Tag: Student

Compton College Addresses Student Homelessness and Basic Needs

During the 2016-2017 school year, the Brothers to Sisters Club at Compton College reserved a portion of their meetings for “Real Talk.” This allowed students to share their current feelings and experiences. During one of these meetings, two students spoke up and shared that they were homeless.
This moment inspired Joshua Jackson and Dayshawn Louden, then student leaders at Compton College, to begin campaigning and advocating for student housing and increased basic needs on campus.

“Immediately, Dayshawn and I went into planning,” says Jackson,

Eight years later, Compton College is breaking ground on a 250+ bed housing facility, becoming the first community college in Los Angeles County to offer campus housing to its students.

CCCD Student Housing RenderingCompton College President and CEO Dr. Keith Curry says Jackson and Louden were worried about their peers’ lack of basic needs and immediately brought their concerns to him.

“It was a great conversation when they first brought it forward, and their question was, ‘How do we do it,” says Curry in an interview with Diverse. “I give them the credit for it because they got me to think about it differently and what we could do. I’m a former student activist, so seeing student activists seeing what we need was good.”

Jackson and Louden had just begun their roles as Compton College’s Associated Student Body President and Vice President when they approached Curry.

“We were motivated, and I think we felt that space gave us the courage to believe that we could create change,” says Jackson. “Our roles also gave us the conviction that we should.”

Rallying The Community

After their conversation with Curry, the student leaders called on their community at Compton College for support. Under Curry’s leadership, their efforts grew into a larger task force committed to addressing housing, food, and basic needs for the student body. Their next step was to identify Compton College students who identified as homeless.

“We took it upon ourselves,” says Louden. “I recall me and Joshua going into classrooms to say, ‘hey, utilize your voice,’ because the school can’t address a problem if there’s no need for it.”

Louden says that their roles as campus leaders positioned them to advocate for their fellow students and the longevity of the institution.

“Housing was like a five-to-six-year plan, but to address the needs that we could see that Compton College had, we pushed for a pantry, opening the showers that were going unused by the football team, and supplying bathroom kits and supplies,” he says.

Within weeks, Compton College began implementing additional programs designed to serve students’ needs.

Dr. Keith Curry“It’s not just about a lack of physical space to live. It’s about the absence of opportunity, the absence of safety, the absence of stability,” says Louden. “This was not just about providing resources. This was about fostering community and belonging.”

Curry, who previously served as the Dean of Student Services at Compton College and has been instrumental in the college’s growth, success, and rebuilding, says that his role in this process was to also be courageous.

“I announced at one of our professional development days the need to build student housing, and I think people were like, ‘What is he talking about,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘we’ll be the first ones to build housing,’ and sometimes you have to dream. Sometimes you have to say stuff and get people united because you said it.”

Curry also became one of the founding chairpersons of the Chief Executive Officers of the California Community Colleges’ Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce in spring 2018. This group provides system-wide recommendations to address housing and food insecurities for California Community College students.

“I was advocating statewide for basic needs, so then I was able to fold in that advocacy to include food and also housing,” says Curry.

Once Compton College gathered all of the data and support they needed, college leaders submitted a proposal. Curry, however, was intentional about the request.
“I think the most important piece to this was we didn’t ask for the planning grant,” remembers Curry. “We went directly for the project funding grant. We went for the entire dollar amount, and that was the strategic plan.”

Over the course of about five years, what began as a conversation in a student club meeting eventually became a reality.

Celebrating In Community

In June 2022, California lawmakers moved to include a student housing grant totaling $80,389,000 in the 2022-2023 State Budget for the Compton Community College District to build their proposed 250+ bed student housing facility.

“We proved our critics wrong,” says Curry, who has emerged as a national thought-leader on community colleges. “When we’re talking about student housing and having conversations, we were able to take a dream that some people thought was not possible and made it possible for the community that we serve.”

The Compton College Housing Project Groundbreaking Ceremony took place last month, a win that those involved hope to share with the entire Compton community and Compton Community College District (CCCD).

“We’re serving Black and Brown individuals within our community, and for me, it gives these students hope,” says Curry. “They can see a college campus that looks like a four-year college with new facilities but also with student housing. That means that they will not be looked at as less than.”

Phase one of the 86,000-square-foot building will include three floors of affordable student living quarters with 100 percent occupancy designated for students in need. The facility will provide three types of living configurations: 50 double-room units with access to shared bathrooms and common spaces, 50 double-suite units with bathrooms and access to common spaces, and 50 studio units for single occupants. The student housing will also include study areas, lounges and shared kitchens.

“We’re showing other colleges that this can be done,” says Curry. “Compton is the model for that. When you think about our history, we’re the first community college in the state of California whose accreditation was revoked, and to go from that in 2006 to be where we’re at now and to be on the cutting edge, that tells you that transformation can happen, but transformation can happen in communities where we look like the students.”

Curry marks this moment as one of hope, not just for Compton but for communities of color all over the country.

“We’re always criticizing what we don’t do in our communities. Now we see what we can do, and that gives people hope that change is coming,” he says. “But also, this gives the students the opportunity to say look at my backyard, and my community college matters.”

Big things have been on the horizon for Compton College for some time now. Just last year, rapper Kendrick Lamar surprised 2024 Compton College graduating students as their graduation speaker.

“If you look at our video from graduation, you can see the words from Kendrick Lamar where he talks about the value of our degree and how important it is and what it means to be a Compton College graduate,” says Curry. “It gives our students hope. When you’re told you’re not good enough, and now you see a college in your community that is doing stuff that makes you proud, that means you know you’re a part of something that’s bigger than us.”

Phase one is just the beginning of Compton College 2035, a comprehensive master plan outlining the college’s plans to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities, including a physical education complex and a visual and performing arts complex, over the next decade and beyond.

