Tag: students

  • Smarter Support: How to Use AI in Online Courses and Teach Your Students to Use It Too – Faculty Focus

    Smarter Support: How to Use AI in Online Courses and Teach Your Students to Use It Too – Faculty Focus

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  • Smarter Support: How to Use AI in Online Courses and Teach Your Students to Use It Too – Faculty Focus

    Smarter Support: How to Use AI in Online Courses and Teach Your Students to Use It Too – Faculty Focus

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  • How Pakistani students are reshaping global mobility

    How Pakistani students are reshaping global mobility

    A new study from ApplyBoard has shown the number of students leaving Pakistan to join universities in countries such as the UK and US has grown exponentially in the past few years, with student visas issued to Pakistani students bound for the ‘big four’ nearly quadrupling from 2019 to 2025.

    “One of the most striking findings is just how rapid and resilient Pakistan’s growth has been across major study destinations,” ApplyBoard CEO Meti Basiri told The PIE News.

    “The rise of Pakistani students is a clear signal that global student mobility is diversifying beyond traditional markets like India and China,” he said.

    The question is, why?

    A large factor is Pakistan’s young population – 59%, or roughly 142.2 million people, are between the ages of five and 24, making it one of the youngest populations in Asia.

    Additionally, due to economic challenges faced by Pakistan, many young people see international education as a necessity in order to succeed financially, even with Pakistan’s economic growth and gradual stabilisation – which has a possibility of slightly decreasing the overall movement between countries in the future.

    The UK has remained the most popular destination for Pakistani students even through Covid-19, with Pakistan rising to become the UK’s third largest source country in 2024.

    Visas issued to Pakistani students have grown from less than 5,500 to projected 31,000 this year, an increase of over 550% from 2019 to 35,501 in 2024.

    Some 83% of students chose postgraduate programs, with the most popular being business courses, but in recent years statistics show a shift towards computing and IT courses.

    This trend aligns with the growth of the UK’s tech sector, which is now worth more than 1.2 trillion pounds, with graduates set to aid further growth in the coming years.

    “In the US, F-1 visas for Pakistani students are on track to hit an all-time high in FY2025,” said Basiri, with STEM subjects the most popular among the cohort.

    This aligns with the US labour market, where STEM jobs have grown 79% in the last 30 years.

    Basiri highlighted the “surprising” insight that postgraduate programs now make up the majority of Pakistani enrolments, particularly in fields of IT, engineering and life sciences. “This reflects a deliberate and career-driven approach to international education,” he said.

    Such an approach is true of students across the world, who are becoming “more intentional, choosing destinations and programs based on affordability, career outcomes, and visa stability, not just brand recognition,” said Basiri.

    The rise of Pakistani students is a clear signal that global student mobility is diversifying beyond traditional markets like India and China

    Meti Basiri, ApplyBoard

    Canada, unlike the US and UK, has welcomed far fewer Pakistani students, most likely due to the introduction of international student caps. ApplyBoard also suspects Pakistani student populations to drop further in the coming years, it warned.

    Similarly, the amount of visas issued to Pakistani students has also dropped in Australia after high demand following the pandemic.

    Germany, however, has experienced rising popularity, a 70% increase in popularity over five years amongst Pakistani students.

    One of the biggest factors for this is their often tuition-free public post secondary education, according to ApplyBoard, as well as the multitude of engineering and technology programs offered in Germany.

    What’s more, though smaller in scale, the UAE has seen a 7% increase in Pakistani students in recent years, thanks, in part to “geographic proximity, cultural familiarity and expanding institutional capacity,” said Basiri.

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  • Creative approaches to teaching math can help fill AI talent gap

    Creative approaches to teaching math can help fill AI talent gap

    Key points:

    Not surprisingly, jobs in AI are the fastest growing of any in the country, with a 59 percent increase in job postings between January 2024 and November 2024. Yet we continue to struggle with growing a workforce that is proficient in STEM. 

    To fill the AI talent pipeline, we need to interest kids in STEM early, particularly in math, which is critical to AI. But that’s proven difficult. One reason is that math is a stumbling block. Whether because of math anxiety, attitudes they’ve absorbed from the community, inadequate curricular materials, or traditional teaching methods, U.S. students either avoid or are not proficient in math.  

