure on me. I have to decide in these next two years that I’ve got to go to a specific college,” he says.
Come with us to a college fair where recruiters line up to compete for applicants, and hear from enrollment consultants, economists, and the president of a school that has already closed.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza.
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus. We’re going to start this brand-new season of the podcast by taking you back to a time most Americans would probably rather forget.
[Archival news footage] Monday, Sept. 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers files the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, precipitating the global financial crisis. … The Dow tumbled more than 500 points.
[Jon] What we now call the Great Recession started in 2008, and it left the world’s economy reeling.
[Archival news footage] More than two million prime mortgages, traditional loans for people with good credit, are now delinquent.
[Jon] The Great Recession did a lot of damage at the time, but it also caused something else most people haven’t noticed, and that’s about to affect us all.
[Archival news footage] Birth rates in the USA have dropped to their lowest annual levels in three decades, falling for nearly every group of women. … It changed the game when it comes to job security, and it led many young adults to delay marriage and kids.
[Jon] People stop having babies during economic downturns. That was a major but almost unseen impact of the Great Recession 18 years ago. And that means we’re about to run out of 18-year-olds. This is being called the demographic cliff.
Hey Kirk, help me explain the deal with this demographic cliff.
[Kirk] Yeah, so the demographic cliff is this big dropoff that’s about to hit the number of traditional-age college students. And the reason experts call it a cliff is that the number of students is going to go down, like you’re tumbling down a mountain and it never comes back up, Jon.
[Jon] The demographic cliff is pretty much the focus of our new season of this podcast. There’s some surprising good news that we’ll tell you about for students and their families, and for the parents of prospective college students. But this demographic cliff is also a big, big problem in ways most Americans don’t realize yet, for colleges and universities — and for economy.
[Nicole Smith] We are looking ahead down the road to circumstances, dire circumstances where we just can’t fill the jobs that are opening up.
[Wes Butterfield] We are at the, I’m going to call it the crossroads. You know, we’re at the cross roads for many campuses where they’re going to have to think creatively.
[Rachel Sederberg] We’re going to see issues across every occupation and every industry. There is going to be no one spared of this pain.
[Jon] Those are the voices of some experts whose job it’s been to watch this coming crisis. Like the lookouts with binoculars on the deck of the Titanic.
[Telephone ringing] Pick up, you bastards!
Yes, what do you see?
Iceberg! Dead ahead!
[Jon] So forgive us for the mixed metaphors and come with us as we help you cross these icy seas and this pivotal crossroads. We’ll show you how the demographic cliff will affect you.
[Kirk] This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. …
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate, so GBH …
[Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report is here to show you.
[Kirk] In our fourth season, we’ll be looking at the many dramatic ways that college is changing right now and what it all means for you. Today on the podcast: “The Demographic Cliff.”
[Sound from college fair] Hi, guys, welcome to the college fair. If you’d like a bag…
[Kirk] To get a sense of what the demographic cliff looks and sounds like on the ground, I went to a national college fair in Edison, New Jersey.
[Sound from college fair] Students, make sure you have your barcode ready so the colleges can scan your barcodes.
[Kirk] Inside a massive convention and exposition center in an industrial park, a bunch of juniors and their families anxiously waited in the lobby before passing through turnstiles, and then they mingled with college representatives.
[Sound from college fair] And do you have one of the scan cards so I can get your information?
[Kirk] It’s kind of like speed dating, with most of the colleges here selling themselves.
[Sound from college fair] What’s cool about it is that we’re currently building our brand new college of business building that’s a lot of these that will be the biggest academic building on campus, so honestly your degree is going to work tenfold by the time that you end up coming to FSU.
[Kirk] There’s rows and rows of colleges. In some of those rows, it seems like there are more colleges than students.
[Sound from college fair] And we’re 10 minutes from London Heathrow Airport as well, so for international students getting on is great.
[Kirk] After the initial rush, the crowd thins out and those turnstiles stop turning.
Welcome to a new era of college admissions.
As you come to a fair like this, what are you looking for exactly?
[Brody Scully] I’m looking for environmental sciences and eco-engineering.
[Kirk] Brody Scully is a junior from West Milford, New Jersey. He says he knows exactly what he wants in a college: someplace where he can be active and maybe ski, and someplace small.
[Brody Scully] Because I definitely learn where there’s probably a smaller group of people, so I’m looking for that.
[Kirk] Is it anxiety-inducing for you guys, going through this process?
[Brody Scully] I would say yeah, definitely, and, like, time intensive.
[Kirk] Why is it so stressful?
[Brody Scully] There’s a lot of pressure on me. I have to decide in these next two years that I’ve got to go to a specific college.
[Kirk] But Brody may be in luck, because in the college admissions game, he was born at the right time: in 2008, just as birth rates in the U.S. started to decline. Remember Jon, that means there will be fewer 18-year-olds applying to college over the next few years. And except at elite schools like Harvard or Stanford and a few dozen other most selective colleges, the odds of getting in are going up. Eight out of 10 applicants to public universities and 7 out of 10 at private colleges are accepted now. That’s nearly 8 percentage points higher than 10 years ago.
Brody was surprised and thrilled when I told him this. In fact, his eyes widened.
[Brody Scully] I’m not aware of that at all and I’m kind of happy now that you told me that.
[Kirk] As the fair winds down, college reps, some standing alone in the back of the convention center, keep smiling, making eye contact, and hoping for just one more student to come by.
I mean, the reality is, this is a competitive landscape for many colleges, and for students, it’s increasingly a buyer’s market.
Take Rider University, which is trying really hard to stand out in this sea of schools. Its reps are simply telling potential students what the school is all about. and where it is.
[Susan Makowski] It is a small private school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, which is about 15 minutes south of Princeton.
[Kirk] Susan Makowski is director of admissions at Rider, and for the past 20 years, she’s helped organize this fair.
This seems like organized chaos.
[Susan Makowski] I think that’s a great way to describe it.
[Kirk] This year, there are about 300 schools here looking for applicants. Colleges pay about $700 just to rent a booth. They think it’s worth it for a chance to connect with some of the nearly 3,000 registered students. And, of course, to scan their barcodes so they can follow up with endless reminders and marketing materials.
[Sound from college fair] I think I’m all good, but I’m making some…
Do you have one of the scans?
Uh, yes I do.
[Kirk] This year, Makowski tells me, Rider University is trying something a little different.
[Susan Makowski] Tonight, to be honest, I’m in New Jersey school at a New Jersey fair. I bought two booths. That’s how I’m standing out physically tonight so that you see that I’m here, right? You can’t miss me.
[Kirk] So you expanded your footprint.
[Susan Makowski] Yes, I did.
[Kirk] You can’t just walk, you can’t blow by you.
[Susan Makowski] Right, but that’s a selfish thing that I’m choosing to do, because I want to make certain that I can capture as many students Who might not have heard of us or might be really interested in us
[Kirk] Looking ahead and over the demographic cliff, Makowski tells me she knows things are about to change with fewer applicants.
[Susan Makowski] I think that’s going to be a natural progression, simply because a cliff is coming.
