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Dive Brief:
The State University of New York’s fall 2025 enrollment rose 2.9% over last year, marking the third straight year of growth at the public system after a decade of steady student losses.
Enrollment in the 64-college systemreached 387,363 students this fall.SUNY also experienced outsized first-time undergraduate enrollment growth this fall, with new students increasing by 3.1% to 70,401.
However, SUNY’s recent enrollment growth — up 6.5% since 2022 — is still well below the 500,000-student goal New York Gov. Kathy Hochul set that year.
Dive Insight:
From 2012 to 2022, SUNY’s enrollment steadily declined,losing more than a fifth of its students. Hochul has made changing SUNY’s fortunes, and the state’s public higher education more broadly, a policy priority since taking office in 2021.
SUNY Fall Enrollment
The university system lost roughly 100,000 students between fall 2012 and fall 2022.
In that time, New York made completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid a high school graduation requirementbeginning in the 2024-25 academic year, a move SUNY supported publicly.
SUNY has also introduced direct admissions at community collegesand guaranteed admissions at its selective colleges. Direct admissions programs offer students college acceptance without them first needing to apply, whereas guaranteed admissions programs generally promise students a spot if they submit an application and meet certain conditions.
In fall 2025, headcounts at SUNY’s 30 community colleges jumped 5% to173,893 students. Their first-time enrollment also grew, rising 4.8% to reach 34,425 students.
The program, also known as the Opportunity Promise Scholarship, allows New York residents ages 25 to 55 with no prior degree to attend community college for free if they study certain high-demand fields, such as nursing and engineering.
As of Nov. 13, 5,608 people enrolled at SUNY community colleges through Reconnect, according to institutional data. Hochul’s office said each student in the program saves an average of $2,000 per year.
Transfer enrollment also increased at SUNY in fall 2025, up 4.7% to 26,301 students.
Like overall enrollment, however, the number of transfer students, first-time students, and students at community colleges still fell well below 2015 numbers.
In contrast to SUNY’s overall growth this year, international enrollment dipped amid federal attacks on foreign students and an increasingly complicated visa landscape.
Overall international enrollment at SUNY’s colleges declined 3.9% to 20,608 students.
The recently released annual Open Doors report found that international enrollment in the U.S. reached an all-time high in fall 2024. But its preliminary fall 2025 survey of 825 colleges shows their international enrollment dropped 1% this term, driven by a 12% decline in foreign graduate students.
SUNY’s institutional data aligned with these findings. Declines were steepest at doctoral degree-granting universities, where enrollment fell 6.9% to 15,352 students.International graduate enrollment decreased 13.8% compared to fall 2024, according to Hochul’s office.
Other institutional types — the system’s comprehensive and technology colleges — saw increases, though they only enroll a combined 2,216 international students.
His central charge is that I’m a misogynist. His evidence is that I use the word “hoeflation.” Using a term coined by others to describe a social trend does not mean I endorse it. Reporting or analyzing a phenomenon is not the same as condoning it.
In my essay, I wrote,
“And, unfortunately for men, dating algorithms concentrate attention on the top 10 percent—those deemed most attractive—rendering the majority effectively unseen. This imbalance has led young men to coin the term ‘hoeflation,’ the grind of chasing women they might barely fancy, but will date just to escape loneliness. (Young American men experience loneliness at rates far exceeding those of their counterparts across other developed countries.)”
This was an observation on what is being said among some young men. The term reflects a real cultural phenomenon: Many young men feel alienated from modern dating, seeing it as transactional, unequal or algorithmically stacked against them. It expresses their view that women’s expectations have risen out of reach.
Jared Gould is managing editor of Minding the Campus.
Like their peers nationwide, students at Crawford County Middle School in southern Indiana struggled academically in the pandemic’s wake. Principal Tarra Carothers knew her students needed help to get back on track.
So two years ago, she decided to double instructional time for math and English. Students now spend two periods per day in these critical subjects. Carothers believes the change has been a success, and a key trend backs her up: Crawford’s ILEARN scores in English language arts increased by over 8 percentage points from 2024 to 2025.
