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Tag: Colleges and universities

  • Older adults are heading back to school and represent the ‘new majority student’ as they seek up-skilling or a career change | Fortune

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    Interested in starting a business, learning about artificial intelligence or exploring a new hobby? There’s a class for that.

    Millions of U.S. adults enroll in credit and non-credit college courses to earn professional certificates, learn new skills or to pursue academic degrees. Some older students are seeking career advancement, higher pay and job security, while others want to explore their personal interests or try new things.

    “They might have kids, they might be working full-time, they might be older non-traditional students,” said Eric Deschamps, the director of continuing education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. But returning to school “opens doors to education for students that might not have those doors open to them otherwise.”

    Older students, many of whom bring years of work and life experience to their studies, often are juggling courses with full-time jobs, caregiving and other family responsibilities. It is a challenging balancing act but can also sharpen priorities and provide a sense of fulfillment.

    Here’s what experts have to say about returning to school, what to consider beforehand and how to balance coursework with work and personal commitments.

    Why more people want to continue learning

    UCLA Extension, the continuing education division of the University of California, Los Angeles, offers more than 90 certificate and specialization programs, from interior design, early childhood education and accounting to photography, paralegal studies and music production. Individual courses cover a wide range of topics, including retirement planning, writing novels, the business of athletes and artists, and the ancient Japanese art of ikebana, or flower arranging.

    About 33,500 students — nearly half of them older than 35 — were enrolled during the last academic year. UCLA reported a full-time enrollment of about 32,600 degree-seeking undergraduate students during the same period.

    “I prefer calling our (adult) learners not only continuous, but the new majority student. These are learners who tend to already be employed, often supporting a family, looking for up-skilling or sometimes a career change,” Traci Fordham, UCLA’s interim associate dean for academic programs and learning innovation, said.

    Higher education experts say some adults take classes for professional development as economic concerns, technological advances and other workforce changes create a sense of job insecurity.

    “A great example of that is artificial intelligence. These new technologies are coming out pretty quickly and for folks that got a degree, even just 5 or 10 years ago, their knowledge might be a little bit outdated,” Deschamps said.

    What to ask yourself before returning to school

    Adults interested in becoming students again may want to assess their time and budgets, and weigh the potential benefits and consequences, including the financial impact, the potential for burnout and rewards of education that may take a while materialize, academic advisors say.

    Deschamps suggests asking where you want to be in 5 or 10 years and how the training and knowledge received through an additional class or certificate can help get you there. For example, if you want to start a microbrewery, learning to brew your own beer or launching a business will help. If a promotion or career change is the goal, training for a new job, refreshing skills or understanding a different industry may help show you are qualified.

    Schools like UCLA and Northern Arizona University are working to make continuing education courses accessible by keeping the cost low in comparison to degree-track classes and offering financial assistance. A variety of learning environments usually are offered — in-person and online classes, accelerated and self-paced instruction — to help adults integrate schoolwork with their home and work lives.

    Katie Swavely, assistant director for academic advising and student success at UCLA, started at community college before transferring to UCLA to study anthropology. She said it took her 10 years after graduating to go back for her master’s degree in counseling with a focus on academic advising. Swavely completed that degree in 2020 and credits access to the program through employer-sponsored tuition assistance from her job at the time.

    “I felt like in so many ways I didn’t really know who I was or what I wanted to do other than just pay the bills and survive,” said Swavely, who is married and has two children. “It was hard. And I thought about quitting many times. We had to budget to the extreme and find additional ways to make it work.”

    She added: “There are questions of how are we going to make it work and do we have the money. As a parent, sacrifices are there all the time. You make those judgment calls every day. But making sure that you’re investing in yourself. There’s always gonna be reasons why it’s not today, not this month, not this year, but it’s also OK to just jump in and go for it and see how it works out.”

    As an avid book lover, Swavely now wants to take a book editing course and hopes to continue her education and enroll in that through the university soon.

