Most college students are taking online classes, but they’re paying just as much as in-person students [ hechingerreport.org ]

The flava:

Emma Bittner considered getting a master’s degree in public health at a nearby university, but the in-person program cost tens of thousands of dollars more than she had hoped to spend.

So she checked out master’s degrees she could pursue remotely, on her laptop, which she was sure would be much cheaper.

The price for the same degree, online, was … just as much. Or more.

“I’m, like, what makes this worth it?” said Bittner, 25, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Why does it cost that much if I don’t get meetings face-to-face with the professor or have the experience in person?”

Among the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are charging more for online education to subsidize everything else they do, online managers say. Huge sums are also going into marketing and advertising for it, documents show.

The article:

https://hechingerreport.org/as-online-higher-education-hits-a-milestone-why-does-it-still-cost-so-much/

How Niche Programs Are Saving Higher Education [ Forbes ]

The flava: 

Higher education institutions must rethink their strategies to stay relevant in today's increasingly competitive landscape. As enrollment numbers dwindle, financial pressures mount, and competition from alternative education options rises, many schools seek ways to differentiate themselves. Higher education institutions marketed themselves for decades as one-size-fits-all solutions, offering broad liberal arts curricula and traditional majors. However, a new strategy is emerging as the landscape shifts: niche programs catering to high-demand, specialized fields. One of the most effective ways to do so is by offering specialized programs not widely available elsewhere. In an era where niche knowledge and skill sets are in high demand, universities that cater to specific industries or unique interests can position themselves as leaders in their fields. . . . 

The article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottwhite/2025/03/16/how-niche-programs-are-saving-higher-education/

Lee Bollinger presents his thoughts

I can’t comment specifically on current responses among universities, in part because they are facing an extremely difficult and, I would say, unprecedented political environment and, in part, because they are being put in a vise of dealing with an admittedly serious problem and being presented with an existential threat by forces unclear about what they really want. I can, however, make more general comments.

First, I believe universities must understand what their identity is, their role in the society, and then express and defend that identity. It is my view that the First Amendment should extend special protections to universities just as it arguably does for the press, as institutions of systemic importance serving the public’s interest in advancing understanding and knowledge and in informing the public about vital issues. Courts have afforded universities important protections because they are part of the bedrock of American values, reflected in the Constitution. Universities need to articulate that special role and defend it.

Second, I think that seeking shelter in the courts is most often the necessary path. I share the view of those who argue that the government cannot intrude into university decision-making without compelling reasons, whether directly or by placing unconstitutional conditions on funding. When I became president of the University of Michigan, I was immediately informed that we were the next target of the anti-affirmative action movement. This was an attack on a core value of the institution, and settlement or capitulation was not an option in my view. We ended up successfully making that case in the Supreme Court.

And, third, it is always important to take the long view, and we must make sure that when we emerge from whatever present crisis we are in, the choices we made will not make us ashamed. Universities last for centuries. . . .

We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orban and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That’s what we’re experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you’re on your way.

We’re beginning to see the effects on universities. It’s very, very frightening.

--Lee Bollinger, former president of Columbia University and the University of Michigan

podcasts this week: Grammar Girl, Fresh Air, & The Key with Inside Higher Ed

Local college students give up spring break to give back [ WOOD TV8 ]

Education Department Lays Off Nearly Half of Staff [ Inside Higher Ed ]

The flava:

The Education Department laid off “nearly 50 percent” of its more than 4,100 employees Tuesday evening, according to four sources inside the agency who were told about the plans and an agency news release. . . . 

The reductions will bring the total workforce down to fewer than 2,200. 

The department’s D.C. offices will be closed Wednesday for “security reasons,” according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed. The email instructed department staff to take their laptops home with them on Tuesday in order to telework Wednesday, and said they would “not be permitted in any ED facility on Wednesday, March 12th, for any reason.” 

The article:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/03/11/education-department-reduce-staff-half

What science tells us about transgender athletes [ PBS NewsHour ]

As Trump Goes After Universities, Students Are Now on the Chopping Block [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

In the early weeks of the Trump administration’s push to slash funding that colleges and universities rely on, grants and contracts had been cut and, in a few cases, researchers had been laid off.