But overall, Indiana middle schools are heading in the opposite direction when it comes to English. In fact, despite gains in math, middle schoolers are struggling more than students in other grade levels in English, state test scores show. Since 2021, ILEARN English proficiency rates in seventh and eighth grades have fallen, with the dip particularly pronounced for seventh graders. And while their scores are up slightly compared with four years ago, sixth graders’ performance fell over the past year.
Indiana has made significant and much-publicized investments in early literacy, relying heavily on the science of reading, as many states have in the last few years. But that instructional transformation has come too late for current middle schoolers. Meanwhile, ILEARN English scores for third and fourth graders have risen by relatively small levels since the pandemic, although this improvement has been uneven.
The Board of Education expressed specific concerns about middle schoolers’ performance at a July 16 meeting. “We’ve gotta pick it up and make sure all of our middle school kids are reading, provide those additional supports,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.
Some middle school leaders say strategies they’ve used can turn things around. In addition to increasing instructional time for key subjects, they point to participation in a pilot that allows students to take ILEARN at several points over the school year, instead of just once in the spring. Educators say relying on these checkpoints can provide data-driven reflection and remediation for students that shows up in better test scores.
Middle school an ‘optimum time’ for students’ recovery
Katie Powell, director for middle level programs at the Association for Middle Level Education, said she often asks teachers if middle schoolers seem different since the pandemic and “heads nod,” she said. These post-pandemic middle schoolers are harder to motivate and engage, self-report more stress, and are less likely to take risks academically, Powell said.
When the pandemic hit, “they were young, at the age of school where they’re developing basic reading fluency and math fact fluency,” she said. Current eighth graders, for example, were in second grade when the pandemic shut down schools and many learned online for much of their third grade year. Third grade is when students are supposed to stop learning to read and start “reading to learn,” Powell said.
Powell noted that middle schoolers are in the stage of rapid development with the most changes for the brain and body outside of infancy.
“This is actually an optimum time to step in and step up for them,” she said. “It is not too late. But it’s critical that we pay attention to them now.”
Crawford County Middle School has nine periods every day, and students spend two periods each in both math and English. While many schools have some version of block scheduling, many have a model in which students only go to each class every other day. But at Crawford, students attend every class every day. Their version of block scheduling results in double the amount of instructional time in math and English.
To make this switch, sacrifices had to be made. Periods were shortened, resulting in less time for other subjects. Carothers worried that student scores in subjects like science and social studies would decrease. But the opposite occurred, she said. Sixth grade science scores increased, for example, even though students were spending less time in the science classroom, according to Carothers.
“If they have better math skills and better reading skills, then they’re gonna perform better in social studies and science,” she said.
Meanwhile, at Cannelton Jr. Sr. High School, on the state line with Kentucky, the first three periods of the day are 90 minutes, rather than the typical 45. Every student has English or math during these first three periods, allowing for double the normal class time.
Cannelton’s sixth through eighth grade English language arts ILEARN scores increased by nearly nine percentage points last year.
Schools use more data to track student performance
Cannelton Principal Brian Garrett believes his school’s reliance on data, and its new approach to getting it, is also part of their secret.
Students take benchmark assessments early, in the first two or three weeks of school, so that teachers can track their progress and find gaps in knowledge.
This year, the state is adopting that strategy for schools statewide. Rather than taking ILEARN once near the end of the year, students will take versions of the test three separate times, with a shortened final assessment in the spring. The state ran a pilot for ILEARN checkpoints last school year, with over 70% of Indiana schools taking part.
The Indiana Department of Education hopes checkpoints will make the data from the test more actionable and help families and teachers ensure a student is on track throughout the year.
Kim Davis, principal of Indian Creek Middle School in rural Trafalgar, said she believes ILEARN checkpoints, paired with reflection and targeted remediation efforts by teachers, “helped us inform instruction throughout the year instead of waiting until the end of the year to see did they actually master it according to the state test.”
The checkpoints identified what standards students were struggling with, allowing Indian Creek teachers to tailor their instruction. Students also benefitted from an added familiarity with the test; they could see how questions would be presented when it was time for the final assessment in the spring.
“It felt very pressure-free, but very informative for the teachers,” Davis said.
The type of data gathered matters too. In the past, Washington Township middle schools used an assessment called NWEA, taken multiple times throughout the year, to measure student learning, said Eastwood Middle School Principal James Tutin. While NWEA was a good metric for measuring growth, it didn’t align with Indiana state standards, so the scores didn’t necessarily match how a student would ultimately score on a test like ILEARN.