    A recent Gallup report on Math Matters reveals that the U.S. public greatly values math but also experiences significant gaps in learning and confidence, finding that: 

    • 95 percent of U.S. adults say that math is very or somewhat important in their work life 
    • 43 percent of U.S. adults wish they had learned more math skills in middle or high school. 
    •  24 percent of U.S. adults say that math makes them feel confused  

    Yet this need not be the case. Creative instruction in math can change the equation, and it is available now. The following three examples from respected researchers in STEM education demonstrate this fact. 

    The first is a recently published book by Susan Jo Russell and Deborah Schifter, Interweaving Equitable Participation and Deep Mathematics. The book provides practical tools and a fresh vision to help educators create math classrooms where all students can thrive. It tackles a critical challenge: How do teachers ensure that all students engage deeply with rigorous mathematics? The authors pose and successfully answer key questions: What does a mathematical community look like in an elementary classroom? How do teachers engage young mathematicians in deep and challenging mathematical content? How do we ensure that every student contributes their voice to this community? 

    Through classroom videos, teacher reflections, and clear instructional frameworks, Russell and Schifter bring readers inside real elementary classrooms where all students’ ideas and voices matter. They provide vivid examples, insightful commentary, and ready-to-use resources for teachers, coaches, and school leaders working to make math a subject where every student sees themselves as capable and connected. 

    Next is a set of projects devoted to early algebra. Significantly, research shows that how well students perform in Algebra 2 is a leading indicator of whether they’ll get into college, graduate from college, or become a top income earner. But introducing algebra in middle school, as is the common practice, is too late, according to researchers Maria Blanton and Angela Gardiner of TERC, a STEM education research nonprofit. Instead, learning algebra must begin in K-5, they believe. 

    Students would be introduced to algebraic concepts rather than algebra itself, becoming familiar with ways of thinking using pattern and structure. For example, when students understand that whenever they add two odd numbers together, they get an even number, they’re recognizing important mathematical relationships that are critical to algebra. 

    Blanton and Gardiner, along with colleagues at Tufts University, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Texas at Austin, Merrimack College, and City College of New York, have already demonstrated the success of an early algebra approach through Project LEAP, the first early algebra curriculum of its kind for grades K–5, funded in part by the National Science Foundation.  

    If students haven’t been introduced to algebra early on, the ramp-up from arithmetic to algebra can be uniquely difficult. TERC researcher Jennifer Knudsen told me that elementary to middle school is an important time for students’ mathematical growth. 

    Knudsen’s project, MPACT, the third example of creative math teaching, engages middle school students in 3D making with everything from quick-dry clay and cardboard to digital tools for 3D modeling and printing. The project gets students involved in designing objects, helping them develop understanding of important mathematical topics in addition to spatial reasoning and computational thinking skills closely related to math. Students learn concepts and solve problems with real objects they can hold in their hands, not just with words and diagrams on paper.  

    So far, the evidence is encouraging: A two-year study shows that 4th–5th graders demonstrated significant learning gains on an assessment of math, computational thinking, and spatial reasoning. These creative design-and-making units are free and ready to download. 

    Math is critical for success in STEM and AI, yet too many kids either avoid or do not succeed in it. Well-researched interventions in grade school and middle school can go a long way toward teaching essential math skills. Curricula for creating a math community for deep learning, as well as projects for Early Algebra and MPACT, have shown success and are readily available for school systems to use.

    We owe it to our students to take creative approaches to math so they can prepare for future AI and STEM professions. We owe it to ourselves to help develop a skilled STEM and AI workforce, which the nation needs to stay competitive. 

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  • Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic College Students Face Dramatically Higher Rates of Mental Health Challenges, New Research Shows

    Autistic college students are experiencing anxiety and depression at significantly higher rates than their non-autistic peers, according to new research from Binghamton University that analyzed data from nearly 150,000 undergraduate students across 342 institutions nationwide.

    The study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, represents one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of mental health challenges facing autistic students in higher education—a population that researchers say has been historically underrepresented in academic research despite growing enrollment numbers.

    “What we found is really staggering—autistic individuals endorse much higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their non-autistic peers,” said Diego Aragon-Guevara, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in psychology at Binghamton University.

    The research team analyzed data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which in 2021 became the first year that autism was included as an endorsable category in the survey. This milestone allowed researchers to conduct the first large-scale comparison of mental health outcomes between autistic and non-autistic college students.

    “We were really excited to see what the data would tell us. It was a big opportunity to be able to do this,” said Dr. Jennifer Gillis Mattson, professor of psychology and co-director of the Institute for Child Development at Binghamton University, who co-authored the study.