    Overcoming barriers to returning at any age

    Some experts say one of the main barriers to returning to school is psychological. There might be concerns that their writing skills are rusty and that they don’t know enough math or technology, bringing up feelings of uncertainty or failure.

    “I think this is tied to access. Many of our learners, not all of them, haven’t imagined themselves in any kind of higher education, post-secondary education environment,” Fordham said.

    Swavely said it was important for her to build a support network and take advantage of the counseling and advising options that were available to her as a student.

    She encourages adults who are furthering their educations to spend time “finding your community.” Having people around who helped build up her confidence at home and during classes got her through graduate school, Swavely said. She also suggests setting boundaries and giving yourself grace when you need need help.

    “The biggest piece of advice is for people to realize you’re never too old to learn,” she said.

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    Cheyanne Mumphrey, The Associated Press

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  • Why adults pursuing career growth or personal interests are the ‘new majority’ student

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    FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Interested in starting a business, learning about artificial intelligence or exploring a new hobby? There’s a class for that.

    Millions of U.S. adults enroll in credit and non-credit college courses to earn professional certificates, learn new skills or to pursue academic degrees. Some older students are seeking career advancement, higher pay and job security, while others want to explore their personal interests or try new things.

    “They might have kids, they might be working full-time, they might be older non-traditional students,” said Eric Deschamps, the director of continuing education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. But returning to school “opens doors to education for students that might not have those doors open to them otherwise.”

    Older students, many of whom bring years of work and life experience to their studies, often are juggling courses with full-time jobs, caregiving and other family responsibilities. It is a challenging balancing act but can also sharpen priorities and provide a sense of fulfillment.

    Here’s what experts have to say about returning to school, what to consider beforehand and how to balance coursework with work and personal commitments.

    UCLA Extension, the continuing education division of the University of California, Los Angeles, offers more than 90 certificate and specialization programs, from interior design, early childhood education and accounting to photography, paralegal studies and music production. Individual courses cover a wide range of topics, including retirement planning, writing novels, the business of athletes and artists, and the ancient Japanese art of ikebana, or flower arranging.

    About 33,500 students — nearly half of them older than 35 — were enrolled during the last academic year. UCLA reported a full-time enrollment of about 32,600 degree-seeking undergraduate students during the same period.

    “I prefer calling our (adult) learners not only continuous, but the new majority student. These are learners who tend to already be employed, often supporting a family, looking for up-skilling or sometimes a career change,” Traci Fordham, UCLA’s interim associate dean for academic programs and learning innovation, said.

    Higher education experts say some adults take classes for professional development as economic concerns, technological advances and other workforce changes create a sense of job insecurity.

    “A great example of that is artificial intelligence. These new technologies are coming out pretty quickly and for folks that got a degree, even just 5 or 10 years ago, their knowledge might be a little bit outdated,” Deschamps said.

    Adults interested in becoming students again may want to assess their time and budgets, and weigh the potential benefits and consequences, including the financial impact, the potential for burnout and rewards of education that may take a while materialize, academic advisors say.

    Deschamps suggests asking where you want to be in 5 or 10 years and how the training and knowledge received through an additional class or certificate can help get you there. For example, if you want to start a microbrewery, learning to brew your own beer or launching a business will help. If a promotion or career change is the goal, training for a new job, refreshing skills or understanding a different industry may help show you are qualified.

    Schools like UCLA and Northern Arizona University are working to make continuing education courses accessible by keeping the cost low in comparison to degree-track classes and offering financial assistance. A variety of learning environments usually are offered — in-person and online classes, accelerated and self-paced instruction — to help adults integrate schoolwork with their home and work lives.

    Katie Swavely, assistant director for academic advising and student success at UCLA, started at community college before transferring to UCLA to study anthropology. She said it took her 10 years after graduating to go back for her master’s degree in counseling with a focus on academic advising. Swavely completed that degree in 2020 and credits access to the program through employer-sponsored tuition assistance from her job at the time.