Last year, the district adopted ILEARN checkpoints instead, and used a service called Otis to collect weekly data.
It took approximately six minutes for students to answer a few questions during a class period with information that educators could then put into Otis. That data allowed teachers to target instruction during gaps between ILEARN checkpoints.
“Not only were they getting the practice through the checkpoints, but they were getting really targeted feedback at the daily and weekly level, to make sure that we’re not waiting until the checkpoint to know how our students are likely going to do,” Tutin said.
Both Davis and Tutin stressed that simply having students take the checkpoint ILEARN tests was not enough; it had to be paired with reflection and collaboration between teachers, pushing each other to ask the tough questions and evaluate their own teaching.
“We still have a fire in us to grow further, we’re not content with where we are,” Davis said. “But we’re headed in the right direction and that’s very exciting.”
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Physical security company Genetec’s Sydney office. Picture: Supplied
Western Sydney University (WSU) will send some of its students to intern at a Sydney-based tech company amid continued calls for universities to partner with industry to produce better quality graduates.
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In a significant shift for higher education access, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced his support for new legislation that would allow the state’s community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in high-demand fields. The move aligns Illinois with a growing national trend that has seen dramatic expansion in community college baccalaureate (CCB) programs across the country.
“By allowing our community colleges to offer baccalaureate degrees for in-demand career paths, we are making it easier and more affordable for students to advance their careers while strengthening our state’s economy,” Pritzker said in his February announcement.
The proposed bills, SB2482 and HB3717, would make Illinois the 25th state to implement such programs, joining states like California, Washington, and Florida that have already embraced community college bachelor’s degrees as a way to meet workforce demands and increase educational access. The measure appears to be stalled in the state legislature.
The Illinois initiative addresses practical challenges faced by many community college students. According to State Representative Tracy Katz Muhl, 78% of community college students work while in school, making relocation to four-year institutions impractical.
“Community college students are deeply rooted in their local communities—they work here, raise families here, and contribute to the local economy,” says Dr. Keith Cornille, President of Heartland Community College. “By expanding community college baccalaureate programs, we’re meeting students where they are.”
The proposal has gained support from education leaders including Illinois Community College Board Executive Director Brian Durham, who highlighted the potential to increase access to affordable higher education without burdening students with excessive debt.
A recent survey revealed that 75% of Illinois community college students would pursue a bachelor’s degree if they could complete it at their current institution—a statistic that demonstrates significant untapped potential in the state’s third-largest community college system, which serves 600,000 residents annually.
Illinois’ move follows a remarkable expansion in community college baccalaureate programs nationwide. According to a recent report from The Community College Baccalaureate Association (CCBA) and higher education consulting firm Bragg & Associates Inc., 187 community colleges across the country were offering or authorized to offer bachelor’s degrees as of last year.
This represents a 32% increase from Fall 2021, when only 132 institutions had such authorization. Today, approximately one-fifth of the nation’s 932 community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees, with the number of CCB degree programs rising from 583 to 678—a 17% increase in just two years.
“It’s a big jump over the last two years,” says report author Dr. Debra Bragg, president of Bragg & Associates Inc. Bragg anticipates “tremendous growth” in coming years as more states recognize the potential of these programs.
The movement began in 1989 when West Virginia became the first state to authorize a community college to confer bachelor’s degrees. By 2010, several more states—including California, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Georgia—had followed suit. Some states have embraced the model completely, with Florida, Delaware, and Nevada authorizing all their community colleges to confer bachelor’s degrees.
Geographic and demographic patterns Community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees are not distributed evenly across the country. According to the CCBA report, 62% of CCB colleges are located on the West Coast, where there is “less density” of higher education institutions and longer commutes to traditional four-year schools.
“Geographic access to college, measured through proximal distance from a student’s home to college, correlates with students deciding whether they will ever participate in higher education,” the report notes. “Research on ‘education deserts’ shows most students choose to attend college within 50 miles of their home.” Washington (32), California (29), and Florida (28) lead the nation in the number of community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees. These institutions tend to be concentrated in large city and suburban areas (36%) or rural and town settings (27%) rather than in small cities or midsize urban areas.