    The findings come at a critical time for higher education institutions as autism diagnoses continue to rise nationwide and more autistic students pursue college degrees. The research highlights a significant gap in support services that could impact student success and retention.

    “We know the number of autistic college students continues to increase every single year,” Gillis-Mattson noted. “We really do have an obligation to support these students, and to know how best to support these students, we need to look beyond just autism.”

    The study reveals that campus support systems may be inadvertently overlooking mental health needs while focusing primarily on autism-specific accommodations. Aragon-Guevara, whose research focuses on improving quality of life for autistic adults, said this represents a critical oversight in student services.

    “Support personnel might address an individual’s autism and, in the process, overlook their mental health issues,” he explained. “More care needs to be put into addressing that nuance.”

    The research underscores the need for institutions to develop more comprehensive support frameworks that address both autism-related needs and concurrent mental health challenges. The findings suggest that traditional disability services approaches may need significant enhancement to serve this population effectively.

    “We want to provide the best support for them and to make sure that they have a college experience where they get a lot out of it, but also feel comfortable,” Aragon-Guevara said.

    Dr. Hyejung Kim, an assistant professor in Binghamton’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, noted that the complexity of factors affecting autistic students requires deeper investigation. 

    “This population often skews male, and interactions between personal factors and conditions such as anxiety and depression may shape overall well-being in college,” she said.

    Kim also pointed to additional considerations that institutions should examine. 

    “Autistic students are also more likely to pursue STEM fields, and many report different experiences with faculty and staff across institutional settings,” she said. “We still have much to learn about how these and other contextual factors relate to mental well-being.”

    The Binghamton team views this study as foundational research that confirms the scope of mental health challenges among autistic college students. Their next phase will investigate specific contributing factors, including social dynamics, faculty support, campus accessibility, and other environmental elements that influence student well-being.

    “There are so many elements that go into being comfortable in the new environment that is college,” Aragon-Guevara explained. “We want to look into that and see if there are any deficits in those areas that autistic college students are experiencing, so that we know where we can help support them, or create institutional things to help improve quality of life as a whole.”

    The research is part of a broader effort at Binghamton to better understand and support autistic students in higher education, with plans to collaborate with campus partners to develop targeted interventions based on their findings.

     

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  • For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

    In Britain, we can be oddly squeamish when talking about class, whether known or implied through a person’s accent, appearance, or behaviour.

    But not having an honest conversation with ourselves and our institutions about it is actively harming our students, especially the ones who are from the area where our institutions sit.

    I was one of a team of authors that published a report at the back end of 2024 exploring the role of social class and UK home region at Durham University. Our research, which was supported by the university, found that students from North East England had a lower sense of belonging than their peers.

    This is in comparison to students from other northern regions, the rest of the UK, and international students. And it is true even if they are from more advantaged backgrounds.

    I’ll say that again – students from North East England feel excluded from Durham University, which is in… North East England. This highlights that a problem at Durham University is not only class, but preconceived stereotypes based on how a person speaks, acts, or their family background.

    This article explains how we built our evidence base, and how the university responded, including by integrating our recommendations into the new Access and Participation Plan, and resourcing new staff roles and student-led activity.

    From anecdote to evidence

    The student-led report came out of the First Generation Scholars group in the Anthropology department in 2022.

    Having heard repeatedly the issues that first generation students were facing, and feeling it ourselves, we decided to move beyond anecdotal stories which were known in the university, and produce something concrete and legible which couldn’t be denied.

    We devised a survey and sent it to every student, with a 10 per cent response rate. Follow up focus groups were conducted to add additional context to the quantitative findings and ensure the voices of those who had been let down were heard.

    The findings were grouped into seven areas – overall sense of belonging at Durham, peer relationships, experiences in teaching and learning, college events and activities, college staff relationships, experiences in clubs and societies, and financial considerations.

    Across all these areas, social class had the strongest and most consistent effect. Students from less privileged backgrounds were more likely to feel ashamed of the way they speak, dress, and express themselves.

    They students felt targeted based on their background or personal characteristics – and said they were:

    …being told countless times by a flatmate that I seem the ‘most chavvy’ and continuously refer to Northerners as degenerates.

    …at a formal dinner, students laughed at my North-east accent, they asked if I lived in a pit village.

    The irony is that due to rising housing costs, many students really are being forced to live in pit villages.