[Jon] Kirk, the seeds of this problem for colleges were planted back in 2008.
[Archival news footage] It was a manic Monday in the financial markets. The Dow tumbled more than 500 points after…
[Wes Butterfield] We were in a fairly dark place. And, again, that’s impacting us today.
[Jon] That’s Wes Butterfield. He’s chief of consulting services at Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a consulting firm that helps colleges and universities recruit students.
[Wes Butterfield] Anytime we reach those types of points in our history, birth rates go down. People just simply stop having babies. People were concerned about whether or not they’d have the resources to be able to start a family. And so those numbers backed off, and it takes a while for us to get to a point where it truly begins to impact us.
[Jon] The decline in births that started 18 years ago is about to translate into fewer students coming out of high school and enrolling in college. By 2039, there will be 15 percent fewer 18-year-olds per year than there are now.
The effect of all of this that you and I report about the most, Kirk, is what it will do to colleges and universities. It comes on top of a decline in enrollment that’s already been happening over most of the last 10 years. People have been questioning whether college is worth the high cost, and a relatively strong labor market drew a lot of high school graduates straight into jobs. Emily Wadhwani keeps a close eye on this as a senior director at Fitch Ratings, where she’s the sector lead for education. Fitch rates the financial health of institutions.
[Emily Wadhwani] We’ve been seeing kind of a trending downward of demand in terms of enrollment, particularly on the undergraduate side. So this is definitely a longer trend that we’re seeing.
[Jon] The pandemic only made things worse. And now the demographic cliff is here.
[Emily Wadhwani] Where we are now climbing back out of this post-pandemic recovery period, we see the same challenges that schools were facing prior to the pandemic, only now it’s more pronounced because those demographic trends have only deteriorated since then.
[Jon] That’s why colleges have started closing. Fitch categorizes the outlook for the higher education sector as deteriorating. Kirk, you and I have been seeing that a lot lately on abandoned campuses of colleges that have closed.
[Bob Allen] This is sort of a movie-set college campus, and people say that as soon as they essentially walk in the front gate.
[Kirk] That’s Bob Allen. He was the last president of a 185-year-old Green Mountain College in Vermont before it closed in 2019. By the time I visited the campus, it looked more like a ghost town.
[Bob Allen] So, yeah, watch yourself on these. They aren’t, see normally all of this would have been cleaned up.
One of the advantages of a small school is that it really was like an extended family. I knew not all of the students by name, but I knew most, and they knew me. They called me Bob, which was what I would prefer.
[Kirk] To Allen’s right, the red brick dining hall and dorms. To his left, the empty swimming pool, a ghost-like symbol of dried-up enrollment.
[Bob Allen] Increasingly students want to go to schools in cities and not rural areas. Poultney is a very tiny Vermont town.
[Kirk] At the time, Allen told me he preferred to give tours like these when the college was still open.
[Bob Allen] It was a lot more fun when we had students, all right.
[Kirk] At its peak, Green Mountain had about 800 students. That was already pretty small. But by the end of the 2010s, there were only a little more than half that many left. So Allen and his board decided that the college had to close.
[Bob Allen] It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do personally. I spent most of my career building businesses and to take a 185-year-old institution and have to shut it down was really tough.
The demographics are working against all colleges, but in particular, small rural colleges. It’s tough for surrounding towns when colleges close too. Our payroll just for the college alone was $6 million. It has to, in the end, have an economic impact on the town. You know, some of the businesses had closed even long before we made our announcement.
[Jon] Kirk, the demographic cliff means there will be a lot more colleges closing. Don’t take it from us. That’s the prediction of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Already, 21 colleges defaulted on their bonds last year, or were at risk of defaulting. That’s way up. Here’s Emily Wadhwani from Fitch.
[Emily Wadhwani] We’ve seen the closure rate accelerate over the last few years. We expect to see that continue for the next few years. That has tended to be smaller, private, liberal arts, sometimes religiously affiliated schools with perhaps less than a thousand students. I’m generalizing; there are a couple outliers there, but broadly speaking, those are the types of schools that we’ve seen close.
[Jon] That’s a pretty good list of the kinds of colleges that are in trouble, and consumers need to keep that in mind. No matter what schools you’re considering, you need to do more these days than look at their courses or the athletics program. You need to check out their finances.
[Emily Wadhwani] The second place I would look is the strength of fundraising, often an indicator of the level of wealth the university has — the capacity to fund scholarships and other aid packages, less reliance on tuition as a primary means of operating revenue.
[Jon] We’ve talked before in this podcast about how you can see if your college might be in financial trouble. And we’ll post the link to that in the show notes.
Now, it’s obviously a sad situation when colleges close, for their employees and students and alumni, and for the towns that depend on them. But, Kirk, there are a couple of bright spots if you’re currently a college student or the parent of a college student, or have a child who’s considering college.
[Kirk] Yeah, Jon, colleges teach this in Econ 101. It’s the simple law of supply and demand. As the number of students is falling, there’s less demand. And as demand goes down, two things are happening. First, most colleges are becoming easier to get into. And second, the price of tuition has actually started falling.
[Jon] Now, Kirk, let’s be clear: College is still expensive, and to make up for keeping tuition low, colleges with dorms and dining plans are raising the price of food and housing. But increases in tuition are finally dropping when adjusted for inflation, after decades of exceeding the cost of almost everything else that Americans spend money on.
[Kirk] Exactly, Jon. You’re also likely to be able to negotiate for more financial aid. We gave a lot of advice about this in the first episode of our second season, and we’ll link that in the show notes too.
[Jon] We’ll have a lot more to tell you about the dramatic changes in admission in our next episode. So check that out.
[Kirk] So that’s all pretty good news for future students and their families. But there’s more bad news. And not just for colleges, but for the economy and society. There will be fewer graduates coming out the other end with skills employers need, and fewer young people in general available to work in any kinds of jobs.
[Jon] Right, and all of that, Kirk, is coinciding with the tidal wave of baby boomers who will be retiring at the same time.
[Rachel Sederberg] We’re already well underway in this process where we saw vast retirements over the last few years.
[Jon] That’s Rachel Sederberg, a senior economist and director of research at the labor market analytics firm Lightcast. Ten-thousand baby boomers are turning 65 every day. And Sederberg says there just aren’t enough workers coming up behind these retiring baby boomers to fill the jobs they’re leaving.
[Rachel Sederberg] The generations that follow the baby boomers are simply smaller and cannot mathematically make up for that decline.
[Jon] These shortages are already happening, Kirk.
[Rachel Sederberg] We are losing people across every occupation and industry. So we’re going to need more workers across, and we don’t have enough of any kind.
[Kirk] Okay, to tie this all together for you, we reached out to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. It studies the connection between higher education and the economy. Chief Economist Nicole Smith connected these dots for us.
[Nicole Smith] So if you’re a college president, one way to look at this is, you know, ‘I don’t have enough students.’ But as an economist, I’m also thinking of the impact on the economy. Young people and young labor and the labor force — it’s the lifeblood of our society.
[Kirk] Smith says the decline in the number of traditional-aged college students will affect much more than whether a bunch of colleges close.