    “I felt like in so many ways I didn’t really know who I was or what I wanted to do other than just pay the bills and survive,” said Swavely, who is married and has two children. “It was hard. And I thought about quitting many times. We had to budget to the extreme and find additional ways to make it work.”

    She added: “There are questions of how are we going to make it work and do we have the money. As a parent, sacrifices are there all the time. You make those judgment calls every day. But making sure that you’re investing in yourself. There’s always gonna be reasons why it’s not today, not this month, not this year, but it’s also OK to just jump in and go for it and see how it works out.”

    As an avid book lover, Swavely now wants to take a book editing course and hopes to continue her education and enroll in that through the university soon.

    Some experts say one of the main barriers to returning to school is psychological. There might be concerns that their writing skills are rusty and that they don’t know enough math or technology, bringing up feelings of uncertainty or failure.

    “I think this is tied to access. Many of our learners, not all of them, haven’t imagined themselves in any kind of higher education, post-secondary education environment,” Fordham said.

    Swavely said it was important for her to build a support network and take advantage of the counseling and advising options that were available to her as a student.

    She encourages adults who are furthering their educations to spend time “finding your community.” Having people around who helped build up her confidence at home and during classes got her through graduate school, Swavely said. She also suggests setting boundaries and giving yourself grace when you need need help.

    “The biggest piece of advice is for people to realize you’re never too old to learn,” she said.

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  • How the University Replaced the Church as the Home of Liberal Morality

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    During the past several weeks, I have been making the argument that progressive movements in America need to strengthen their connection to communities of faith and center their work in the church, as earlier progressive movements have done. In the past decade, millions of Americans have taken to the streets on behalf of social justice, but this has not led to much in the way of real change. The accomplishments of the civil-rights movement in the nineteen-fifties and sixties and of the Sanctuary Movement in the eighties depended, in part, on the infrastructure, moral clarity, and greater purpose of the church.

    But this argument raises a question that I haven’t addressed. If it’s true that those earlier movements drew inspiration and leadership from the church, and if it’s also true that young liberals are increasingly secular, then where does that progressive energy come from? Why do young people participate in politics today, either through voting or through protest, in high numbers? What institution taught them a sense of morality, gave them words to express their outrage, and offered them the space and infrastructure to imagine a different world?

    The answer is obvious: the university. In the past thirty or so years, the academy has replaced the church as the center of the liberal moral imagination, providing the sense of a community bound by ethics, a firmament of texts and knowledge that should inform action, and a meeting space for like-minded people. This isn’t an entirely new development, of course—American history is full of student-protest movements—but, rather, a consolidation of the university’s influence. Young people not only stopped going to church in large numbers, they also got fewer and fewer union jobs—and unions were the other institution in America that has historically produced a great deal of progressive change. College, particularly for middle-class and upper-middle-class kids, is now often the first and perhaps only place where young people are told that they are part of a community of their choosing, one that will prepare them to be “leaders of tomorrow” and instill in them a moral and ethical code of conduct.

    So, if we accept that the university has become the incubator for social-justice movements in America, is it actually good at this job?

    I began thinking about this question while reading about the effects of education on political polarization. It’s a familiar story by now: the more years of education you’ve received, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. In the past few election cycles, this correlation has become more robust. A number of conservative commentators, including Roger Kimball, Peter Wood, and Chris Rufo, maintain that political conformity overtook élite institutions of higher learning and turned every seminar room into some radical struggle session where students dutifully read Karl Marx and bell hooks. Even if you disagree, as I do, with their prescriptions to root out so-called radicalism wherever they find it, you can recognize that what they’re describing is not imaginary. In 1969, around the height of anti-Vietnam War protests and the Third World Liberation Front movement on campuses, the faculty at American universities were closer in political alignment to the general public. This held true until the end of the century, when a combination of factors—including the expansion of the social sciences, which tend to attract more liberals—led to the left-leaning academy that you see today. The extreme effects of this shift have been especially visible at élite universities; according to one conservative group’s report, seventy-seven per cent of faculty at Yale, for example, are or have largely supported Democrats, compared with just three per cent who are Republicans. But most forms of higher education have seen at least a doubling of its liberal-to-conservative gap since the nineties.