Perhaps most significantly, CCB programs appear to be effectively serving traditionally underrepresented student populations. Approximately half of all community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees qualify as minority-serving institutions (MSIs), with Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) comprising 71% of these MSIs.
Data from the 2021-22 academic year shows that about half of all CCB graduates come from racially minoritized groups. Hispanic or Latinx students made up the slight majority (52%) of these graduates, followed by those identifying as Black or African American (29%) or Asian (9%).
Women are also well-represented among CCB graduates, accounting for 64% of degree recipients. This aligns with broader trends in higher education, where women generally attain degrees at higher rates than men.
The gender distribution varies by field of study. While business programs attract the largest portion of both male and female students (around 40% for each), men are more likely to pursue STEM fields (34%), while women gravitate toward nursing programs (26%).
The CCBA report highlights that CCB degrees are primarily focused on workforce preparation. Business programs dominate the offerings, followed by health professions, education, and nursing—all areas that align with significant workforce needs.
This workforce alignment is a key selling point for Illinois’ proposed legislation. The initiative comes as Illinois employers report growing demand for workers with bachelor’s degrees in specialized fields, mirroring workforce gaps seen in other states with successful CCB programs.
CCBA President Dr. Angela Kersenbrock sees these workforce-focused degrees as central to the community college mission. “To me, this is the community college really embracing its missions,” says Kersenbrock. “I know some folks say this is community colleges stepping over their mission. But I think it’s a full embracing of what they should be doing… closing equity gaps, being the people’s college, setting people up for economic success and mobility, and being very responsive to what a community needs in terms of workers and employees.”
Despite the growth and apparent success of community college baccalaureate programs, they are not without controversy. Some traditional four-year institutions view them as mission creep or unwelcome competition.
Illinois’ proposal faces similar scrutiny. Critics question whether community colleges have the resources, faculty expertise, and infrastructure necessary to deliver quality bachelor’s degree programs. Others worry about potential duplication of existing programs at four-year institutions.
Supporters counter that CCB programs typically focus on applied fields with clear workforce connections rather than traditional academic disciplines. They also emphasize that these programs often serve students who would otherwise not pursue bachelor’s degrees at all, rather than pulling students away from existing institutions.
Looking Ahead If Illinois passes the proposed legislation, it will join a diverse group of states finding success with community college baccalaureate programs. States like Washington, California, and Florida report positive outcomes in terms of both degree attainment and workforce preparation.
For Illinois’ sprawling community college system—the third largest in the nation—the change could significantly reshape higher education access. Community colleges often serve as entry points to higher education for first-generation college students, working adults, and others who face barriers to traditional four-year institutions.
“This initiative isn’t about competing with our university partners,” notes one Illinois community college president. “It’s about creating additional pathways for students who might otherwise never earn a bachelor’s degree.”
As more states consider similar legislation, the community college bachelor’s degree appears poised to become an increasingly common feature of American higher education. With workforce demands continuing to evolve and traditional college enrollment patterns shifting, these programs offer a flexible approach to meeting both student and employer needs.
For Bragg, the trend represents a natural evolution of community colleges’ historical mission.
“Community colleges have always adapted to meet changing educational and workforce needs,” she observes. “Bachelor’s degrees are just the latest example of this responsiveness.”
As Illinois moves forward with its proposal and other states watch closely, the coming years will likely see further expansion of bachelor’s degree options at community colleges nationwide—continuing a transformation that is making higher education more accessible to students who need it most.
This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.
Math is the subject sixth grader Harmoni Knight finds hardest, but that’s changing.
In-class tutors and “data chats” at her middle school in Compton, California, have made a dramatic difference, the 11-year-old said. She proudly pulled up a performance tracker at a tutoring session last week, displaying a column of perfect 100 percent scores on all her weekly quizzes from January.
Since the pandemic first shuttered American classrooms, schools have poured federal and local relief money into interventions like the ones in Harmoni’s classroom, hoping to help students catch up academically following COVID-19 disruptions.
But a new analysis of state and national test scores shows the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. In reading, especially, students are even further behind than they were in 2022, the analysis shows.
Compton is an outlier, making some of the biggest two-year gains in both subjects among large districts. And there are other bright spots, along with evidence that interventions like tutoring and summer programs are working.