“The city is already going up, as you can imagine why, but this is another notch to add under the belt of why Compton is just a historic and beautiful place,” says Jackson.

Serving As A Model For Other Community Colleges In California And Beyond

In addition to Compton College being the first community college in LA County to have student housing, the housing project is also the first prefabricated modular student housing project that is design-approved by the California Division of the State Architect.

A prefabricated modular means that most of the building will be built thousands of miles away.

“It’s a unique project,” says David Lelie, senior project manager with Gafcon, the construction management company managing the project. “They’re going to build them in a factory in Idaho, and then they’re going to ship them by truck to our site and use a crane to place them.”

This model is designed to decrease construction time and disruptions.

“What we’re saving is sustainability and time nuisance for the students,” says Lelie. “So, instead of bugging students for two years, you’re dropping all those modules into place in two weeks.”

Once the building is placed on campus, the exterior and final touches will be completed, which is projected to be done by May 2027. This will save about six months of traditional construction time.

“It’s a seed, and eventually other campuses will use this idea and this method of prefab modular in order to build their student housing,” says Lelie. “Yes, we’re housing 250 students, but now other colleges, especially in California, can take this model and replicate it, and every time you replicate it, it’s like a car, they get less and less expensive.”

HPI, which is the architecture company responsible for some of the first non-modular student housing on community college campuses, took on this project to continue building cutting-edge experiences and homes for community college students.

They wanted the design to provide not only a place to sleep but also academic support and integration into the broader campus.

“As we learned about how to deliver modular student housing, it was really taking the program that [Compton College] had already established in terms of number of beds and the types of beds and then looking at how we could do that in a way that created community,” says Larry Frapell, principal and president of HPI architecture.

“We wanted the amenities to be easy to get to, a combination of both indoor and outdoor spaces, and a sense of security.”

HPI has a long history of serving higher education and, specifically, larger community colleges.

“We have a good understanding of not only the need for housing but how housing relates to community college students and how to integrate that in a community college campus,” says Frapell. “It’s part of a greater campus and part of a greater community, so we hope that this becomes a home for students and that this is a desirable place to live.”

Jackson and Louden are proud of the legacy they left to be continued for generations to come. Jackson says that he recently spoke with the two students who inspired the project’s advocacy.

“They’re housed, and they’re happy,” he says. “So, I’m grateful to be a part of history in this regard. I’m grateful for what I call following a tradition of activism that’s taking place at Compton College and just through our history as Black folks generally. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what we were doing. We just wanted to help.”

Louden believes now, more than ever, that Compton’s faith in humanity is one of its superpowers.

“Compton made that choice as an institution to restore faith in humanity,” says Louden, “and in the words of Compton College’s late great Dr. Joseph Lewis, ‘Compton makes the world go around.’”

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January 31, 2025
Student visa numbers hit record despite Australian clampdown

Student visa issuances reached record levels in Australia late last year, suggesting that 12 months of policy upheaval have failed to suppress international education flows ahead of a federal election likely to be fought on migration.

Visa grants to would-be university students applying from overseas reached an all-time high of almost 17,000 in November, the latest month for which Department of Home Affairs statistics are available.

Monthly issuances have been at or near record levels since mid-2024, well exceeding pre-pandemic tallies and driving a surge in overall foreign student numbers. Higher education typically accounts for two-thirds or more of student visa recipients.

The figures show that student flows have weathered some 10 separate policy changes unleashed to dampen overseas enrollments since December 2023. They include increased financial capacity requirements on applicants, a doubling of visa fees and a chaotic reprioritization of visa processing that has been blamed for soaring delays and refusals.

The opposition Liberal Party, which is due to contest a general election by mid-May, has repeatedly berated the Labor government over student volumes since Australia’s post-pandemic reopening of its borders. The surge in student numbers, initially spurred by policies enacted by the opposition when it was in government, has been blamed for housing shortages.

Liberal leader Peter Dutton promised “stricter caps on foreign students to relieve stress on city rental markets” during an election campaign rally on Jan. 12.

While treasurer Jim Chalmers has attributed Australia’s lofty migrant tally to low departures rather than high arrivals, the latest statistics suggest both are contributing. And the figures do not include record numbers of applicants fighting to have their visa rejections overturned.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the backlog of international students contesting their visa refusals in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal had doubled in five months to exceed 20,000 for the first time, and that two-thirds of visa rejections were being overturned by the tribunal.

Meanwhile, overseas students are pursuing strategies to extend their time in Australia, including starting new courses or applying for asylum. Immigration expert Abul Rizvi said the tally of onshore student visa applicants had blown out to more than 100,000.

Home Affairs data provided to a Senate inquiry in October showed that a long-term monthly average of about 300 asylum applications from overseas students had increased to about 450 since mid-2024, reaching 516 by August—the highest figure in at least five years, and probably since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Student visa grants could also increase following the late-December replacement of the controversial ministerial direction 107, which slowed down the processing of many visa applications, with ministerial direction 111.

International education consultant Dirk Mulder said opinion on the new arrangements was divided, with some operators saying visa processing had sped up while others complained that it was slower than a year ago.

Both camps expressed concern about the likelihood of further policy changes and the fate of institutions that had reached their “thresholds”—80 percent of the formerly announced international student caps, the trigger point for slower visa processing.

One worry was that agents might stop referring students to universities and colleges in this position. “There is a large amount of angst as to how recruitment partners will work amongst institutions when they hit their 80 percent threshold,” Mulder wrote on his Koala news site.

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January 31, 2025
The labour of being a student nurse

It’s 5:15pm and I’ve just finished an extra shift on placement to meet my required 2300 hours. I haven’t had time to change out of my nursing uniform.