    Wood argues that colleges are not only staffed with a disproportionate number of radicals who indoctrinate the students but also have turned everything from dormitory management to the dining halls over to the left. In this view, even students who might disagree with their radical professors will eventually succumb to progressive politics because it is embedded in every part of campus life. Wood and others—such as John McWhorter, who, in his book “Woke Racism,” contends that “wokeness” has become a religion on college campuses—understand that the contemporary university functions in some respects as a church, and they believe that it has taken up a dangerous and wrongheaded set of doctrines. (Wood co-authored a three-hundred-and-seventy-page study on my alma mater, Bowdoin College, because he believed that the school had become hostile to the teachings of Western civilization.) These critics do not want to change the basically religious function of the university so much as they want to swap out the sermons.

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    Jay Caspian Kang

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  • He left the US for an internship. Trump’s travel ban made it impossible to return

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    The first time Patrick Thaw saw his University of Michigan friends together since sophomore year ended was bittersweet. They were starting a new semester in Ann Arbor, while he was FaceTiming in from Singapore, stranded half a world away.

    One day last June he was interviewing to renew his U.S. student visa, and the next his world was turned upside down by President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from 12 countries, including Thaw’s native Myanmar.

    “If I knew it was going to go down this badly, I wouldn’t have left the United States,” he said of his decision to leave Michigan for a summer internship in Singapore.

    The ban was one of several ways the Trump administration made life harder for international students during his first year back in the White House, including a pause in visa appointments and additional layers of vetting that contributed to a dip in foreign enrollment for first-time students. New students had to look elsewhere, but the hurdles made life particularly complicated for those like Thaw who were well into their U.S. college careers.

    Universities have had to come up with increasingly flexible solutions, such as bringing back pandemic-era remote learning arrangements or offering admission to international campuses they partner with, said Sarah Spreitzer, assistant vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education.

    In Thaw’s case, a Michigan administrator highlighted studying abroad as an option. As long as the travel ban was in place, a program in Australia seemed viable — at least initially.

    In the meantime, Thaw didn’t have much to do in Singapore but wait. He made friends, but they were busy with school or jobs. After his internship ended, he killed time by checking email, talking walks and eating out.

    “Mentally, I’m back in Ann Arbor,” the 21-year-old said. “But physically, I’m trapped in Singapore.”

    When Thaw arrived in Ann Arbor in 2023, he threw himself into campus life. He immediately meshed with his dorm roommate’s group of friends, who had gone to high school together about an hour away. A neuroscience major, he also joined a biology fraternity and an Alzheimer’s research lab.

    His curiosity pushed him to explore a wide range of courses, including a Jewish studies class. The professor, Cara Rock-Singer, said Thaw told her his interest stemmed from reading the works of Philip Roth.

    “I really work to make it a place where everyone feels not only comfortable, but invested in contributing,” Rock-Singer said. “But Patrick did not need nudging. He was always there to think and take risks.”

    When Thaw landed his clinical research internship at a Singapore medical school, it felt like just another step toward success.

    He heard speculation that the Trump administration might impose travel restrictions, but it was barely an afterthought — something he said he even joked about with friends before departing.

    Then the travel ban was announced.

    Thaw’s U.S. college dream had been a lifetime in the making but was undone — at least for now — by one trip abroad. Stuck in Singapore, he couldn’t sleep and his mind fixated on one question: “Why did you even come here?”

    As a child, Thaw set his sights on attending an American university. That desire became more urgent as higher education opportunities dwindled after a civil war broke out in Myanmar.