    These instances weren’t only present in peer interactions – but also took place in the teaching and learning spaces. One student said that during a lecture, the lecturer mentioned that they couldn’t understand what the IT staff member was saying due to his North East accent – which was the same as the students’.

    Another noted that their peers were “sniggering when I made a comment in a tutorial.” Comments like these have led to students self-silencing during classes and, in some cases, changing their accents entirely to avoid stigma.

    Anecdotally, I’ve heard students say that their families laugh when they hear their new accent. If we are implicitly telling students that they have to change who they are in their own region, their own city, amongst their own family in order to fit in, we are telling them that they are not safe to be authentically themselves. That message lingers beyond university.

    The report notes that other groups of students also experienced exclusion. These included women, LGBTQ+ students, and students with a disability – although only disability came close to the magnitude of effects explained by social class and region.

    It should be noted that these are protected characteristics, while class and region are not. But there was also an interaction between these characteristics, class, and region. Women from less advantaged backgrounds from North East England had a worse time than their southern peers – which they reported as being due to their perceived intelligence and sexual availability. One North East female student stated,

    I was a bet for someone to sleep with at a college party because ‘Northern girls are easy.’

    Tackling the sense of exclusion

    The report also highlights instances of real connections for students. It was often in the simplest gestures, such as having a cup of tea with their college principal, porters saying hello in the corridor, or a lecturer confirming that they deserved to be at Durham, despite the student’s working-class background.

    We were worried that the university might be quick to dismiss, bury, or simply ignore the report. However, they’ve stepped up. The report has been used in the new Access and Participation Plan (APP), underpinning an intervention strategy to increase students’ sense of belonging through student-led, funded activities.

    That builds on the creation of new, instrumental staffing positions. In discussions following the launch event for the report, there was a real buzz and momentum from colleagues who spotlighted the work they were doing in this area – but with an awareness that more needs to be done.

    A key issue is connecting this discrete but interconnected work. Many activities or initiatives are happening in silos within departments, colleges, faculties, or within the central university, with few outside those realms knowing about it.

    In a time when every university is tightening their belts, coordinating activities to share resources and successes seems like an easy win.

    It would be easy to dismiss the problem as unique to Durham – the university and its students have often been under fire for being elitist, tone deaf, or exclusionary. But it’s likely that students at other institutions are facing similar barriers, comments, and slights.

    I’ve spoken to enough colleagues in SUs to know that it isn’t just a Durham problem, not even just a Russell Group problem. There will be those who are afraid of what they might find if they turn over that particular stone, actually having a good look at how social class impacts students belonging.

    But I’d argue it’s a positive thing to do. Bringing it into the light and confronting and acknowledging the problem means that we can move forward to make our students’ lives better.

    Read the full report here, including recommendations, and the university’s comments.

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  • Rethinking Pathways for Students in Rural Communities

    Rethinking Pathways for Students in Rural Communities

    In rural parts of the U.S., 36 percent of jobs that pay enough for an individual to be self-sufficient require at least a bachelor’s degree, yet only 25 percent of rural workers hold such degrees. Many rural communities do not have a university or four-year college nearby. As a result, students in these communities are likely to start their educational journey to a bachelor’s at a community college. Of the nearly 1,000 community colleges nationwide, more than a quarter are in rural areas and many others are designated as rural-serving.

    The paths to a bachelor’s degree for rural students are not as straightforward as they are for students in urban or suburban areas with higher concentrations of four-year institutions. For rural community college students, there are four primary routes to earning a bachelor’s degree. As described below, the first three, more conventional, paths do not always work well. But there is also a fourth path—the community college bachelor’s degree program. While still relatively rare, this path is growing in popularity because, when well designed, it is effective in enabling place-bound students to earn bachelor’s degrees and secure good jobs in their communities.

    Path 1: Transfer to a Four-Year University

    The first path is to transfer to a four-year college and either become a residential student there or commute a long distance to get back and forth to campus from home. Laramie County Community College, where one of us is president, has worked with the University of Wyoming, the state’s only university, located in Laramie, to develop guaranteed transfer pathways to UW bachelor’s programs in major fields of economic importance to the region and state.