[Nicole Smith] We just don’t have enough who are completing and going to college and finishing school at as fast a rate as the economy is creating jobs for people with college degrees.
[Kirk] She’s not just talking about bachelor’s degrees, but all kinds of education after high school, including in manufacturing and the trades.
[Nicole Smith] Seventy-two percent of all jobs over the next decade will require some type of education and training beyond high school. So even if you don’t need a full bachelor’s, we need something that’s beyond high school and everyone has to be prepared to go back to get that credential so that you are prepared for that particular job.
[Kirk] So we’re all going to be falling down the demographic cliff together. In some parts of the country, labor shortages are already well underway.
[Nicole Smith] Many communities are facing this already. Rural communities are already having problems filling vacancies for some of their medical fields. They’re offering all sorts of incentives for doctors to come and work in those locations. So we’re already there.
[Jon] Kirk, as our experts have said, this demographic cliff is a dramatic turning point for higher education and it comes alongside questions about the value of college and a general decline in the proportion of high school students who are bothering to go.
[Kirk] Right, Jon, and that’s on top of huge political pressure on colleges and universities under the Trump administration and massive funding cuts.
[Jon] Throughout this season of the podcast, we’ll be looking at the ramifications of this unprecedented moment in the history of higher education. We’ll tell you how admissions is changing, why men in particular aren’t going to college, and the many new ways that are popping up, other than college, to train people for the workforce. and there’s much more.
[Kirk] So keep listening to future episodes to hear more about what colleges and universities don’t teach you in class.
This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH.
[Jon] And I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report.
[Kirk] This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus …
[Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza, and it was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim.
[Kirk] Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman
Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. We also used some music in this episode from the Stony Brook University Orchestra.
The demographic cliff was set to sound for us by James Trayford of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in England.
Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robbins.
[Jon] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It’s produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report, and distributed by PRX.
Thanks so much for listening.
More information about the topics covered in this episode:
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In a corner of Huffman High School, the sounds of popping nail guns and whirring table saws fill the architecture and construction classroom.
Down the hall, culinary students chop and saute in the school’s commercial kitchen, and in another room, cosmetology students snip mannequin hair to prepare for the state’s natural hair stylist license.
Starting this fall, Alabama high school students can choose to take these classes — or any other state-approved career and technical education courses — in place of upper level math and science, such as Algebra 2 or chemistry.
Alabama state law previously required students to take at least four years each of English, math, science and social studies to graduate from high school. The state is now calling that track the “Option A” diploma. The new “Option B” workforce diploma allows students to replace two math and two science classes with a sequence of three CTE courses of their choosing. The CTE courses do not have to be related to math or science, but they do have to be in the same career cluster. Already, more than 70 percent of Alabama high school students take at least one CTE class, according to the state’s Office of Career and Technical Education/Workforce Development.
The workforce diploma will give students more opportunities to get the kind of skills that can lead to jobs right after high school, legislators said. But there’s a cost: Many universities, including the state’s flagship University of Alabama, require at least three math credits for admission. The workforce diploma would make it more difficult for students on that track to get into those colleges.
The law passed in 2024 alongside a spate of bills aimed at boosting the state’s labor participation rate, which at 58 percent as of January remained below the national rate of 63 percent. Simply put, Alabama wants to get more of its residents working.
Alabama is giving high school students a new pathway to a high school diploma: fewer math and science classes in exchange for more career and technical education courses. Credit: Tamika Moore for The Hechinger Report
The new diploma option also comes at a time when public perception of college is souring: Only 36 percent of U.S. adults have a lot of confidence in higher education, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Just 43 percent of Alabama high schoolers who graduated in 2023 enrolled in one of the state’s public colleges the following fall.
“The world of higher education is at a crossroads,” said Amy Lloyd, executive director of the education advocacy nonprofit All4Ed and former assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education. “Americans are questioning the value of the return on their investment: Is it worth my money? Is it worth my time?”
Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free newsletter on K-12 education.
One recent afternoon in Huffman High School’s architecture class, a few students in bright yellow safety vests were measuring a wall they had built. At the end of the semester, the project will culminate in a tiny home.
Lucas Giles, a senior, started taking architecture his sophomore year as a way to “be able to fix things around the home without having to call other people,” he said. The new workforce diploma option won’t apply to him since he’s graduating this year, but he said he likely would have opted for it to fit more architecture classes into his schedule — that is, until he learned it would make it harder for him to attend college and study engineering.
“I wouldn’t have the credits,” Giles realized.
Students who earn a workforce diploma and end up wanting to go to college after all can enroll in community colleges, or aim for state colleges that have less stringent admissions requirements, said Alabama education chief Eric Mackey. The key to the new diploma will be ensuring school counselors are properly advising students, he added.
“That’s where the counselor comes in and says, ‘If you want to be a nurse, then yes, you need the practical stuff at the career tech center — taking blood pressure and trauma support — but you also need to be taking biology, physiology, chemistry and all those things, too,’” Mackey said.
Because the diploma only makes sense for a specific subset of students — those who do not plan to go to a four-year college that requires more math or science and who cannot otherwise fit CTE classes in their schedule — counselors have a huge role to play in guiding students. As of 2023, there were 405 students for every counselor in Alabama’s public schools, well over the recommended ratio of 250 to 1.
Mackey said the state added career coaches in recent years to ease the counseling workload, but in many districts there is just a single coach, who rotates among schools.
Samantha Williams, executive director of the nonprofit Birmingham Promise, fears the workforce diploma may shut off students’ options too early. Birmingham Promise helps students in Birmingham City Schools pay college tuition and connects them to internship opportunities while in high school.
“Do you really think that all of our school districts are preparing students to know what they want to do” by the time they’re in high school, Williams asked.
Williams also worries that lower-performing students might be steered to this diploma option in order to boost their schools’ rankings.
Students who opt for the workforce diploma will not have their ACT test scores included in their schools’ public reports. Legislators decided that schools should not have to report standardized test scores for students who did not have to take the requisite math and science classes.
“The concern a lot of people voiced was ‘Hey, isn’t everyone just going to place the kids who are underperforming in the workforce diploma so their ACT scores don’t bring down the whole?’” Williams said. “There’s a strong perverse incentive for people to do that.”
Speaking to the state’s Board of Education last fall, Mackey warned the “furor of the state superintendent will come down on” anyone who tries to redirect students toward the workforce diploma because of low ACT scores.
At Headland High School in rural Henry County, Alabama, every student takes at least one CTE course, according to Principal Brent Maloy. The most popular classes, he said, are financial management and family consumer science.
“We don’t force them in — everybody registers themselves, they pick their own classes,” Maloy said. “But there’s just about a zero percent chance that a kid’s not going to have a career tech class when they graduate.”
The school has hosted information sessions for parents and students about the new diploma option ahead of next school year. In a poll of rising juniors and seniors, 20 percent said they would like to pursue a workforce diploma, and another 30 percent said they might be interested. Maloy is anticipating about 25 percent of students will actually opt in to the pathway.