In recent days, the fiscal pain has come to students.

At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators have asked departments in the School of Arts & Sciences, the university’s largest school, to cut incoming Ph.D. students. In some cases, that meant reneging on informal offers, according to Wendy Roth, a professor of sociology.

Her department had to decide which of the students would be “unaccepted.” Dr. Roth, chair of graduate education, was chosen to explain those decisions to them.

“Two of them, I would say, were extremely upset. One person was in tears,” she said. “It’s just the most terrible thing to get that kind of news when your plans are made.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty. The University of Pennsylvania could face a $250 million hit in N.I.H. funding alone. . . . 

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/trump-university-funding-grad-student-cuts.html

Trump threatens to pull federal funds for US schools allowing ‘illegal protests’ [ The Guardian ]

The flava:

Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to halt all federal funding for any college or school that allows “illegal protests” and vowed to imprison “agitators”, in a social media statement that prompted alarm from free expression advocates.

“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” the US president wrote on Truth Social.

“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

In a statement on Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire) condemned Trump’s remarks. . . . 

The article:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/04/trump-university-funding-protests

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"Will Universities Surrender or Resist?" Scholar Slams Trump's Threat to Defund Universities [ Democracy Now! ]

The crisis facing colleges and universities that no one is talking about [ thebigstorypodcast.ca ]

There is a crisis facing Canada’s post-secondary education sector that no one is talking about.

Now that the federal government has slashed the number of international student permits available in Canada, colleges and universities from coast to coast are facing huge budget shortfalls.

Several of Canada’s best schools are cutting programs and laying off staff just to stay afloat.

These institutions have no choice but to take drastic measures, or risk going bankrupt.

PhD student expelled from University of Minnesota for allegedly using AI [ KARE 11 ]

I was asked to keep this confidential [ Sabine Hossenfelder ]

5 Ways the Education Department Affects Higher Ed [ insidehighered.com ]

The flava:

Republicans’ long-sought goal of shuttering the Education Department got a boost this week as several media outlets reported the Trump administration was finalizing plans for an executive order to wind down the agency.

Trump added to the speculation, telling reporters Tuesday he wanted his education secretary nominee, Linda McMahon, to put herself out of a job. Then, on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said getting rid of the department is “an idea whose time has come.”

The specifics and timing of the executive order are still unclear, though media reports say the directive could instruct department officials to shut down some programs not directly approved by Congress or come up with a plan to move functions to other departments in the federal government. At the very least, the Trump administration wants to see a much smaller version of the department, particularly because only Congress can actually eliminate the agency.

More than 4,000 people currently work for the department, which was created in 1979. In fiscal year 2024, the department had a $80 billion discretionary budget. Its spending makes up just over 2 percent of the federal budget. . . . 

The article:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/student-aid-policy/2025/02/07/five-ways-education-department-impacts-higher-ed

‘Merit based, color blind’: Race, sex no longer considered for military promotions and academy admissions as Hegseth moves to weed out DEI [ Stars and Stripes ]

The flava:

Race and sex will no longer be considered in military promotions and academy admissions as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moves to weed out diversity and equity-based programs across the U.S. military.

“The [Defense Department] will strive to provide merit-based, color-blind, equal opportunities to service members but will not guarantee or strive for equal outcomes,” Hegseth wrote in a memo released Wednesday titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force.”

According to the memo, the Defense Department will not take into account sex, race or ethnicity when considering troops for promotions or special duty. Additionally, no department component will establish sex-, race- or ethnicity-based goals for academic admissions, career fields or organizational composition. . . . 

The article:

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-01-30/hegseth-dei-defense-department-promotions-academies-16654199.html

The college affordability crisis [ WAMU ]

The graduating class of 2025 is the largest the country has ever seen — around 3.9 million students. . . .

How vet schools are trying to address the mental health challenges plaguing veterinarians [ PBS NewsHour ]

Fake papers are contaminating the world’s scientific literature, fueling a corrupt industry and slowing legitimate lifesaving medical research [ The Conversation ]

The flava:

Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research, undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.

It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. Around 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies only to find that they were made up.