I had to support a deteriorating patient, a patient who was dying, and a patient that needed a new catheter as an emergency – otherwise they could have died too. And then I remembered I was running late to a board of governors’ meeting.

I run in and apologise: scrubs on, hair ragged, eyes puffy, pouring the first glass of water I have managed to drink since 8am that morning.

I explain I need to leave a bit early for patient bedtime calls. People were surprised, and suddenly the focus was away from the agenda and the questions flooded. I began to explain what it is really like to be a student nurse.

I explained about the unpaid placement hours, dealing with real life patients and people who rely on us in some of their most vulnerable moments. The full time studying, having to work alongside it all and the toll on our mental and physical health. I was just scratching the surface.

According to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), more than 32,000 student nurses could drop out of their courses by the next parliament and seven in ten are considering quitting due to financial pressures. Statistics like these don’t surprise me, instead they reflect me and my colleagues’ experiences.

Ultimately, institutions and governments can’t support student nurses, increase numbers and reduce retention issues if they first don’t understand their experience.

It’s a full-time job on top of a full-time job

We are told studying a full-time degree is a full-time job. Many students are now working more hours part- or full-time to fill the gap left by an inadequate student maintenance system, but what about student nurses?

Student nurses juggle between 37.5 and 48 hours a week of unpaid work placements – and also work part-time jobs because the cost of living is so tough. We see student nurses rely on the free tea and toast in the staff rooms as their only source of nutrition for the day.

In August I was on a five-day week placement. I had hours I had to make up as I was unable to attend a period of placement earlier that year due to my mum being treated for cancer. For student nurses, every time we encounter a barrier, the first thing we think about is the hours we’ll need to make up.

We’re not entitled to sick pay, special leave or bereavement when it comes to placement. At the time of writing, I am currently on my ninth straight working day, between placement and my job as a sabbatical officer. My rent is due, my bills need paying – this is survival.

Is it even worth it?

It’s understandable that nursing students often feel like they exist in a limbo between the university they’re studying at and their placements. Where the student journey is so different, there needs to be different or specialised support to ensure nursing students can succeed.

Nursing students don’t have the ability to commit to all the things that enrich the student experience – clubs, societies or volunteering – because they don’t have the time for it.

It makes many question if they can ever actually just be students.

In a context of an incredibly challenged health care system, student nurses are being asked to do more and more before they are qualified. As future healthcare professionals who signed up for these degrees because we want to take care of others, we are in positions where we can’t care for ourselves.

The labour of being a student nurse feels heavy but that’s not to say that there isn’t room to make positive change.

To universities, talk to your healthcare students, celebrate their differences from other students but acknowledge the challenge it can bring. By understanding them and lobbying on their behalf they’ll feel validated and supported by their institution.

Looking to the government, with future reform of the NHS on the government’s agenda, how will you look at the whole student nurse journey before focusing on only recruitment? Working with trade unions including the RCN to improve the immediate conditions of student nurses is an important first step to ensure retention.

This could include student discounts on food in hospital trusts, travel bursaries, and flexible working regulations. In order to increase recruitment in the long term, the government should consider livable bursaries and the introduction of a loan forgiveness scheme.

It’s important that both the health sector and the higher education sector look after our future NHS and healthcare workforce. Because no matter who you are or where you come from, in yours’ or your loved one’s time of need, we want to always be there to help you.

We’ll only see progress once there is a joined up approach from universities and government to improve the experience, and that starts with better understanding the labour of being a student nurse.

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January 31, 2025
Q&A with a student success dean, Soka University of America

As an undergraduate student, Lisa MacLeod wasn’t sure where her career path would take her. She majored in English literature and international relations with the aspirations of being a journalist or a State Department staffer and found herself back in academia not long after.

Lisa MacLeod, assistant dean of student success at Soka University of America

Lisa MacLeod/Soka University of America

Now, as the inaugural assistant dean of student success at Soka University of America since last fall, MacLeod is charged with breaking institutional silos at the California institution to improve student outcomes after graduation, working collaboratively across campus.

MacLeod spoke with Inside Higher Ed about her time thus far at the institution, a private liberal arts college, and her aspirations in the long-term.

Inside Higher Ed: What is your new role at Soka and how does it fit into institutional goals for student success?

MacLeod: One of the most important things [about my role] is that I am housed under the dean of faculty, so I’m not under the dean of students, which is very different from how a lot of schools have done this.

My top priority, luckily, isn’t getting students to graduate—because we already are doing that very well as an institution … I’m not just new in the job, the position is new at the university—so there’s some room for me to define what the position is.

I was asked to look specifically at advising. Right now, our program is all faculty individually advising students for academic advising. Career services and internships is the other side of the house, and historically, the two sides of the house don’t talk to each other very well. So looking at how we advise, but also thinking about, are there ways that we can integrate better, because we have lots of good things happening by different people. But do faculty know about that? Do they know enough about it to recommend it to students? Not so much.

The other thing is starting to integrate career readiness skills into the curriculum. This year, we are rolling out RATE (Reflect, Articulate, Translate, Evaluate), which was developed by the University of Minnesota for their liberal arts students.

We’re having our first cohort this coming semester—so beginning in February—of faculty fellows who have pledged to develop the RATE system into their existing course, and we’re supporting them with some training and other kinds of activities so that we’re very specific in the application. We’re not asking you to change your course. What we’re asking is that you make it more evident to students how they are developing career readiness skills in addition to academic and subject area knowledge.

Inside Higher Ed: You were a double major in college. While interdisciplinary learning can be an asset to students, sometimes academic departments can be more focused on helping students on a specific path within their discipline. Do you have any insights based on your experience as a dual major and helping students find their own path?