    For a time, tensions were so high that Thaw and his mother took shifts watching to make sure the bamboo in their front yard didn’t erupt in flames from Molotov cocktails. Once, he was late for an algebra exam because a bomb exploded in front of his house, he said.

    So when he was accepted to the University of Michigan after applying to colleges “around the clock,” Thaw was elated.

    “The moment I landed in the United States, like, set foot, I was like, this is it,” Thaw said. “This is where I begin my new life.”

    When Thaw talked about life in Myanmar, it often led to deep conversations, said Allison Voto, one of his friends. He was one of the first people she met whose background was very different from hers, which made her “more understanding of the world,” she said.

    During the 2024-25 school year, the U.S. hosted nearly 1.2 million international students. As of summer 2024, more than 1,400 people from Myanmar had American student visas, making it one of the top-represented countries among those hit by the travel ban.

    A Michigan official said the school recognizes the challenges facing some international students and is committed to ensuring they have all the support and options it can provide. The university declined to comment specifically on Thaw’s situation.

    While the study abroad program in Australia sparked some hope that Thaw could stay enrolled at Michigan, uncertainty around the travel ban and visa obstacles ultimately led him to decide against it.

    He had left Myanmar to get an education and it was time to finish what he started, which meant moving on.

    “I cannot just wait for the travel ban to just end and get lifted and go back, because that’s going to be an indefinite amount of time,” he said.

    He started applying to colleges outside the U.S., getting back acceptance letters from schools in Australia and Canada. He is holding out hope of attending the University of Toronto, which would put his friends in Ann Arbor just a four-hour drive from visiting him.

    “If he comes anywhere near me, basically on the continent of North America, I’m going to go see him,” said Voto, whose friendship with Thaw lately is defined by daylong gaps in their text conversations. “I mean, he’s Patrick, you know? That’s absolutely worth it.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Tennessee university reinstates professor fired for Charlie Kirk post and settles for $500k

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Austin Peay State University has reinstated a professor who was fired for his social media post after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The Tennessee school is also paying the teacher $500,000 in the settlement.

    Austin Peay spokesperson Brian Dunn said Darren Michael returned to his position as a tenured faculty member at the public university in Clarksville effective Dec. 30. A copy of the settlement agreement obtained through a public records request includes a $500,000 payment and reimbursement of counseling, as reported earlier this week by WKRN-TV.

    Tennessee’s governor, attorney general and comptroller signed a document authorizing the settlement payment.

    Michael, a theater and dance professor, was among people who reported facing a conservative backlash and punishment at work for their online posts about Kirk’s fatal shooting in September. He was later moved to a suspension status.

    In a Dec. 30 email to the university community, Austin Peay President Mike Licari said the school did not follow the required tenure termination process. The communication was another requirement under the settlement.

    Licari added, “I deeply regret and apologize for the impact this has had on Professor Michael and on our campus community. I am committed to ensuring that due process and fairness are upheld in all future actions.”

    Two days after Kirk’s killing, Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee circulated a screenshot indicating Michael on Sept. 10 had posted the headline of a 2023 news article reading, “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment.” Blackburn, who is also a candidate for governor, included a photograph and biography of Michael. She wrote, “What do you say, Austin Peay State University?” and tagged the university’s account.

    Blackburn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the settlement.

    David L. King, Michael’s attorney, said the professor said “nothing that was threatening or otherwise offensive.” King decried the pressure applied by “outside forces” and said the ordeal “caused a great deal of harm” to Michael and his daughter.

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  • Chanel exec started in teaching—she fell into luxury after a failed exam forced her back to school. Her career advice for Gen Z? Get out of their dorms | Fortune

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    Claire Isnard can trace her 40‑year career—including 17 years at fashion house Chanel—back to one bad exam. Had she passed, she’d likely still be in a classroom, grading essays on Italian literature.

