Education

EDU news curated by Kiosk: Graduation rates …and other higher ed news

Too Many Students Still Aren’t Finishing College, New Report Says

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The share of students who earn a college credential within six years of enrolling has stalled at the same rate for a third straight year, according to a report published Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. About 62 percent of students who started college in 2017 have since earned a degree or certificate. The proportion of students who haven’t earned a credential within six years aren’t just taking longer, the data show; many have left college entirely. Of the 2.4-million students who began college in 2017, nearly one-third left without a credential — amounting to over 710,000 students. Only about 9 percent of the students who started in 2017 are still enrolled.”

 

HBCUs Increase Black Students’ Likelihood of Graduating

From Inside Higher Education: “A recent report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University suggests that the type of college where Black students initially enroll could narrow racial disparities in degree completion and influence students’ long-term financial outcomes. The report was released earlier this month and is based on an analysis of data from nearly 1.2 million Black students who took the SAT between 2004 and 2010. The study found that students who initially enrolled at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) were 14.6 percentage points more likely to graduate than their peers who attended a non-HBCU institution or started at a two-year college.”

 

Class attendance in US universities ‘at record low’

From Times Higher Education: “Two other trends in higher education might be compounding attitudes towards in-person classroom attendance, Professor Chambliss said. One, he said, was the growing reliance on adjunct instructors. That appeared to be giving students a lower-quality classroom experience, which might make them question the value of spending time in class. … The other … was the growing emphasis in US higher education on job-oriented teaching – ‘this whole idea of return on investment, and that majors have to pay off’. ‘The students think now, reasonably… that they’re supposed to have a transactional view of this, that what you want is the best return for the least work…’ he said. ‘They get used to this notion that there’s nothing intrinsically worthwhile, and so if you can slide by with going to class less, that’s fine.’”

 

Here are the states with the highest average student debt

From The Hill: “A new analysis says Maryland has the highest average student loan debt per borrower, coming in at more than $40,000 each. Degree Choices, an organization dedicated to helping students with their higher education journey, analyzed federal data to rank the states with the most student loan debt. The top five states are all on the East Coast, with Maryland in first at $43,116 per borrower. Georgia comes in second with an average of $41,775 each, Virginia with $39,599, Florida at $38,683 and South Carolina borrowers showing an average of $38,360.”

 

Hispanics Want to Enroll in College, but They Don’t Know How to Get There

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “In a national poll by The Chronicle, 75 percent of Hispanic respondents with no more than a high-school diploma said they had considered college, compared with 60 percent of white respondents. …. But some Hispanic survey respondents contacted by The Chronicle were also unsure how to enroll in college and how to pay for it. The findings demonstrate a need for colleges — especially those faced with dwindling enrollments and worried about the impending drop in traditional-age students — to build links to Hispanic communities.’

 

Affirmative Action and the Future of Education Reform

From Anthony Carnevale.com: “Attacks on legacy and donor admissions are gaining momentum. Part of the chatter involves taxing endowments and using the money to support scholarships for economically disadvantaged students. The idea that colleges should fill a minimum percentage of seats with Pell-eligible students in order to receive federal funds has also been around for a while, and will almost certainly make a comeback. … The drama in the courts will surely continue, given that it is still unclear which alternatives to race-conscious admissions the Supreme Court will allow. The test case that will take the court’s temperature on class-based admissions involves Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia.”

 

House Republicans Blame DEI Programs for Rise in Campus Antisemitism

From Inside Higher Education: “‘I think DEI is a fraud and what we’re seeing now on campuses is proof of that,’ said Burgess Owens, the Utah Republican who chairs the House higher education subcommittee. Stacey Burdett, an expert in antisemitism prevention who formerly worked for the Anti-Defamation League, pushed back against the idea that DEI policies or programs are to blame. She said that while DEI offices might not have been set up initially to help Jewish students, the programs are adapting. ‘Don’t make us the excuse to shut down something important,’ she said.”

 

Paul LeBlanc to Leave Presidency of Southern New Hampshire

From Inside Higher Education: “Under his leadership, the university grew from 2,500 to more than 200,000 students and was a driver of competency-based learning and other innovations. … LeBlanc said in an email to colleagues that he would begin a sabbatical next June and would work on developing ‘new AI-supported learning models’ and ‘a new global data consortium, which we think is critical if higher education is going to shape its AI future as opposed to being merely reactive.’”

 

2U struggles as US universities go it alone on online delivery

From Times Higher Education: “2U has now hit a clear low moment, removing co-founder Chip Paucek as its chief executive after more than a decade in the role; closing all its remaining remote offices; and ending some key institutional contracts, including that of its original partner, the University of Southern California, amid legal and financial troubles. Around the time of Mr. Paucek’s removal, the company’s stock value was down about 80 per cent from the beginning of the year and, from a valuation in excess of $5 billion in 2018, it is now worth around $80 million.”

 

Moody’s: ‘Stable’ Outlook for Higher Education in 2024

From Inside Higher Education: “Moody’s Investors Service has projected a ‘stable’ outlook for higher education in 2024. The report … projects that “revenue gains will materialize across multiple sources as the residual impacts of the pandemic wane” and “expense growth will moderate as inflation cools, preventing further deterioration in operating performance for most of the sector.” Moody’s projected sectorwide revenue growth of 4 percent in its 2024 outlook.”

 

UK reliance on overseas students an ‘uncomfortable reality’

From Times Higher Education: “Universities… have been put under further financial pressure by UK government immigration policy deterring international students, with institutions’ reliance on overseas income being the ‘uncomfortable reality’… Universities have ‘tried to cross-subsidise’ the cost of educating domestic students via ‘aspirations’ to increase international recruitment, but ‘interestingly in the very last cycle people didn’t meet those aspirations’…While there was variation across the sector and not every university was facing financial struggle, ‘at least a third of universities now are posting deficits’, said Professor Higham.”