MacLeod: At Soka, we don’t have majors—everyone graduates with a major in liberal arts, and then within that, we have concentrations. Students here do have the opportunity to double concentrate, so they’re not taking as many courses as you would for a major, but there’s still some degree of specialty.

I encourage them to look at the whole course catalog and say, “Take the classes that really attract you, that are interesting, and you’ll figure out how they connect to each other if you look for it,” and to not worry about double concentrations. Or, you know, force yourself to take courses you wouldn’t otherwise.

Certainly, I encourage students, depending on what their interests are, if you’re going to go to graduate school, yes, take statistics, take a research methodology course. Do these kinds of courses that are skill building [so] you’ll have that [for] the next level of your education; they will have expected you to have that background.

But beyond that, I’m really focused on having students maybe try something they wouldn’t otherwise. I wish as an undergraduate I had taken an anthropology class, but it never occurred to me; it just wasn’t on my radar. Explore, because you don’t know what you don’t know, and to really find something that drives them, that they’re really excited about doing the coursework and learning more about that area. Because they’ll put more into it, and as they put more into it, they’re going to develop the liberal arts skills in the process. Whereas, if they’re forcing themselves to take a course because they feel they should take this course, they’re not going to have the same level of motivation. They’re not going to get the same out of it.

Inside Higher Ed: As you said, one of your priorities is advising, which is so important to the student journey. What does quality advising look like to you?

MacLeod: I think that quality advising really requires time and listening.

I always ask students to come in with kind of a worksheet: Where are you [in your progress] toward graduation? Where are you in terms of taking required courses? But I also ask them things like, “OK, this is a required course, but you have a selection of five different faculty members that might be teaching that course, and of course, they bring their skills and expertise and kind of personality in each course. Why did you choose that faculty member? If you’re interested in this, maybe this other faculty member—even though it’s the same requirement—might teach that course in a way that you would find appealing?” And directing them to resources, encouraging them to talk to faculty before they enrolled in the course if they have questions or concerns or if they’re not certain about something.

Then also asking them very blatant questions that I wish someone had asked me when I was an undergraduate. What are your plans after you graduate? What are you doing to achieve that goal? What information do you need to know, and how are you going to get it moving forward?

I took time off [after graduating] because I’d never had those conversations. Maybe people at the university thought I was having it with my family. My family may have thought I was having it with people at the university. I’m not sure where I lost the memo, but it just didn’t happen. Before, someone had always come along and said, “Apply for this,” and it was a very structured thing. That’s not how life after graduation works at all. So I ask those questions I wish someone had asked me.

Inside Higher Ed: What is student success to you?

MacLeod: It’s not for me to define for someone else what success looks like. I have my own ideas, but I think it’s wrong to impose that on other people, because success can look like so many different things.

In general, I feel that student success is they graduate from the program, and they feel good about that. That there’s not regret that they should have gone someplace else, but also that we’ve equipped them with the skills in their personal and in their professional life to face the challenges that will inevitably come and to be able to surmount them.

The first couple years after graduation for everyone is hard—that’s just kind of the nature of the beast—but that they are prepared for, that they can get through it, and know that there’s something on the other side. that they are confident in their skills, that they will figure it out and then end up on the other side in a career that they find fulfilling in some manner, being able to contribute to the community, if that’s their goal, in a way that is meaningful to them. And hopefully happy alumni that are talking to our current students that and sharing their experiences.

Inside Higher Ed: What are your long-term goals in this new role?

MacLeod: It feels like so much of academic life is keeping your head above water for now.

I think that in the long term, I’d really like to see a more collaborative campus culture, where faculty members are supporting each other in their endeavors, maybe a bit more. It’s not that my colleagues are unsupportive, but we don’t always ask each other or are aware of the ways in which our research overlaps and we could actually be doing more—whether it’s with our teaching or where we could be drawing more on each other’s skills and knowledge base.

I’m still really new at this … so I think right now my priority is still listening, rather than planning for the future.

Seeking stories from campus leaders, faculty members and staff for our Student Success focus. Share here.

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January 30, 2025
FIRE statement on reports of forthcoming executive order on student visas and campus protests

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today threatening action against international students in the United States for their involvement in campus protests related to Israel and Hamas.

Per reports, President Trump promises to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” and to deport students who joined “pro-jihadist protests.”

The revocation of student visas should not be used to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the federal government. The strength of our nation’s system of higher education derives from the exchange of the widest range of views, even unpopular or dissenting ones.

Students who commit crimes — including vandalism, threats, or violence — must face consequences, and those consequences may include the loss of a visa. But if today’s executive order reaches beyond illegal activity to instead punish students for protest or expression otherwise protected by the First Amendment, it must be withdrawn.

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January 29, 2025
Making better decisions on student financial support

By Peter Gray, Chief Executive and Chair of the JS Group.

As the higher education sector starts to plan its next budget cycle and many may need to make savings, there is a concern about the impact of any cuts on students and how this could negatively affect their university experience and performance.

Universities are bound to look at a range of options to save money, especially given the stormy operating context. But one less-often highlighted aspect of university finances is the cost (and benefit) of the additional financial support universities devote to many of their students. Through cash, vouchers and other means, many universities provide financial help to support with the costs of living and learning.

Using Universities UK’s annual sector figures as one indicator, roughly 5% of universities’ overall expenditure has gone towards financial support and outreach, equivalent to around £2.5 billion. Although some of this money will inevitably not go directly to students themselves, this is still a significant amount of spending.

There are, naturally, competing tensions when it comes to considering any changes to targeted financial support. With significant financial pressures on students, exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis, there is always a very justifiable case for more money. However, with the significant financial pressures universities are facing, there is an equally justifiable case to control costs to ensure financial sustainability. Every university has to manage this tension and trade-offs are inevitable when understanding just how much financial support to give and to whom.