    Looking back, in her first-ever sit-down interview ahead of her retirement, Isnard says she feels like she’s come full circle. Despite having zero HR qualifications, she wound up as Chanel’s chief people and chief organization officer. “When you draw my story back, the first compelling and meaningful thing that would end up spread across everything I’ve done is helping people become who they didn’t think they can become,” she told Fortune.

    “For me, teaching was not about the speciality of French or Italian, it was about helping those young people—especially the ones who were having difficulty unleashing their skill set and couldn’t find themselves internally, I could help them become larger, bigger than what they thought,” she said. “And I loved it very much.”

    At the time, Isnard took that career plan “very, very seriously” and was giving language lessons to teenagers in both Italy and France while studying, which made the final exam failure that would have cemented a lifelong academic career all the more confusing.

    “Not only I failed,” Isnard said, “but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had no clear path ahead of me. I had no clear goal.” 

    With no plan B, she went back to school and threw herself into student forums and networking events. It led to a chance encounter that would drag her from the classroom into consulting—and eventually, right into Chanel’s corner office.

    Gen Z: Failure might be your lucky break—but not if you don’t get out

    40 years later, Isnard still remembers how crushing that first experience of failure was—but she refuses to let younger generations see similar setbacks as the end of the story.

    Now, the lesson she reminds her millennial children (who are 30 and 33) is that failure is simply “a roadblock on the road, not the end of the road.” 

    “It hurts, it’s very uncomfortable,” Isnard said. “It can be very frustrating because you worked hard. Although it may not feel like it in the moment, this pause could be a blessing in disguise.”

    Isnard recommends using failure as an opportunity to reassess the direction you’re going down—as well as whether you’re even enjoying it. 

    “There is a signal here that either you’ve not worked enough—if you really want to do it again, work harder, and you will get it—or maybe there was something that was not for you,” she said. “Look at what you enjoyed in doing that, but also look at the thing you don’t enjoy, and go where your passion is… I’m really convinced that we cannot be good at something we don’t like doing.”

    Of course, passion alone is not enough to land a big break after a failure. It doesn’t matter how much you love talking about luxury brands or coding—if you don’t get out of your comfort zone and show them, no one will know. That’s why Isnard recommends Gen Zers simply get out into the world.

    “If you stay in your room, or behind your computer, you just don’t get those moments of connection that spark a different conversation, or open your mind to possibility, or let you meet someone who finds something interesting in you,” she said. 

    She would know. Just one “lucky” conversation with the founder of a boutique consultancy at a student forum turned into a two-decade career in the industry, including climbing up Aon Hewitt’s ranks (formerly known as Hewitt Associates) to managing director.

    “I was present in all forums, in all networks, where I could meet people that I would not meet otherwise, and it was a series of encounters that brought me to the woman who hired me,” she said. “So I really believe in connection. I really believe in going outside of your comfort zone—open that door, be curious, meet with people, enter the conversation.”

    Isnard says you don’t need a slick five-year plan, or even a full-to-the-brim contacts book—just the courage to start up conversation in a room full of strangers. 

    “Everyone knows someone,” she said. “So I didn’t hesitate to say, I’m hungry for work and I would like to do something that has to do with writing, thinking and being helpful to others.”

    The brutally honest answer that got her poached by Chanel

    Being courageous worked out in Isnard’s favour when Chanel was a client of hers. Soon after the company had hired its first-ever global CEO, Maureen Shekels, she directly asked Isnard one tough-to-answer question: Do I have what I need to act as a global CEO?

    The answer, Isnard gave her, was brutally honest: No. 

    For eight years, she had partnered with the fashion brand on “different, strategic problems.” And that proximity became vital when its new boss asked her to carry out a no‑nonsense diagnosis of her leadership and how to bring the luxury brand out of an outdated, fragmented structure.