Most graduates of Headland enroll in a two-year school after graduation anyway, Maloy said, and the workforce diploma won’t hinder that. But the high school has only one counselor for its 450 students, and making sure students fully understand this diploma pathway — and its limitations — is likely to add pressure and extra responsibilities on counselors with heavy workloads.
Students hold up the wall of a tiny home they’re building in a career and tech architecture class at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report
“There’s so much pressure on our secondary counselors already just to make sure that all of the boxes are checked before graduation. It’s going to put an extra box for them to check,” Maloy said.
Ultimately, state businesses and industries want this change, said Mackey, who started his career as a middle and high school science teacher.
“They were saying, ‘We really need students with skills over, say, calculus,’” Mackey said. “That doesn’t mean some students don’t need calculus — we want to still offer those higher math courses and higher science courses.”
But, reflecting on his own experience as a high school science teacher, “I can tell you that every student doesn’t need high school chemistry,” Mackey said.
The chamber of commerce in Mobile, Alabama, is one group that advocated for the workforce diploma. Career tech classes are a good way for students to better learn what they want to do before graduating high school, and they are also an avenue for students to get skills in high wage industries prevalent in Alabama, said Kellie Snodgrass, vice president of workforce development at the Mobile Chamber.
Less than half of high school graduates in the region end up enrolling in college after graduation, Snodgrass said, and only 20 percent of high-wage jobs in Mobile require a college degree. A large chunk of jobs in the state, and in Mobile in particular, are in manufacturing.
“It’s terrible when a student goes away to college and comes back and can’t find a job, when we have thousands of open jobs here,” Snodgrass said.
In an emailed statement, Trevor Sutton, the vice president of economic development at the Birmingham Business Alliance, said the diploma option was a “win for the state of Alabama” that would allow students a chance to learn both “hard and soft skills like communication and time management.”
At least 11 states have embraced policies that give students flexibility to use career tech courses for core academic credits, according to a review from the Education Commission of the States.
Like Alabama, Indiana also made changes to its diploma requirements in 2024. After more than a year of public debate, the state created three graduation pathways that are meant to lead to college admissions, the workforce, or enlistment in the military. Those changes will be effective for students in the class of 2029, or current eighth graders.
Having industry buy-in on career tech programs is important, said Lloyd with All4Ed, because most students will need either an industry or post-secondary credential to land a job with a comfortable wage.
“The reality is a high school diploma is not enough in today’s labor market to have a guaranteed ticket to the middle class,” Lloyd said.
The problem, Lloyd said, is most K-12 industry credentials have little use to employers. Only 18 percent of CTE credentials earned by K-12 students in the U.S. were in demand by employers, according to a 2020 report from the Burning Glass Institute.
The key in Alabama will be ensuring students are going into career pathways that line up with job demand, Snodgrass said. Out of the more than 33,000 CTE credentials Alabama high school students earned in 2023, only 2 percent were in manufacturing, which is one of the state’s highest need areas.
Still, attitudes toward high school CTE courses — once largely thought of as classes for students who struggled academically — have improved significantly over the years. And many schools offer CTE programs like aerospace, robotics or conservation that could help students get into high-demand undergraduate programs at universities.
“We’re increasingly blurring the lines between what has been historically siloed in people’s minds in terms of career education versus academic education,” Lloyd said. “Those are very often one and the same.”
This story about Alabama high school requirements was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
After weeks of uncertainty, two tribal colleges have been told they can hire back all employees who were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts across the federal workforce in February, part of a judge’s order restoring some federal employees whose positions were terminated.
Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, widely known as SIPI, in New Mexico lost about 70 employees in mid-February amid widespread staffing cuts to federal agencies. While most of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities are chartered by American Indian tribes, Haskell and SIPI are not associated with individual tribes and are run by the federal government.
About 55 employees were laid off and 15 accepted offers to resign, according to a lawsuit filed last month by tribes and students. The colleges were forced to cancel or reconfigure a wide range of services, from sports and food service to financial aid and classes. In some cases, instructors were hired by other universities as adjuncts and then sent back to the tribal colleges to keep teaching.
Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.
It was not clear this week when and if the workers would return, whether the employees who resigned would also be offered their jobs back, or if the government would allow colleges to fill vacancies. Both colleges said some employees had turned down the offers.
The Bureau of Indian Education, which runs the colleges, declined to answer questions except to confirm the laid-off workers would be offered jobs with back pay to comply with a judge’s order that the government reverse course on thousands of layoffs of probationary employees. But the agency also noted the jobs would be available “as the White House pursues its appeals process,” indicating possible turmoil if an appeals court reinstates the layoffs.
Both colleges said the bureau also has refused to answer most of their questions.
SIPI leaders were told last week that the positions were being restored, said Adam Begaye, chairman of the SIPI Board of Regents. The 270-student college lost 21 employees, he said, four of whom decided to take early retirement. All but one of the remaining 17 agreed to return, Begaye said.
The chaos has been difficult for those employees, he said, and the college is providing counseling.
“We want to make sure they have an easy adjustment, no matter what they’ve endured,” Begaye said.
The chairman of Haskell’s Board of Regents, Dalton Henry, said he was unsure how many of the 50 lost employees were returning. Like SIPI, Haskell was forced after the layoffs to shift job responsibilities and increase the workload for instructors and others.
Haskell was reviewed by accreditors in December, and Henry said he was worried how the turmoil would affect the process. Colleges and universities must be accredited to offer federal and state financial aid and participate in most other publicly funded programs.
Henry declined to discuss his thoughts on the chaos, saying there was nothing the college could do about it.
“Whatever guidance is provided, that’s what we have to adhere to,” he said. “It’s a concern. But at this point, it’s the federal government’s decision.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to make the presidents of the two colleges available for interviews.
Tribal colleges and universities were established to comply with treaties and the federal trust responsibility, legally binding agreements in which the United States promised to fund Indigenous education and other needs. But college leaders argue the country has violated those contracts by consistently failing to fund the schools adequately.
In the federal lawsuit claiming the Haskell and SIPI cuts were illegal, students and tribes argued the Bureau of Indian Education has long understaffed the colleges. The agency’s “well-documented and persistent inadequacies in operating its schools range from fiscal mismanagement to failure to provide adequate education to inhospitable buildings,” plaintiffs claimed.
Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, both Kansas Republicans, said before Trump took office that they plan to introduce a bill shifting Haskell from federal control to a congressional charter, which would protect the university from cuts across federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education.
“[F]or the last few years the university has been neglected and mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moran said in a written statement in December. “The bureau has failed to protect students, respond to my congressional inquiries or meet the basic infrastructure needs of the school.”
The February cuts brought rare public visibility to tribal colleges, most of which are in remote locations. Trump’s executive orders spurred outrage from Indigenous communities and a flurry of national news attention.
“We’re using this chaos as a blessing in disguise to make sure our family and friends in the community know what SIPI provides,” said Begaye, the SIPI board president.
The uncertainty surrounding the colleges’ funding has left a lasting mark, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. But she added she was proud of how the schools have weathered the cuts.