In many respects, the answers to those questions are partially governed by Access & Participation Plans, with the clear intention that these financial interventions really change student outcomes. However, properly measuring those outcomes is incredibly difficult without a much deeper understanding of student ‘need’ – and understanding these needs comes from being able to identify student spending behaviour (and often doing this in real-time).

It always amazes me that some APPs will state that financial support ‘has had a positive impact on retention’ and some quite the opposite and I think part of this is a result of positioning financial support from the university end of the telescope rather than the student end.

Understanding real and actual ‘need’ helps to change this. Knowing perhaps that certain groups (for example Asylum Seekers or Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Showman and Boater students) across the sector will have similar needs would be helpful and data really help here. Having, using, and sharing data will allow us to draw a bigger picture and better signpost to where interventions are most effectively deployed so those particular groups of students who need support are achieving the right outcomes.

Technology is at hand to help: Open Banking (for example) is an incredible tool that not only can transform how financial support can be delivered but also helps to build an understanding of student behaviour.

Lifting the bonnet and understanding behaviour poses additional questions, such as: When is the right time to give that support? And what form should that support take?

I am a big proponent of providing financial support as soon as a student starts. When I talk to universities, however, it is clear that the data needed to identify particular groups of students are not readily available at the point of entry and students’ needs are not met. Giving a student financial support in December, when they needed it in September, is not delivering at the point of student need, it is delivering at the point where the university can identify the student. I think there is a growing body of evidence that suggests the large drop off in students between September and December is, in part, because of this.

Some universities in the sector give a small amount of support to all students at the start of the year, knowing that by doing so they will ensure that they can meet the immediate needs of some students. But clearly, some money must also go to those who do not necessarily need it.

However, and this is where the maths comes in, if the impact of that investment keeps more students in need at university, then I would argue that investment is worth the return. And the maths is simple: it really doesn’t take many additional students to stay to have a profoundly positive impact on university finances. Thus it is certainly worthy of consideration.

To me, this is about using financial support to drive the ultimate goal of improving student outcomes, especially the retention of students between September and December, which is when the first return is made, where the largest withdrawal is seen and where the least amount of financial support is given.

As to the nature or format of support: of course, in most cases, it is easier to provide cash. However, again, this is about your investment in your student, and, for example, if you have students on a course with higher material and resource costs, or students who are commuting, then there is an argument to consider more in-kind support and using data to support that decision.

Again, I am a proponent of not just saying ‘one size fits all’. Understanding student need is complex, but solutions are out there. It is important to work together to identify patterns of real student need and understand the benefits of doing so.

My knowledge draws on JS Group’s data, based on the direct use of £40 million of specialist student financial support to more than 160,000 students across 30 UK universities in the last full academic cycle.

I have also looked at the student views on such funding and there is an emerging picture that connects student financial support with continuation, participation and progress. A summary of student feedback is here: https://jsgroup.co.uk/news-and-views/news/student-feedback-report-january-2025/

The real positive of this is that everyone wants the same goal: for fewer students to withdraw from their courses and for those students to thrive at university and be successful. We need to widen the debate on how financial support is delivered, when, and in what format to draw together a better collective understanding of student need and behaviour to achieve that goal.

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January 29, 2025
How to Build a Dynamic Student Enrollment Plan That Thrives Amid Change
Key Takeaways:
- Evolving student enrollment strategies require proactive, data-informed approaches that adapt to demographic shifts, economic pressures, and market dynamics.
- Real-time metrics and prescriptive analytics enable institutions to refine recruitment strategies, address challenges quickly, and optimize enrollment outcomes.
- Flexible tools and predictive modeling help mitigate disruptions, align team efforts, and support personalized student engagement.
- Continuous refinement ensures institutions can navigate uncertainties, maintain competitive student enrollment plans, and prepare for future challenges.
Higher education is in constant flux, primarily driven by student demographic shifts, economic pressures, and rapid technological advancements. For institutions to stay competitive in this environment, student enrollment strategies must evolve. By embracing a consistent, data-informed, and adaptable enrollment management approach, institutions can navigate current and unforeseen uncertainties and meet their enrollment goals.

A Forward-Looking Approach to Enrollment Strategies

Traditional enrollment strategies often rely on rearview analyses, evaluating successes and missteps only at the end of an enrollment cycle. However, the dynamic nature of student recruitment today demands a more proactive approach. Institutions must adopt prescriptive analytics to “look through the windshield,” using real-time data to understand how current strategies are performing and make adjustments on the fly. This forward-thinking approach allows enrollment managers to:
- Identify what is working and what needs refinement during the current recruitment cycle.
- Test potential strategies against historical data to predict their effectiveness before implementation.
- Address emerging challenges quickly, such as unexpected FAFSA delays or shifts in application behavior.
- Develop broad tactics to adapt to changes throughout the enrollment cycle as well as adjust to shifting dynamics with individual students.
Such adaptability requires not just access to the right data but also the tools and expertise to act on it effectively. The combination of robust technology platforms, such as Liaison’s predictive analytics tool Othot, and experienced partners who understand the nuances of higher education can make all the difference. By integrating analytics and expert guidance, institutions can respond to challenges with precision and agility.

Data-Informed Metrics for Strategic Refinement

To optimize their student enrollment plans, institutions must evaluate specific metrics at each stage of the recruitment process. This means aligning data evaluation with the student journey, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most at each stage:

· Search phase | Metrics such as inquiry volume, lead conversion rates, and source effectiveness provide insight into initial interest in the institution and the success of outreach efforts.

· Application phase | Metrics such as application volume, completion rates, and demographic trends help institutions understand the reach and appeal of their efforts.