    “So we designed together a global model for the future,” Isnard said. “It’s easier for a consultant to tell [the harsh truth] because you have objectivity, you don’t have the emotion of being inside. I was not losing anything; I was helping my client to see through what she needed for the future.”

    But what Isnard perhaps didn’t expect was to get poached by the CEO herself, just two years later in 2008: “I was very surprised, because I’ve never been an HR in my life before,” Isnard recalled, before adding she didn’t think twice before accepting despite feeling a mixture of honoured, intimidated, and frankly, a bit scared.

    “I had to move with my family to New York from France,” she said. “I had to learn how to be an insider—I knew everybody, all the leaders, but from the outside. I had to build a team. There was no global team in HR. I had to do everything from scratch.”

    Despite her lack of formal HR credentials, Chanel’s global footprint has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. Today, the brand operates in roughly 70 countries worldwide with over 600 boutiques. Under Isnard’s watch, its workforce has more than tripled, growing to 38,400 employees worldwide.

    “It’s another story of someone placing trust in you,” she added. “Take risk, pivot, but do it with people you trust—who trust you too. And check that you have the passion for what is to come.” 

    What comes after Chanel’s corner office?

    Now, as she prepares to step down after over 17 years as Chanel’s chief people and organization officer, Isnard faces a familiar uncertainty—the same feeling she had after that first failed exam. Only this time, she’s looking forward to it.

    “The next chapter for me is to be invented, which is also back to the first conversation, how will I take risk—or not? Am I going to meet with other people? It’s all about the new possibilities that will unfold.” 

    The outgoing exec, who says she’s been reflecting on what her purpose is and will take some more time to ponder, already knows she wants to “continue being contributive,” even in retirement. 

    “The worst is if you feel lost and you feel abandoned. But I think the other worst is that you get another kind of frenetic, but it has no meaning. It’s just a bunch of activities for the sake of not being by yourself. These are the things that I want to absolutely avoid,” she said.

    In the end, she hints she may just go back to where it all began: In teaching, some way or another.

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    Orianna Rosa Royle

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  • Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are awarding $5 million to a leader in neurodiversity education

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    NEW YORK — Mega billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, former news anchor Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are awarding $5 million to the founder of a neurodivergent student support network, a recognition that the lesser-known recipient credits to the students powering his fast-growing movement for more inclusive classrooms.

    “I feel like there’s a narrative sometimes that our little actions don’t matter,” Neurodiversity Alliance CEO David Flink said. “That’s just not true. And this proves it. Lots of little actions that happen every day in our work, collectively over time, reached the ears of folks like Lauren and Jeff.”

    Flink is among this year’s five winners of the Bezos Courage & Civility Award. Given most years since 2021, the grant celebrates barrier-breaking individuals who unify people behind bold solutions to often neglected challenges. The no-strings-attached prize money can be used however honorees want to pursue their charitable goals.

    The Neurodiversity Alliance began over 25 years ago as a peer-to-peer mentorship program for students with various learning and developmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia. The nonprofit now reaches more than 600 high schools and colleges, encouraging youth to build educational environments that serve classmates whose brains function differently from what is considered typical.

    The Bezoses, who tied the knot this summer in a lavish Venice ceremony that drew protests highlighting wealth inequality, did not release any explanation for their support of the cause. The Amazon founder’s net worth sits around $240 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fourth richest person in the world.

    Bezos has previously shown an interest in early childhood education through his nonprofit network of tuition-free preschools inspired by the Montessori model.

    Sánchez Bezos grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia. She told “Good Morning America” last year that her children’s book, “The Fly Who Flew to Space,” is for “the 8-year-old me who was told I wasn’t smart.” She credited a college professor, who recruited her to the school newspaper despite her insistence that she could not spell, for encouraging her to get tested.

    The selection of Flink marks a departure from the award’s previous higher profile recipients. Past honorees include CNN political commentator Van Jones, World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, actor-director Eva Longoria and country superstar Dolly Parton. The shift reflects a desire to get the money closer to the ground rather than let well-known figures distribute money to the nonprofits of their choice.