“Indian country is always one of the most resourceful and creative populations,” she said. “We’ve always made do with less. I think you saw resilience and creativity from Haskell and SIPI.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Abrupt cuts in federal funding for life saving medical research. Confusing and misleading new guidance about campus diversity programs. Cancellation, without due process, of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and contracts held by a major university. Mass layoffs at the Education Department, undermining crucial programs such as federal student aid.
All of this, and more, in the opening weeks of the second Trump administration.
The president has made clear that colleges and universities face a moment of unprecedented challenge. The partnership the federal government forged with American higher education long ago, which for generations has paid off spectacularly for our country’s civic health, economic well-being and national security, appears in the eyes of many to be suddenly vulnerable.
America must not permit this partnership to weaken or dissolve. No nation has ever built up its people by tearing down its schools. Higher education builds America — and together, we will fight to ensure it continues to do so.
Some wonder why more college and university presidents aren’t speaking out. The truth is, many of them fear their institutions could be targeted next.
They are also juggling immense financial pressures and striving to fulfill commitments to teaching and research.
But the American Council on Education, which I lead, has always stood up for higher education. We have done it for more than a century, and we are doing it now. We will use every tool possible — including litigation, advocacy and coalition-building — to advance the cause.
ACE is the major coordinating body for colleges and universities. We represent institutions of all kinds — public and private, large and small, rural and urban — with a mission of helping our members best serve their students and communities.
Let me be clear: We welcome scrutiny and accountability for the public funds supporting student aid and research. Our institutions are subject to state and federal laws and must not tolerate any form of discrimination, even as they uphold freedom of expression and the right to robust but civil protest.
We also know we have much work to do to raise public confidence in higher education and the value of a degree.
However, we cannot allow unwarranted attacks on higher education to occur without a vigorous and proactive response.
When the National Institutes of Health announced on Feb. 7 a huge cut in funding that supports medical and health research, ACE joined with the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and a number of affected universities in a lawsuit to stop this action.
ACE has almost never been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government, but the moment demanded it. We are pleased that a federal judge has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction to preserve the NIH funding.
When the Education Department issued a “Dear Colleague” letter Feb. 14 that raised questions about whether campus programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion would be permissible under federal law, ACE organized a coalition of more than 70 higher education groups calling for the department to rescind the letter.
We raised concerns about the confusion the letter was causing. We pointed out that the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts in the Students for Fair Admissions case acknowledged that diversity-related goals in higher education are “commendable” and “plainly worthy.”
We invited the department to engage with the higher education community to promote inclusive and welcoming educational environments for all students, regardless of race or ethnicity or any other factors. We remain eager to work with the department.
Unfortunately, in recent days the administration has taken further steps we find alarming.
ACE denounced the arbitrary cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia University. Administration officials claimed their action was a response to failures to adequately address antisemitism at Columbia, though it bypassed well-established procedures for investigating such allegations. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College, Columbia University.)
Ultimately, this action will eviscerate academic and research activities, to the detriment of students, faculty, medical patients and others.
Make no mistake: Combating campus antisemitism is a matter of utmost priority for us. Our organization, along with Hillel International and the American Jewish Committee, organized two summits on this topic in 2022 and 2024, fostering important dialogue with dozens of college and university presidents.
We also are deeply concerned about the letter the Trump administration sent to Columbia late last week that makes certain demands of the university, including a leadership change for one of its academic departments. To my mind, the letter obliterated the boundary between institutional autonomy and federal control. That boundary is essential. Without it, academic freedom is at risk.
Meanwhile, layoffs and other measures slashing the Education Department’s workforce by as much as half will cause chaos and harm to financial aid and other programs that support millions of students from low- and middle-income families. We strongly urge the administration to change course and Congress to step in if it does not.
Despite all that has happened in the past several weeks, we want President Trump and his administration to know this: Higher education is here for America, and ready to keep building. Colleges and universities have long worked with the government in countless ways to strengthen our economy, democracy, health and security. We cannot abandon that partnership. We must fortify it.
Ted Mitchell is president of the American Council of Education in Washington, D.C.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This spring, the number of high school graduates in the United States is expected to hit its peak. Starting in the fall, enrollment will likely enter a period of decline that could last a decade or more.
This looming “demographic cliff” has been on the minds of education leaders for nearly two decades, dating back to the start of the Great Recession. A raft of college closures over the past five years, exacerbated by the pandemic, has for many observers been the canary in the coal mine.
In the years to come, schools at all levels — reliant on per-pupil funding for K-12 and on tuition dollars for colleges and universities — will begin feeling the squeeze.
The question now is whether to treat the cliff as a crisis or an opportunity.
Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweeklyHigher Education newsletter.
As they prepare for enrollment shortfalls, superintendents and college presidents are primarily focused on crisis management. With good reason, they’re spending the bulk of their time on the hard short-term decisions of cutting programs and personnel to meet looming budget shortfalls.
In the precious few years before the situation becomes even more dire, the question is whether schools should just continue bracing for impact — or if they can think bigger in ways that could be transformative not just for the landscape of education, but for the economy more broadly. In my view, they should think about what it would look like to make a moment of crisis a real opportunity.
Here are some ideas about how that could happen. The first involves blurring the lines between high school and college.
Colleges today feel immense pressure because there aren’t enough high school graduates. High schools feel similar pressure because there are fewer young people around to enroll each year — not to mention the chronic absenteeism and disengagement that has persisted since the pandemic.
What if the two worked more closely together — in ways that helped high schools keep students engaged while enabling colleges to reach a broader range of students?
In many states, this is already happening. At last count, 2.5 million high schoolers took at least one dual-enrollment course from a college or university. But it’s not enough to just create tighter connections between one educational experience and another. Today’s students — and today’s economy — also demand clearer pathways from education to careers. It makes sense to blur the lines between high schools, colleges and work.
So imagine taking these changes even further — to a world in which instead of jumping from high school to college, students in their late teens entered entirely new institutions that paid them for work-based learning experiences that would lead them to a degree and eventually a career.
That’s a lofty goal. But it’s the kind of big thinking that both high schools and colleges may need to reinvent themselves for the country’s shifting demographics.
Colleges have an opportunity right now to double down on creating and expanding job-relevant programs — and to think even bigger about who they serve. That could include expanding opportunities for adult learners who have gained skills outside the classroom through credit for prior learning and competency-based learning. It could also mean speeding up the development of industry-relevant coursework to better align with the needs of the labor market and leaning into short-form training programs to upskill incumbent workers.
Not every student is ready to invest four years of time and money to earn a bachelor’s degree. But they shouldn’t have to be — and colleges have a chance to expand their offerings in ways that give students more pathways into today’s fast-changing economy and further education if they so choose.
Part of the problem with the current trajectory from high school to college is that the wrong things get incentivized. Both K-12 schools and colleges get money and support based on the number of students they enroll and (sometimes) the number of people who graduate — not on how well they do at helping people gain the skills to effectively participate in the economy.
That’s not anyone’s fault. But it often boils down to a matter of policy. Which means that changing policy can create new incentives to tighten the connections between high school, college and work.
States like Colorado are already taking the lead on this shift. Colorado’s “Big Blur” task force put out a report with recommendations on how to integrate learning and work, including by creating a statewide data system to track the outcomes of educational programs and updating the state’s accountability systems to better reflect “the importance of learners graduating ready for jobs and additional training.”