· Yield phase | Yield rates and admitted student feedback provide insights into how students perceive the institution’s value.

· Enrollment phase | Deposit rates and engagement tracking reveal which admitted students are likely to matriculate, enabling targeted follow-ups.

Different variables also emerge during the cycle that require immediate action. For example, when unexpected disruptions such as a sudden change in application deadlines or a major shift in funding policies occur, enrollment leaders must have the tools and knowledge to not only pivot their strategies to address the issues at hand but also effectively predict the results of those changing approaches in real-time. This requires a flexible data infrastructure that can accommodate real-time adjustments.

Overcoming Challenges Through Continuous Adaptation

Flexibility is a nonnegotiable trait for enrollment management teams. The new realities of a post-pandemic world, declining high school graduating classes, and a highly competitive marketplace are significantly challenging existing strategies. The pressure to meet enrollment goals often comes with internal changes—such as staff turnover or shifts in leadership priorities—and external pressures like economic downturns or new legislation.
- Turnover and continuity | Staff turnover can disrupt institutional momentum, particularly when strategies are person-dependent rather than system-driven. Tools such as Othot provide consistency by embedding critical data insights and processes into the institution’s framework, reducing the impact of turnover and fostering a culture of data-informed decision-making.
- Adapting to unexpected variables | Challenges like sudden changes in funding or board directives require immediate adjustments. By leveraging “what-if” scenario modeling, institutions can simulate the impact of potential changes and make informed decisions quickly.
Strategies to Increase Student Enrollment

Strategic flexibility can make the difference between hitting enrollment targets and falling short. Institutions can take several steps to continuously refine their strategies:

1. Monitor trends in real-time | Stay ahead of shifts in student behavior by regularly reviewing metrics such as engagement rates, application trends, and deposit patterns.

2. Incorporate scenario planning | Use predictive tools to simulate how changes in funding, messaging, or outreach might impact enrollment outcomes.

3. Align collaboration across teams | Align data and strategy efforts across departments to create a unified approach to enrollment management.

4. Personalize student engagement | Tailor communication based on individual student data, ensuring that messaging resonates with their unique needs and interests.

By integrating these strategies into their student enrollment plans, institutions can adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining a steady focus on meeting their overall long-term enrollment goals.

Staying Ahead in a Dynamic Environment

Continuous refinement isn’t just about meeting immediate needs—it’s about preparing for the future. Institutions that embrace adaptability, leverage data strategically, and invest in both technology and expertise are better positioned to succeed in today’s competitive higher education market.

Whether it’s managing the challenges of staff turnover, responding to external pressures, aligning all your enrollment tools at hand, or identifying the most effective ways to engage prospective students, institutions must prioritize flexibility and innovation.

With Liaison’s advanced tools and expert partnership, institutions can confidently navigate the complexities of data-driven enrollment management and set the stage for sustained success. Contact us today to get started.

About the Author

Craig Cornell is the Vice President for Enrollment Strategy at Liaison. In that capacity, he oversees a team of enrollment strategists and brings best practices, consultation, and data trends to campuses across the country in all things enrollment management. Craig also serves as the dedicated resource to NASH (National Association of Higher Education Systems) and works closely with the higher education system that Liaison supports. Before joining Liaison in 2023, Craig served for over 30 years in multiple higher education executive enrollment management positions. During his tenure, the campuses he served often received national recognition for enrollment growth, effective financial aid leveraging, marketing enhancements, and innovative enrollment strategies.
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January 28, 2025
Study Reveals Key Factors Driving Student College Choice in 2025

A comprehensive new study by education research firm EAB has identified the most influential factors shaping how students choose colleges, with academic program variety, campus safety, and student organizations emerging as the top three drivers of student attraction.

The research, analyzing data from U.S. four-year colleges, found that schools offering a wider range of majors see significantly higher student interest, with each additional program contributing to increased application and enrollment rates. Campus safety measures and the number of available student organizations were also found to be major factors in students’ decision-making process.

“What’s particularly interesting is how these factors play out differently across institution types,” said Dr. Ryan Gardner-Cook, the project director. “For example, smaller schools gain more from incremental improvements in campus amenities and academic offerings compared to larger institutions.”

The study also revealed that affordability remains a critical factor, especially for first-generation and low-income students. Schools with lower net prices and stronger financial aid packages showed notably higher attraction rates among these demographics.

Environmental factors like climate and location also play a significant role. Schools in temperate climates and growing urban areas generally showed stronger appeal to prospective students. State-level political environments were found to increasingly influence student choice as well.

The research identified nine distinct “institutional personas” ranging from “Accessible Education Anchors” to “Rigorous Academic Giants,” each with unique characteristics and challenges in attracting students. This classification system aims to help institutions better understand their competitive position and develop more effective recruitment strategies.

For institutions looking to improve their student attraction, the study recommends focusing on controllable factors like admissions processes, student life offerings, and academic programs while finding ways to mitigate challenges related to location or cost.

The findings come at a crucial time as higher education institutions face evolving student preferences and increasing competition for enrollment.

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January 27, 2025
Mercury in retrograde: How UT Dallas tried to roll back student press rights

At the University of Texas at Dallas, a new independent newspaper is bearing witness to an authoritarian streak undermining student rights on campus. Last week, The Retrograde published its first print edition — cementing its status as the successor to The Mercury, the historic student newspaper that administrators silenced last spring for expressing dissenting opinions.

The new paper’s name — a reference to the astrological phenomenon of “Mercury in retrograde” — also references student journalists’ perception that the university is “going in reverse” on important issues like free speech.

“We are seeing the school backslide and we want to make sure that each step backwards is criticized and documented,” said Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, former editor-in-chief of The Mercury and current editor of The Retrograde.