    But only a minority of LCCC students—mostly younger students who have financial support from their families—can realistically afford to become full-time residential students at UW. Most community college students have jobs and families they can’t leave for several months a year, even if they could afford room and board in addition to tuition (which few can). Commuting to UW is difficult even for LCCC students who live in relatively nearby Cheyenne, almost an hour’s drive from Laramie on a road that crosses the highest point on the Continental Divide and is often closed in the winter. For LCCC students who live in outlying areas and for students at other Wyoming community colleges, commuting to UW is not realistic.

    Path 2: Pursue a Bachelor’s Degree Online

    Theoretically, this should be an effective option for rural, place-bound community college students. In reality, this avenue is not feasible for the many rural students who live in “digital deserts” or face “last-mile” barriers to broadband access.

    Even when internet access is not a problem, many students struggle to complete online programs. Only a quarter of community college students who transfer to online universities complete a bachelor’s degree within four years of transferring. This compares to 57 percent of community college starters who transfer to a public four-year institution. In general, undergraduates who take all their courses online are less likely to succeed than those who take just some courses online. And online success rates are especially low for low-income students, those from other underserved groups or those who face other challenges typical in rural areas, such as limited access to transportation and childcare.

    Path 3: Complete a Bachelor’s Degree Through a Community College–Based University Center

    The third path is for students to take upper-division coursework through a university center arrangement, where the four-year university has a physical presence on the community college campus. These arrangements vary in design but typically involve university faculty teaching courses on the community college campus. While reasonable in concept, university centers are often challenging to operate. Beyond common issues of ownership, oversight and authority associated with programs run by two separate institutions, in rural colleges, such programs also often do not enroll enough students to make it worth the investment by the university and thus are difficult to sustain, financially and politically.

    A Fourth Path: The Community College Bachelor’s Degree

    That leaves community college bachelor’s degree programs, which are often the best option for rural students. Research indicates that these programs not only provide effective access to bachelor’s programs for older working students with families and others who are place-bound but also enable these students to secure good jobs.

    Some question whether community colleges should offer bachelor’s degrees, arguing that they duplicate university offerings and represent a form of mission creep. But community college bachelor’s degrees tend to be unlike conventional bachelor’s degrees from universities. First, they are explicitly designed as applied credentials to meet specific regional workforce needs. In the best cases, community college bachelor’s degrees are reverse-engineered collaboratively with employers to meet these needs.

    Second, they are also often designed to help the many applied associate degree graduates of community colleges find a more effective path to completing a bachelor’s degree, in which their applied coursework is built upon, not disregarded. Finally, they are delivered at home so that graduates of community colleges who are tied to their local area can advance into family-supporting jobs. They are offered through institutions that most students are already familiar with and by people with whom students already have relationships.

    For example, LCCC offers a bachelor’s of applied science in health-care administration, with accelerated eight-week courses, offered at convenient times and through a combination of online and in-person modalities. The program is designed to provide the many working health-care clinicians with applied associate degrees (e.g., nurses, sonographers, radiology techs, etc.) a path to management jobs. This program was developed collaboratively with numerous health-care employers to address the strong demand for talent in health-care administration and provide their employees with a viable path to a bachelor’s degree, without requiring them to start over or relocate to another community.

    The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by community colleges nationally is still small: fewer than 17,000 annually, compared to more than 1.3 million awarded by public universities. Still, policymakers in a growing number of states are recognizing that rural community colleges are well positioned to meet the needs of students and employers for workforce bachelor’s programs not available from other providers. Currently, community colleges in 24 states are authorized to offer bachelor’s degrees in particular fields, yet the majority (nearly 80 percent) of these colleges are located in just seven states. Thus, there is plenty of room to grow. Bachelor’s programs offered by rural community colleges provide a model for what we hope is becoming a national movement to rethink bachelor’s education for the large number of place-bound students who must work and care for their families but need a bachelor’s degree to advance in their careers.

    Joe Schaffer is president of Laramie County Community College. Davis Jenkins is a senior research scholar and Hana Lahr is assistant director of research and director of applied learning at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

    Ascendium Education Group provided funding for this work.

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  • College Creates 101 Course on Gen AI for Students, Faculty

    College Creates 101 Course on Gen AI for Students, Faculty

    As generative artificial intelligence skills have become more in demand among employers, colleges and universities have expanded opportunities for students to engage with the tools.

    Indiana University is no exception. It’s developed a free, online course for campus community members to gain a basic understanding of generative AI and how the tools could fit into their daily lives and work. GenAI 101 is available to anyone with a campus login and comes with a certificate of in-demand skills for people who complete it.