If schools and policymakers stay the course in the decade to come, they already know what’s ahead: declining enrollment, decreased funding and the exacerbation of all the challenges that they’ve already begun to face in recent years.
It’s not the job of the education system to turn the tide of demographic change. But the system does have a unique, and urgent, opportunity to respond to this changing landscape in ways that benefit not only students but the economy as a whole. The question now is whether education leaders and policymakers can seize that opportunity before it’s too late.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about demographic cliff in higher education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Emma Bittner considered getting a master’s degree in public health at a nearby university, but the in-person program cost tens of thousands of dollars more than she had hoped to spend.
So she checked out master’s degrees she could pursue remotely, on her laptop, which she was sure would be much cheaper.
The price for the same degree, online, was … just as much. Or more.
“I’m, like, what makes this worth it?” said Bittner, 25, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Why does it cost that much if I don’t get meetings face-to-face with the professor or have the experience in person?”
Among the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are charging more for online education to subsidize everything else they do, online managers say. Huge sums are also going into marketing and advertising for it, documents show.
Universities and colleges “see online higher education as an opportunity to make money and use it for whatever they want to make money for,” said Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at the left-leaning think tank New America.
Bittner’s confusion about the price is widespread. Eighty percent of Americans think online learning after high school should cost less than in-person programs, according to a 2024 survey of 1,705 adults by New America.
After all, technology has reduced prices in many other industries. And online courses don’t require classrooms or other physical facilities and can theoretically be taught to a much larger number of students, creating economies of scale.
While consumers complained about remote learning during the pandemic, online enrollment has been rising faster than was projected before Covid hit.
Yet 83 percent of online programs in higher education cost students as much as or more than the in-person versions, an annual survey of campus chief online learning officers finds. About a quarter of universities and colleges even tack on an additional “distance learning fee,” that survey found.
In addition to using the income from their online divisions to help pay for the other things they do, universities say they have had to pay more than they anticipated on advising and support for online students, who get worse results, on average, than their in-person counterparts.
Bringing down the price of a degree “was certainly a key part of the appeal” when online higher education began, said Richard Garrett, co-director of that survey of online education managers and chief research officer at Eduventures, an arm of the higher education technology consulting company Encoura.
“Online was going to be disruptive. It was supposed to widen access. And it would reduce the price,” said Garrett. “But it hasn’t played out that way.”
Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.
Today, online instruction for in-state students at four-year public universities costs $341 a credit, the independent Education Data Initiative finds — more than the average $325 a credit for face-to-face tuition. That adds up to about $41,000 for a degree online, compared to about $39,000 in tuition for a degree obtained in person.
Two-thirds of private four-year universities and colleges with online programs charge more for them than for their face-to-face classes, according to the survey of online managers. The average tuition for online learning at private universities and colleges comes to $516 per credit.
And community colleges, which collectively enroll the largest number of students who learn entirely online, charge them the same as or more than their in-person counterparts in 100 percent of cases, the survey of online officers found (though Garrett said that’s likely because community college tuition overall is already comparatively low).
Social media is riddled with angry comments about this. A typical post: “Can someone please explain to me why taking a course online can cost a couple $1000 more than in person?”
Online education officers respond that online programs face steep startup costs and need expensive technology specialists and infrastructure. In a separate survey of faculty by the consulting firm Ithaka S+R, 80 percent said it took them as much time, or more, to plan and develop online courses as it did in-person ones because of the need to incorporate new kinds of technology.
Online programs also need to provide faculty who are available for office hours, online advisors and other resources exclusively to support online students, who tend to be less well prepared and get worse results than their in-person counterparts. For the same reasons, many online providers have put caps on enrollment, limiting those expected economies of scale.
“You still need advisers, you still need a writing center, a tutoring center, and now you have to provide those services for students who are at a distance,” said Dylan Barth, vice president of innovation and programs at the Online Learning Consortium, which represents online education providers.
Still, 60 percent of public and more than half of private universities are taking in more money from online education than they spend on it, the online managers’ survey found. About half said they put the money back into their institutions’ general operating budgets.
Such cross subsidies have long been a part of higher education’s financial strategy, under which students in classes or fields that cost less to teach generally subsidize their counterparts in courses or disciplines that cost more. English majors subsidize their engineering classmates, for example. Big first-year lecture classes subsidize small senior seminars. Graduate students often subsidize undergrads.
“Online education is another revenue stream from a different market,” said Duha Altindag, an associate professor of economics at Auburn University who has studied online programs.
Universities “are not trying to use technology to become more efficient. They’re just layering it on top of the existing model,” said New America’s Carey, who has been a critic of some online education models.
“Public officials are not stopping them,” he said. “They’re not coming and saying, ‘Hey, we’re seeing this new opportunity to save money. These online courses could be cheaper. Make them cheaper.’ This is just a continuation of the status quo.”
Another page that online managers have borrowed from higher education’s traditional pricing playbook is that consumers often equate high prices with high quality, especially at brand-name colleges and universities.
“Market success and reputation can support higher prices,” Garrett said. It’s not what online courses cost to provide that determines the price, in other words, but how much consumers are willing to pay.
With online programs competing for customers across the country, rather than for those within commuting distance of a campus or willing to relocate to one, universities and colleges are also putting huge amounts into marketing and advertising.
An example of this kind of spending was exposed in a review by the consulting firm EY of the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC, which the university created by acquiring for-profit Ashford University in 2020. Obtained through a public-records request by New America, the report found that the university was paying out $11,521 in advertising and marketing for every online student it enrolled.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus committed to spending $500 million foradvertising to out-of-state students over six years, a state audit found.
“What if you took that money and translated it into lower tuition?” asked Carey.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus is spending $500 million to market and advertise to out-of-state students over six years.
While they’re paying the same as or more than their in-person counterparts, meanwhile, online students get generally poorer success rates.
Online instruction results in lower grades than face-to-face education, according to research by Altindag and colleagues at American University and the University of Southern Mississippi — though they also found that the gap is narrowing. Students online are more likely to have to withdraw from or repeat courses and less likely to graduate on time, these researchers found, which further increases the cost.
Another study, by University of Central Florida Institute of Higher Education Director Justin Ortagus, found that taking all of their courses online reduces the odds that community college students will ever graduate.
Lower-income students fare especially poorly online, that and other research shows; scholars say this is in part because many come from low-resourced public high schools or are balancing their classes with work or family responsibilities.
Students who learn entirely online at any level are less likely to have graduated within eight years than students in general, who have a 66 percent eight-year graduation rate, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
Graduation rates are particularly low at for-profit universities, which enroll a quarter of the students who learn exclusively online. In the American InterContinental University System, for example, only 11 percent of students graduated within eight years after starting, federal data shows, and at the American Public University System, 44 percent. The figures are for the period ending in 2022, the most recent for which they have been widely submitted.
Several private, nonprofit universities and colleges also have comparatively lower eight-year graduation rates for students who are online only, the data shows, including Southern New Hampshire University (37 percent) and Western Governors University (52 percent).