Concerns about academic freedom on college campuses spurred an interest in journalism for Gutierrez, a UT Dallas sophomore studying political science and philosophy. In an interview with FIRE, Gutierrez explained that he joined The Mercury in October 2023, “mainly because I was hearing a lot of commotion around the removal of DEI from the classroom.”

Although Senate Bill 17 — which Texas passed in 2023 to ban DEI offices, training, and statements at public universities — included exceptions for teaching and research, headlines revealed in November 2024 that administrators were, in fact, subjecting teaching and research to “intense scrutiny” under the law.

As Gutierrez tells it, he saw warning signs at the University of North Texas, UT Dallas’ closest neighbor in the statewide system, where administrators unilaterally removed references to concepts like diversity and critical race theory from course titles and syllabi. “Despite these being higher-ed concepts, you couldn’t even talk about them,” Gutierrez said. FIRE wrote a letter to North Texas on Dec. 6, 2024, urging administrators “to refrain from unlawfully ordering changes to faculty’s pedagogical material as part of UNT’s overreaching compliance with state law.”

We are seeing the school backslide and we want to make sure that each step backwards is criticized and documented.

At UT Dallas, Gutierrez describes the emergence of a similar climate, where faculty “are scared that what they’re going to say isn’t allowed or that it will get them in trouble,” or might be “a mark against them” in tenure review.

Gutierrez says The Mercury was a watchdog not just at UT Dallas, but within the statewide system.

Retrograde editor Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez

“Anytime [Governor] Greg Abbott wants to crack down on higher ed,” Gutierrez told FIRE, “he usually starts with UT Austin, and then the other presidents in the UT system will either . . . do the same themselves or . . . get the consequences thrown their way.” And these changes affect UT Dallas. As Gutierrez explains it, “if there’s something’s going on in one Texas school, it’s very likely that our administration is going to like what they see and try to incorporate that into our campus policy.”

It was exactly this watchdog role that got Gutierrez and The Mercury into trouble. Last spring, after a police crackdown on First Amendment-protected protests at UT Austin, Gutierrez recalls asking, “If encampments form at UT Dallas, what will we do? How do we protect our student journalists if there are police there? Can we make sure that we’re not getting arrested while doing this important coverage?”

The Mercury’s journalists were not arrested by the state troopers that UT Dallas deployed to break up pro-Palestinian protests, but the newspaper’s relationship with the administration deteriorated after its coverage criticized the university for quashing peaceful protests. In the end, administrators forced Gutierrez out, firing him as editor-in-chief and then firing more staff when they went on strike in protest. To make it worse, administrators completed these terminations without following official policy on the removal of editors — denying due process to Gutierrez and his colleagues.

It would have been very easy for us to just roll over and let the campus administration do whatever they wanted with the student newspaper. But that would be a failure on our part to do proper journalism. It would be a huge dereliction of our duty as student journalists.

Over a thousand people signed The Mercury’s solidarity petition after Gutierrez was fired. Not only that, as Gutierrez recounted to FIRE, “The student government passed multiple resolutions denouncing the actions from campus administration and then supporting our new endeavors with The Retrograde, officially recognizing it as the student newspaper. And the faculty’s academic senate has also been in support of us. They passed a resolution, which was just like — We’ll support the student government’s decision.”

For the student journalists behind The Mercury, the administration’s attempt to silence them marked the beginning of a new chapter for independent student expression.

Gutierrez told FIRE that The Retrograde is working to get 501(c)(3) status and is currently registered as a nonprofit in the state of Texas. This move would give the newspaper full control over its operations — unlike The Mercury, which was beholden to administrators and faculty on the university-sponsored Student Media Oversight Board.

The first issue of The Retrograde independent student newspaper at UT Dallas published on Jan. 21, 2025.

But this new era of editorial freedom has not come without challenges. Gutierrez told FIRE that although “we do what we want as student journalists and we don’t have to fear campus reprisal when it comes to our actions, the administration has been very insistent that they don’t want this structure to exist at all.” While The Retrograde is free from direct retaliation, the university has engaged in what Gutierrez calls a “subtle form of censorship” by directing inquiries to PR officials, ensuring that the official university response is the only one that gets heard.

Administrators at UT Dallas have a lengthy history of suppressing transparency and keeping student voices under their control. During Gutierrez’s freshman year, he recalls a cat torturer being exposed in a front page article in The Mercury as an employee of the university. Although the investigation was thorough and newsworthy, Gutierrez says, “The university didn’t like that we were talking about it . . . They were like, oh, we’re dealing with this internally, so you don’t need to make it public.” And in the spring of 2020, when the paper covered a series of suicides on campus, administrators allegedly removed copies of the paper from campus kiosks.

For Gutierrez, reporting on matters of public concern is often a question of safety.

“Students want to know that the people at the testing center [like the cat torturer] might not all be the safest individuals in that very specific circumstance,” he says, “and yet campus administrators don’t talk about stuff like that.”

Despite these challenges, Gutierrez believes student journalists have a sacred obligation to uphold the freedoms promised by the Constitution. “It would have been very easy for us to just roll over and let the campus administration do whatever they wanted with the student newspaper. But that would be a failure on our part to do proper journalism. It would be a huge dereliction of our duty as student journalists,” he added, “to allow this huge infringement upon the First Amendment to occur on campus.”

FIRE to University of Texas at Dallas: Stop censoring the student press

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Gutierrez credits FIRE, the Student Press Law Center, and the Society of Professional Journalists for stepping in with support, resources, and advice. He encourages other student journalists to reach out to these groups if censorship comes their way.

“I think it’s really important for student journalists facing censorship to reach out to others, work together and fight back against the current regime of censorship that a lot of universities are so fond of,” he concluded.