    Survey says: Artificial intelligence tools have gained a significant foothold on college campuses, especially in teaching and learning.

    A 2023 study by Wiley found over half (58 percent) of instructors say they or their students are using generative AI in their classrooms, and a similar number believe AI-based tools, virtual reality or coursework with flexible assignment types will be important in delivering their courses in three years.

    Even before entering college, learners have said they’re familiar with generative AI and expect their institutions to help them develop their skills in using it. A 2024 survey found 69 percent of high school seniors planning to attend college have used generative AI tools, and 54 percent anticipate their college will engage in AI usage and education in some way. But exposure to AI is not ubiquitous; a different 2024 study of young people (ages 14 to 22) found nearly half of respondents had never used AI tools or didn’t know what the AI tools were.

    AI literacy and safety concerns have presented a growing challenge as well. A February 2025 survey from Microsoft found 73 percent of individuals say spotting AI-generated images is difficult.

    How it works: GenAI 101 at Indiana is free to anyone in the university community, including students, instructors and staff members at all campuses. The course is optional and has no academic credits attached, which allowed faculty designers to be flexible and creative with how content is presented.

    Brian Williams, faculty chair of the Kelley School of Business’s Virtual Advanced Business Technologies Department, serves as the lead course instructor and he, alongside a team of other faculty members, identified key topics to know about generative AI. The goal is to prepare participants to engage in an AI-influenced world with practical takeaways and insights, Williams said.

    The self-paced course has eight modules and 16 lessons that include short, YouTube-style video lectures. Students learn practical examples of how to use generative AI tools, including managing their schedule or planning an event, and content areas range from prompt engineering, data storytelling and fact-checking content to how to use AI ethically. In total, GenAI 101 takes approximately four to five hours to finish.

    The course features an AI character, Crimson, that teaches content, and an embedded AI tutor, Crimson Jr., that can address participants’ questions as they come up.

    After completing the course, participants earn a certificate they can display on their LinkedIn profile or résumé.

    What’s next: The course launches Monday, Aug. 25, and the first person to take it will be IU president Pamela Whitten, according to a university press release. She’ll gain early access to the course on Friday, Aug. 15, Williams said.

    Students will be auto-enrolled in GenAI 101, making it easy to access. Some faculty instructors have also said they’ll embed the content into their syllabus or curriculum, according to Williams, in part to reduce gaps in who’s engaging with generative AI resources and education.

    How is your college teaching students how to use generative AI? Tell us more.

    This article has been updated to correct the date in which the course will launch to the IU community, August 25.

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  • Students for Fair Admissions drops lawsuits against West Point, Air Force Academy

    Students for Fair Admissions drops lawsuits against West Point, Air Force Academy

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    Dive Brief:

    • Students for Fair Admissions has dropped its lawsuits against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy over race-conscious admissions — practices that are no longer in effect at either institution under the Trump administration.
    • Both academies axed admissions goals based on race, ethnicity and gender shortly after President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, took office. 
    • SFFA had filed the lawsuits after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 sided with the anti-affirmative action group in its landmark ruling banning race-conscious admissions at colleges but allowed the practice to continue at military academies.

    Dive Insight:

    In a footnote to Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the case that ultimately ended decades of race-conscious admissions — the court said the decision did not address the practice at the nation’s military academies.

    While no military academy had been party to the case, the court effectively created a carve-out for race-conscious admissions at the institutions “in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”

    In a friend-of-the-court brief to that case, the Biden administration wrote that “the Nation’s military strength and readiness depend on a pipeline of officers who are both highly qualified and racially diverse — and who have been educated in diverse environments that prepare them to lead increasingly diverse forces.”

    After the ruling came down, SFFA soon filed legal challenges against military academies and their race-conscious admissions policies. 

    In its 2023 complaint against West Point, SFFA alleged, “Instead of admitting future cadets based on objective metrics and leadership potential, West Point focuses on race.” 

    The lawsuit further argued: “West Point has no justification for using race-based admissions.” 

    SFFA’s cases against West Point and the Air Force Academy, along with another one against the U.S. Naval Academy, were in progress when Trump retook the presidency in January. 

    The group quickly found it had an ideological ally in the new administration, whose policies reflect SFFA’s goals.

    Hegseth banned race-based admissions at the nation’s military academies in January, days after being sworn in. In doing so, Trump’s defense secretary described diversity initiatives as “incompatible with the values of DoD,” adding that “the DoD will strive to provide merit-based, color-blind, equal opportunities to Service members but will not guarantee or strive for equal outcomes.”