If they do receive degrees, online-only students earn more than their entirely in-person counterparts for the first year after college, Eduventures finds — perhaps because they tend to be older than traditional-age students, researchers speculated. But that advantage disappears within four years, when in-person graduates overtake them.
For all the growth in online higher education, employers appear to remain reluctant to hire graduates of it, according to still other research conducted at the University of Louisville. That study found that applicants for jobs who listed an online as opposed to in-person degree were about half as likely to get a callback for the job.
How strongly consumers feel that online higher education should cost less than the in-person kind was evident in lawsuits brought against universities and colleges that continued to charge full tuition even after going remote during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet students keep signing on. For all the complaining about remote learning at the time, its momentum seems to have beenspeeded up by the pandemic, which was followed by a 12 percent increase in online enrollment above what had been projected before it hit, according to an analysis of federal data by education technology consultant Phil Hill.
Online students save on room and board costs they would face on residential campuses, and online higher education is typically more flexible than the in-person kind.
Sixty percent of campus online officers say that online sections of classes tend to fill first, and nearly half say online student numbers are outpacing in-person enrollment.
There have been some widely cited examples of online programs with dramatically lower tuition, such as a $7,000 online master’s degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (compared to the estimated nearly $43,000 for the two-year in-person version), which has attracted thousands of students and a few copycat programs.
There are also early signs that prices for online higher education could fall. Competition is intensifying from national nonprofit providers such as Western Governors, which charges a comparatively low average $8,300per year, and Southern New Hampshire, whose undergraduate price per credit hour is a slightly lower-than-average (for online courses) $330.
Universities have started cutting their ties with for-profit middlemen, called online program managers, who take big cuts of up to 80 percent of revenues. Nearly 150 such deals were canceled or ended and not renewed in 2023, the most recent year for which the information is available, the market research firm Validated Insights reports.
Another thing that could lower prices: As more online programs go live, they no longer require high up-front investment — just periodic updating.
“It is possible to save money on downstream costs if you offer the same course over a number of years,” Ortagus said.
A student studies on her laptop. The number of college students who learn entirely online will this year surpass the number who take all their classes in person.
While that survey of online officers found a tiny decline in the proportion of universities charging more for online than in-person classes, however, the drop was statistically insignificant. And as their enrollments continue to plummet, institutions increasingly need the revenue from online programs.
Bittner, in Texas, ended up in an online master’s program in public health that was just being started by a private, nonprofit university, and was cheaper than the others she’d found.
Her day job is at the national nonprofit Young Invincibles, which pushes for reforms in higher education, health care and economic security for young Americans. And she still doesn’t understand the online pricing model.
“I’m so confused about it. Even in the program I’m in now, you don’t get the same access to stuff as an in-person student,” she said. “What are you putting into it that costs so much?”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Hancy Maxis spent 17 years incarcerated in New York prisons. He knew that he needed to have a plan for when he got out.
“Once I am back in New York City, once I am back in the economy, how will I be marketable?” he said. “For me, math was that pathway.”
In 2015, Maxis completed a bachelor’s degree in math through the Bard Prison Initiative, an accredited college-in-prison program. He wrote his senior project about how to use game theory to advance health care equity, after observing the disjointed care his mom received when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. (She’s now recovered.)
When he was released in 2018, Maxis immediately applied for a master’s program at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He graduated and now works as the assistant director of operations at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. He helped guide the hospital’s response to Covid.
Maxis is one of many people I’ve spoken to in recent years while reporting on the role that learning math can play in the lives of those who are incarcerated. Math literacy often contributes to economic success: A 2021 study of more than 5,500 adults found that participants made $4,062 more per year for each correct answer on an eight-question math test.
While there don’t appear to be any studies specifically on the effect of math education for people in prison, a pile of research shows that prison education programs lower recidivism rates among participants and increase their chances of employment after they’re released.
Hancy Maxis spent 17 years incarcerated in New York prisons. He now works as the assistant director of operations at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Plus, math — and education in general — can be empowering. A 2022 study found that women in prison education programs reported higher self-esteem, a greater sense of belonging and more hope for the future than women who had never been incarcerated and had not completed post-secondary education.
Yet many people who enter prison have limited math skills and have had poor relationships with math in school. More than half (52 percent) of those incarcerated in U.S. prisons lack basic numeracy skills, such as the ability to do multiplication with larger numbers, long division or interpret simple graphs, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics. The absence of these basic skills is even more pronounced among Black and Hispanic people in prison, who make up more than half of those incarcerated in federal prisons.
In my reporting, I discovered that there are few programs offering math instruction in prison, and those that do exist typically include few participants. Bard’s highly competitive program, for example, is supported primarily through private donations, and is limited to seven of New York’s 42 prisons. The recent expansion of federal Pell Grants to individuals who are incarcerated presents an opportunity for more people in prison to get these basic skills and better their chances for employment after release.
Alyssa Knight, executive director of the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, which she co-founded while incarcerated, said that for years, educational opportunities in prison were created primarily by people who were incarcerated, who wrote to professors and educators to ask if they might send materials or teach inside the prison. But public recognition of the value of prison education, including math, is rising, and the Pell Grant expansion and state-level legislationhave made it easier for colleges to set up programs for people serving time. Now, Knight said, “Colleges are seeking prisons.”
Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.
Jeffrey Abramowitz understands firsthand how math can help someone after prison. After completing a five-year stint in a federal prison, his first post-prison job was teaching math to adults who were preparing to take the GED exam.
Fast forward nearly a decade, and Abramowitz is now the CEO of The Petey Greene Program, an organization that provides one-on-one tutoring, educational supports and programs in reading, writing and now math, to help people in prison and who have left prison receive the necessary education requirements for a high school diploma, college acceptance or career credentials.
The average Petey Greene student’s math skills are at a fourth- or fifth-grade level, according to Abramowitz, which is in line with the average for “justice-impacted” learners; the students tend to struggle with basic math such as addition and multiplication.
“You can’t be successful within most industries without being able to read, write and do basic math,” Abramowitz said. “We’re starting to see more blended programs that help people find a career pathway when they come home — and the center of all this is math and reading.”
Abramowitz and his team noticed this lack of math skills particularly among students in vocational training programs, such as carpentry, heating and cooling and commercial driving. To qualify to work in these fields, these students often need to pass a licensing test, requiring math and reading knowledge.
The nonprofit offers “integrated education training” to help students learn the relevant math for their professions. For instance, a carpentry teacher will teach students how to use a saw in or near a classroom where a math teacher explains fractions and how they relate to the measurements needed to cut a piece of wood.
“They may be able to do the task fine, but they can’t pass the test because they don’t know the math,” Abramowitz said.
Math helped Paul Morton after he left prison, he told me. When he began his 10.5 years in prison, he only could do GED-level math. After coming across an introductory physics book in the third year of his time in prison, he realized he didn’t have the math skills needed for the science described in it.
He asked his family to send him math textbooks and, over the seven years until his release, taught himself algebra and calculus.
The recent expansion of federal Pell Grants to individuals who are incarcerated presents an opportunity for more people in prison to get these basic skills and better their chances for employment after release. Credit: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
“I relentlessly spent six hours on one problem one day,” he said. “I was determined to do it, to get it right.”