Students interact in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press
The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth allows year-to-year comparisons across states and districts, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of how American students are performing since COVID-19 first disrupted learning.
The most recent data is based on tests taken by students in spring 2024. By then, the worst of the pandemic was long past, but schools were dealing still with a mental health crisis and high rates of absenteeism — not to mention students who’d had crucial learning disrupted.
“The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2020 to 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since the pandemic,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the scorecard.
In some cases, the analysis shows school districts are struggling when their students may have posted decent results on their state tests. That’s because each state adopts its own assessments, and those aren’t comparable to each other. Those differences can make it impossible to tell whether students are performing better because of their progress, or whether those shifts are because the tests themselves are changing, or the state has lowered its standards for proficiency.
The Scorecard accounts for differing state tests and provides one national standard.
Higher-income districts have made significantly more progress than lower-income districts, with the top 10 percent of high-income districts four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading compared with the poorest 10 percent. And recovery within districts remains divided by race and class, especially in math scores. Test score gaps grew by both race and income.
A student works in a classroom at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press
“The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard. “Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white district mates.”
Still, many of the districts that outperformed the country serve predominantly low-income students or students of color, and their interventions offer best practices for other districts.
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In Compton, the district responded to the pandemic by hiring over 250 tutors that specialize in math, reading and students learning English. Certain classes are staffed with multiple tutors to assist teachers. And schools offer tutoring before, during and after school, plus “Saturday School” and summer programs for the district’s 17,000 students, said Superintendent Darin Brawley.
To identify younger students needing targeted support, the district now conducts dyslexia screenings in all elementary schools.
The low-income school district near downtown Los Angeles, with a student body that is 84 percent Latino and 14 percent Black, now has a graduation rate of 93 percent, compared with 58 percent when Brawley took the job in 2012.
Harmoni, the sixth-grader, said that one-on-one tutoring has helped her grasp concepts and given her more confidence in math. She gets separate “data chats” with her math specialist that are part performance review, part pep talk.
“Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me” when the numbers are low, said Harmoni. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future, and also now.”
Brawley said he’s proud of the district’s latest test scores, but not content.
“Truth be told, I wasn’t happy,” he said. “Even though we gained, and we celebrate the gains, at the end of the day we all know that we can do better.”
A tutor helps students at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press
As federal pandemic relief money for schools winds down, states and school districts will have limited resources and must prioritize interventions that worked. Districts that spent federal money on increased instructional time, either through tutoring or summer school, saw a return on that investment.
Reading levels have continued to decline, despite a movement in many states to emphasize phonics and the “science of reading.” So Reardon and Kane called for an evaluation of the mixed results for insights into the best ways to teach kids to read.
The researchers emphasized the need to extend state and local money to support pandemic recovery programs that showed strong academic results. Schools also must engage parents and tell them when their kids are behind, the researchers said.
And schools must continue to work with community groups to improve students’ attendance. The scorecard identified a relationship between high absenteeism and learning struggles.
In the District of Columbia, an intensive tutoring program helped with both academics and attendance, said D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. In the scorecard analysis, the District of Columbia ranked first among states for gains in both math and reading between 2022 and 2024, after its math recovery had fallen toward the bottom of the list.
Pandemic-relief money funded the tutoring, along with a system of identifying and targeting support at students in greatest need. The district also hired program managers who helped maximize time for tutoring within the school day, Ferebee said.
Students who received tutoring were more likely to be engaged with school, Ferebee said, both from increased confidence over the subject matter and because they had a relationship with another trusted adult.
Students expressed that “I’m more confident in math because I’m being validated by another adult,” Ferebee said. “That validation goes a long way, not only with attendance, but a student feeling like they are ready to learn and are capable, and as a result, they show up differently.”
Federal pandemic relief money has ended, but Ferebee said many of the investments the district made will have lasting impact, including the money spent on teacher training and curriculum development in literacy.
Students walk through a hallway at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. Credit: Eric Thayer/Associated Press
Christina Grant, who served as the District of Columbia’s state superintendent of education until 2024, said she’s hopeful to see the evidence emerging on what’s made a difference in student achievement.
“We cannot afford to not have hope. These are our students. They did not cause the pandemic,” Grant said. “The growing concern is ensuring that we can … see ourselves to the other side.”
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