    Hegseth has gone much further than just rejecting race-conscious admissions at the academies. Under his leadership, the Pentagon ordered the military academies to purge hundreds of books from their libraries that deal with racism and gender issues, a move that has sparked outcry as well as lawsuits and at least one reversal.

    In June, the Justice Department and SFFA asked that the group’s lawsuit against the Naval Academy be declared moot, after that institution dropped race-conscious admissions under Hegseth’s directive. The case was under appeal at the time, after a federal judge upheld the institution’s policies in December. In July, an appeals court dismissed the case in response to the request from SFFA and the Justice Department.

    SFFA President Edward Blum said in a June statement, “We applaud this extraordinary accomplishment by the President and the Department of Defense which restores the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our military institutions.”

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  • Peer Mentors Help Students Navigate Health Graduate Programs

    Peer Mentors Help Students Navigate Health Graduate Programs

    As a first-year student at Emory University, Leia Marshall walked into the Pathways Center to receive advice on her career goals.

    She was a neuroscience and behavioral biology major who thought she might go to medical school. But after meeting with a peer mentor, Marshall realized she was more interested in optometry. “I didn’t really know a lot about the prehealth track. I didn’t really know if I wanted to do medicine at all,” she said. “Getting to speak to a peer mentor really affected the way that I saw my trajectory through my time at Emory and onwards.”

    Emory opened the Pathways Center in August 2022, uniting five different student-facing offices: career services, prehealth advising, undergraduate research, national scholarships and fellowships, and experiential learning, said Branden Grimmett, associate dean of the center.

    “It brings together what were existing functions but are now streamlined to make it easier for students to access,” Grimmett said.

    The pre–health science peer mentor program engages hundreds of students each year through office hours, advising appointments, club events and other engagements, helping undergraduates navigate their time at Emory and beyond in health science programs.

    The background: Prehealth advising has been a fixture at Emory for 20 years, led by a team of staff advisers and 30 peer mentors. The office helps students know the options available to them within health professions and that they’re meeting degree requirements to enter these programs. A majority of Emory’s prehealth majors are considering medicine, but others hope to study veterinary medicine, dentistry or optometry, like Marshall.

    How it works: The pre–health science mentors are paid student employees, earning approximately $15 an hour. The ideal applicant is a rising junior or senior who has a passion for helping others, Grimmett said.

    Mentors also serve on one of four subcommittees—connect, prepare, explore and apply—representing different phases of the graduate school process.

    Mentors are recruited for the role in the spring and complete a written application as well as an interview process. Once hired, students participate in a daylong training alongside other student employees in the Pathways Center. Mentors also receive touch-up training in monthly team meetings with their supervisors, Grimmett said.

    Peer mentors host office hours in the Pathways Center and advertise their services through digital marketing, including a dedicated Instagram account and weekly newsletter.

    Peer-to-peer engagement: Marshall became a peer mentor her junior year and is giving the same advice and support to her classmates that she received. In a typical day, she said she’ll host office hours, meeting with dozens of students and offering insight, resources and advice.

    “Sometimes students are coming in looking for general advice on their schedule for the year or what classes to take,” she said. “A lot of the time, we have students come in and ask about how to get involved with research or find clinical opportunities in Atlanta or on campus, so it really ranges and varies.”

    Sometimes Marshall’s job is just to be there for the student and listen to their concerns.

    “Once I met with a student who came in and she was really nervous about this feeling that she wasn’t doing enough,” Marshall said. “There’s this kind of impostor phenomenon that you’re not involved in enough extracurriculars, you’re not doing enough to set you up for success.”

    Marshall is able to relate to these students and help them reflect on their experiences.

    “That’s been one of my favorite parts of being a peer mentor: getting to help students recognize their strengths and guide them through things that I’ve been through myself,” she said.

    In addition to assisting their classmates, peer mentors walk away with résumé experience and better career discernment, Grimmett said. “Often our students learn a lot about their own path as they’re in dialogue with other students. It’s a full circle for many of our peer mentors.”

    “It’s funny to think about the fact that our role is to help others, but it really helps all of us as peer mentors as well,” Marshall said. “We learn to connect with a variety of students, and I think it’s been really valuable for me to connect with the advisers myself and get to know them better.”

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    This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Branden Grimmett’s name.



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