Even when the bogus papers are spotted – usually by amateur sleuths on their own time – academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews other research and discusses findings.

The article:

https://theconversation.com/fake-papers-are-contaminating-the-worlds-scientific-literature-fueling-a-corrupt-industry-and-slowing-legitimate-lifesaving-medical-research-246224

The University and the Public Good: The Role of the American College in Our Time [ Colgate University ]

Screens Have Taken Over Classrooms. Even Students Have Had Enough. [ WSJ ]

The flava:

Class time has become screen time in American schools.

Kindergartners now watch math lessons on YouTube, counting aloud with the videos. Middle-schoolers complete writing drills on Chromebooks while sneaking in play of an online game. High-schoolers mark up Google Docs to finish group projects. 

The rapid tech transformation amounts to a grand experiment playing out in American schools. Accelerated by pandemic-era online learning, the move has happened with little debate, conflicting research and high stakes for the nation’s children. 

Educators wonder whether the digitization of the classroom has really benefited learning—or if it’s done kids a disservice. Some teachers say online tools help create more engaging lessons and provide personalized instruction. Others say the screen-heavy approach has distracted students and burned out teachers. 

“Covid really shifted things toward, ‘Oh, we can do this,’” said Stephanie Galvani, a middle-school English teacher in suburban Boston. “But we didn’t ask: ‘Should we do this?’”

The shift runs counter to the prevailing advice from doctors and psychologists to limit tech use. Some frustrated parents are trying to opt their kids out of school technology, with varying degrees of success. Even some students pine for more analog methods. . . .

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/schools-phone-screens-technology-research-c268bda5

A Productive Day In My Life at Columbia University [ JunZhe Koh ]

NIL money in college athletics creating "have-not" sports [ CBS Evening News ]

Report Was In Error: Freshman Enrollment Did Not Decline 5% Last Fall [ Forbes ]

The flava:

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center today released the following statement from Executive Director Doug Shapiro about an error that affected the freshman enrollment data in its October preliminary fall enrollment report:

“The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center has identified a methodological error affecting its calculation of freshman enrollment in the preliminary enrollment report released in October 2024. That report, called the Stay Informed Report, is based on data provided by 50 percent of higher education institutions. The error in research methodology caused the mislabeling of certain students as dual-enrolled rather than as freshmen, and as a result, the number of freshmen was undercounted, and the number of dual-enrolled was overcounted. The error also affected the Special Analysis of 18-year-old Freshmen report released in November.”

The initially reported 5% drop in freshman enrollment was widely covered in news outlets and cited by numerous commentators over the past few months. . . .  

The article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/01/13/report-was-in-error-freshman-enrollment-did-not-decline-5-last-fall/

John Aubrey Douglass: Leading a university is set to become even more difficult.

Over the past five years or so, there has been a significant increase in faculty votes of no confidence in their university and college presidents in the United States. These votes are an indicator of an evolving and increasingly challenging environment for university and college leadership, as well as evidence of a decline in shared governance – an environment that will likely become even more complex with Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

One mega trend: over some five or more decades, management authority has drifted towards university and college presidents and their administrators for several reasons. One is the growing size and role of student support services and other administrative functions, including the rising costs of intercollegiate sports and bureaucracies related to governmental reporting requirements, health and safety and supporting academic research.

In the 1960s, for example, faculty outnumbered administrators. Now, depending on the institution, administrators often outnumber faculty by five to one, or more. Today, a significant portion of a campus’s operations and funding is not directly related to its teaching, research and public service mission.

Another reason is the financial and enrolment pressures that, on average, have meant shrinking revenues relative to costs – even with rising tuition rates. With many institutions in the US facing declining enrolment, budgetary challenges often mean reducing the number of degree programmes, laying off faculty and administrators, and other actions that are sometimes accomplished despite resistance and concerns over shared governance. . . . 

--John Aubrey Douglass, senior research fellow for public policy and higher education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

American Historical Assoc. Votes Overwhelmingly for Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza [ Democracy Now! ]

Community colleges gear up to train workers for America’s proposed manufacturing future [ PBS NewsHour ]

From Teacher to OnlyFans Millionaire-Brianna [ Soft White Underbelly ]