I met Morton through the organization the Prison Mathematics Project, which helped him develop his math knowledge inside prison by connecting him with an outside mathematician. After his release from a New York prison in 2023, he moved to Rochester, New York, and is hoping to take the actuarial exam, which requires a lot of math. He continues to study differential equations on his own.
The Prison Mathematics Project delivers math materials and programs to people in prison, and connects them with mathematicians as mentors. (It also brings math professors, educators and enthusiasts to meet program participants through “Pi Day” events; I attended one such event in 2023 when I produced a podcast episode about the program, and the organization paid for my travel and accommodations.)
The organization was started in 2015 by Christopher Havens, who was then incarcerated at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Havens’ interest in math puzzles, and then in algebra, calculus and other areas of mathematics, was ignited early in his 25-year- term when a prison volunteer slid some sudoku puzzles under his door.
“I had noticed all these changes happening inside of me,” Havens told me. “My whole life, I was searching for that beauty through drugs and social acceptance … When I found real beauty [in math], it got me to practice introspection.”
As he fell in love with math, he started corresponding with mathematicians to help him solve problems, and talking to other men at the prison to get them interested too. He created a network of math resources for people in prisons, which became the Prison Mathematics Project.
The group’s website says it helps people in prison use math to help with “rebuilding their lives both during and after their incarceration.”
But Ben Jeffers, its executive director, has noticed that the message doesn’t connect with everyone in prison. Among the 299 Prison Mathematics Project participants on whom the program has data, the majority — 56 percent — are white, he told me, while 25 percent are Black, 10 percent are Hispanic, 2 percent are Asian and 6 percent are another race or identity. Ninety-three percent of project participants are male.
Yet just 30 percent of the U.S. prison population is white, while 35 percent of those incarcerated are Black, 31 percent are Hispanic and 4 percent are of other races, according to the United State Sentencing Commission. (The racial makeup of the program’s 18 female participants at women’s facilities is much more in line with that of the prison population at large.)
“[It’s] the same issues that you have like in any classroom in higher education,” said Jeffers, who is finishing his master’s in math in Italy. “At the university level and beyond, every single class is majority white male.”
He noted that anxiety about math tends to be more acute among women and people of any gender who are Black, Hispanic, or from other underrepresented groups, and may keep them from signing up for the program.
Sherry Smith understands that kind of anxiety. She didn’t even want to step foot into a math class. When she arrived at Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center in December 2021, she was 51, had left high school when she was 16, and had only attended two weeks of a ninth grade math class.
“I was embarrassed that I had dropped out,” she said. “I hated to disclose that to people.”
Smith decided to enroll in the prison’s GED program because she could do the classes one-on-one with a friendly and patient teacher. “It was my time,” she said. “Nobody else was listening, I could ask any question I needed.”
In just five months, Smith completed her GED math class. She said she cried on her last day. Since 2022, she’s been pursuing an associate’s degree in human services — from prison — through a remote program with Washington County Community College.
In Washington, Prison Mathematics Project founder Havens is finishing his sentence and continuing to study math. (Havens has been granted a clemency hearing and may be released as early as this year.) Since 2020, he has published four academic papers: three in math and one in sociology. He works remotely from prison as a staff research associate in cryptography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and wrote a math textbook about continued fractions.
Havens is still involved in the Prison Mathematics Project, but handed leadership of the program over to Jeffers in October 2023. Now run from outside the prison, it is easier for the program to bring resources and mentorship to incarcerated students.
“For 25 years of my life, I can learn something that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn in any other circumstances,” Havens said. “So I decided that I would, for the rest of my life, study mathematics.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Imagine a classroom in which young students are excitedly discussing their future aspirations and a career in medicine feels like a tangible goal rather than a distant dream. Now, imagine that most of the students come from historically marginalized communities — Black, Hispanic and Indigenous populations — that disproportionately face higher rates of chronic illness, shorter life expectancies and poorer health outcomes.
For many students from underrepresented backgrounds, a medical career feels out of reach. The path to becoming a doctor is daunting, full of obstacles like financial hardship, lack of mentorship and systemic inequities in education. Many students are sidelined long before they consider medical school, while those who persist face an uphill battle competing against peers with far more resources and support.
To mitigate these disparities, we must look beyond our hospitals and medical schools and into the places where young minds are shaped: our K-12 classrooms. Early exposure to health care careers can ignite curiosity and show students that they belong in places where they have historically been excluded.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.
Organizations like the Florida State University College of Medicine, with its “Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence” (SSTRIDE) program, are leading the way in breaking down barriers to medical careers for underrepresented students. SSTRIDE introduces middle and high school students to real-world medical environments, giving them firsthand exposure to health care settings that might otherwise feel distant or inaccessible. Then, the program threads together long-term mentorship, academic enrichment and extracurricular opportunities to build the confidence and skills students need to reach medical school.
The 15 White Coats program in Louisiana takes a complementary but equally meaningful approach: transforming classroom environments by introducing culturally relevant imagery and literature that reflect the diversity of the medical profession. For many students, seeing doctors who look like them — featured in posters or books — can challenge internalized doubts and dismantle societal messages that suggest they don’t belong in medicine. Through fundraising efforts and scholarships, other initiatives from 15 White Coats tackle the financial barriers that disproportionately hinder “minority physician aspirants” from pursuing medical careers.
The impact of these programs can be profound. Research shows that students exposed to careers in science or medicine at an early age are far more likely to pursue these fields later in life. And medical students who belong to underrepresented groups are the most likely to return to underserved communities to practice. Their presence can improve communication, foster patient trust and drive innovation in addressing health challenges unique to those communities.
These programs can even have a ripple effect on families and entire communities. When young people pursue careers in medicine, they become role models for siblings, friends and neighbors. This creates a culture of aspiration in which success feels both possible and accessible, shifting societal perceptions and inspiring future generations to aim higher.
But programs like 15 White Coats and SSTRIDE cannot thrive without sustained investment. We need personal and financial commitments to dismantle the systemic barriers that prevent students from underrepresented groups from entering medicine.
Policymakers and educators must step up. Federal and state educational funding should prioritize grants for schools that partner with hospitals, medical schools and health care organizations. These partnerships should offer hands-on experiences like shadowing programs, medical summer camps and health care-focused career fairs. Medical professionals also have a role to play — they can volunteer as mentors or guest speakers, offering valuable guidance and demystifying the path to a medical career.
As a medical student, I know how transformative these experiences can be. They can inspire students to envision themselves in roles they might never have imagined and gain the confidence to pursue dreams that once seemed out of reach.
Let’s be clear, representation in medicine is not about optics. It’s about improving health outcomes and driving meaningful change. Building a stronger, more diverse pipeline to the medical profession is not just an educational priority. It’s a public health imperative.
An investment in young minds today is an investment in a health care system that represents, understands and serves everyone. Equity in health care starts long before a patient walks into a doctor’s office. It begins in the classroom.
Surya Pulukuri is a member of the class of 2027 at Harvard Medical School.
This story about health equity was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