The Retrograde’s plans to hold UT Dallas administrators accountable are as ambitious as ever. After the May 1, 2024 police raid on a peaceful protest at UT Dallas, Gutierrez and his fellow journalists filed a public records request.

“Right now, we’re working through over 1,500 pages of emails that we’ve gotten from our FOIA request,” said Gutierrez, “and a lot of the information in there is damning.”

You can take action to remind President Richard Benson that UT Dallas is a public institution that must abide by the First Amendment and uphold freedom of the press, even when the administration disagrees with student reporting. As Gutierrez says, “I hope it will shame our university administrators into acting normally for once.”

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January 27, 2025
Student Debt by Ethnicity | HESA

Hi all. Just a quick one today, this time on some data I recently got from StatsCan.

We know a fair a bit about student debt in Canada, especially with respect to distribution by gender, type of institution, province, etc. (Chapter 6 of The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada is just chock full of this kind of data if you’re minded to take a deeper dive). But to my knowledge no one has ever pulled and published the data on debt by ethnicity, even though this data has been collected for quite some time through the National Graduates Survey (NGS). So I ordered the data, and here’s what I discovered.

Figure 1 shows incidence of borrowing for the graduating class of 2020, combined for all graduates of universities and graduates, for the eight largest ethnicities covered by the NGS (and before anyone asks, “indigeneity” is not considered an ethnicity so anyone indicating an indigenous ethnicity is unfortunately excluded from this data… there’s more below on the challenges of getting additional data). And the picture it shows is…a bit complex.

Figure 1: Incidence of Borrowing, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

If you just look at the data on government loan programs (the orange bars), we see that only Arab students have borrowing rates in excess of 1 in 2. But for certain ethnicities, the borrowing rate is much lower. For Latin American and Chinese students, the borrowing rate is below 1 in 3, and among South Asian students the borrowing rate is barely 1 in 5. Evidence of big differences in attitudes towards borrowing!

Except…well when you add in borrowing from private sources (e.g. from banks and family) so as to take a look at overall rates of borrowing incidence, the differences in borrowing rates are a lot narrower. Briefly, Asian and Latin American students borrow a lot more money from private sources (mainly family) than do Arab students, whites, and Blacks. These probably come with slightly easier repayment terms, but it’s hard to know for sure. An area almost certainly worthy of further research.

There is a similarly nuanced picture when we look at median levels of indebtedness among graduates who had debt. This is shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Median Borrowing, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

Now, there isn’t a huge amount of difference in exiting debt levels by ethnicity: the gap is only about $6,000 between the lowest total debt levels (Filipinos) and the highest (Chinese). But part of the problem here is that we can’t distinguish the reason for the various debt levels. Based on what we know about ethnic patterns of postsecondary education, we can probably guess that Filipino students have low debt levels not because they are especially wealthy and can afford to go to post-secondary without financial assistance. But rather because they are more likely to go to college and this spend less time, on average, in school paying fees and accumulating debt. Similarly, Chinese students don’t have the highest debt because they have low incomes; they have higher debt because they are the ethnic group the most likely to attend university and spend more time paying (higher) fees.

(Could we get the data separately for universities and colleges to clear up the confound? Yes, we could. But it cost me $3K just to get this data. Drilling down a level adds costs, as would getting data based on indigenous identity, and this is a free email, and so for the moment what we have above will have to do. If anyone wants to pitch in a couple of grand to do more drilling-down, let me know and I would be happy to coordinate some data liberation).

It is also possible to use NGS data to look at post-graduate income by debt. I obtained the data by in fairly large ranges (e.g. $0-20K, $20-60K, etc.), but it’s possible on the basis of that to estimate roughly what median incomes are (put it this way: the exact numbers are not exactly right, but the ordinal rank of income of the various ethnicities are probably accurate). My estimations of median 2023 income of 2020 graduates—which includes those graduates who are not in the labour market full-time, if you’re wondering why the numbers look a little low—are shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Estimate Median 2023 Income, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

Are there differences in income here? Yes, but they aren’t huge. Most ethnic groups have median post-graduate incomes between $44 and $46,000. The two lowest-earning groups (Latin Americans and Filipinos) re both disproportionately enrolled in community colleges, which is part of what is going on in this data (if you want disaggregated data, see above).

Now, the data from the previous graphs can be combined to look at debt-to-income ratios, both for students with debt, and all students (that is, including those that do not borrow). This is shown below in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Estimated Median 2023 Debt-to-Income Ratios, College and University Graduates Combined, Class of 2020

If you’re just dividing indebtedness by income (the blue bars), you get a picture that looks a lot like Figure 2 in debt, because differences in income are pretty small. But if you are looking at debt-to-income ratios across all students (including those that do not borrow) you get a very different picture because as we saw in Figure 1, there are some pretty significant differences in overall borrowing rates. So, for instance, Chinese students go from having the worst debt-to-income ratio on one measure to being middle of the pack on another because they have relatively low incidence of borrowing; similarly, students of Latin American origin go from being middle-of-the-pack to nearly the lowest debt-to-income ratios because they are a lot less likely to borrow than others. Black students end up having among the highest debt-to-income ratios not because they earn significantly less than other graduates, but because both the incidence and amount of their borrowing is relatively high.

But I think the story to go with here is that while there are differences between ethnic groups in terms of borrowing, debt, and repayment ratios, and that it’s worth trying to do something to narrow them, the difference in these rates is not enormous. Overall, it appears that as a country we are achieving reasonably good things here, with the caveat that if this data were disaggregated by university/ college, the story might not be quite as promising.

And so ends the first-ever analysis of student debt and repayment by ethnic background. Hope you found it moderately enlightening.

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January 27, 2025