    The smaller scale approach differs from many of Bezos’ ultra wealthy peers, according to an Indiana University professor emeritus in public affairs and philanthropic studies. Leslie Lenkowsky said that today’s entrepreneur-philanthropists — Bill Gates, for example — tend to focus on systemic change in the realms of health or education.

    “Rather than trying to change the system, what they’re trying to do is provide funding to individuals or communities to deal with important issues,” Lenkowsky said of the Bezoses. “It really is a much older model of philanthropy.”

    The award’s size is also smaller this year. Five winners are equally splitting a $25 million pot whereas past awards have totaled as much as $100 million.

    Flink said the money will help the alliance meet its goal of reaching more than 2,000 sites by 2028. He promised to invest in growing the mentorship program, telling more stories that challenge negative narratives about neurodiversity and expanding the national network of student leaders who get training to sustain their schools’ clubs.

    He said this support is especially important when “the demand has never been greater” and they’ve witnessed “some oscillation” in the resources that schools receive.

    The Trump administration’s dismantling of the Education Department has included mass layoffs at the agency charged with addressing complaints that students with disabilities are not receiving adequate support from their schools. Earlier this month, the department brought back dozens of Office for Civil Rights staffers, saying their help is needed to tackle a growing backlog of discrimination complaints.

    Kala Shah, an attorney whose 24-year tenure at the Department of Education included enforcing protections for students with disabilities, said that neurodivergent students depend on that oversight.

    “This is an especially critical time for private foundations and philanthropy to help fill the gap in resources that’s been created by the current federal climate,” she said.

    __

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Brown University shooting leaves students, community frustrated with official response

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    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto Brown University ’s campus during a busy exam season and shot nearly a dozen students in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school’s security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.

    A day after Saturday’s mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to develop new leads.

    Law enforcement officials were still doing the most basic investigative work two days after the shooting that killed two students and wounded nine, canvassing local residences and businesses for security camera footage and looking for physical evidence. That’s left students and some Providence residents frustrated at gaps in the university’s security and camera systems that helped allow the shooter to disappear.

    “The fact that we’re in such a surveillance state but that wasn’t used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating,” said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team.

    Ding is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security at school buildings, saying that officials need to do a better job keeping the campus secure against threats like active shooters.

    “I think honestly, the students are doing a more effective job at taking care of each other than the police,” Ding said.

    Kristy dosReis, chief public information officer for the Providence Police Department, said that at no point did the investigation stand down even after officials appeared to have a breakthrough in the case, detaining a Wisconsin man who they now believe was not involved.

    “The investigation continued as the scenes were still active. Nothing was cleared,” said dosReis.

    Police and the FBI on Monday released new video and photographs of a man they believe carried out the attack. The man wore a mask in the footage captured before and after the attack.

    FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said a $50,000 reward was being offered for information that would lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of the shooter.

    Docks described the investigation, including documenting the trajectory of bullets at the shooting scene, as “painstaking work.”

    “We are asking the public to be patient as we continue to run down every lead so we can give victims, survivors, their families and all of you the answers you deserve,” Docks told reporters.

    While Brown University is dotted with cameras, there were few in the Barus and Holley building, home of the engineering school that was targeted.

    “Reality is, it’s an old building attached to a new one,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters about the lack of cameras nearby.

    The lack of campus footage left police seeking tips from the public.

    Katherine Baima said U.S. marshals came to her door on Monday, seeking footage from a security camera pointing toward the street.

    “This is the first time any of us in my building, as far as I know, had heard from anyone,” Baima said.

    Students said the school’s emergency alert system kept them relatively well-informed about the presence of an active shooter. But they were uncertain what to do during a prolonged campus lockdown.

    Chiang-Heng Chien, a 32-year-old doctoral student in engineering, hid under desks and turned off the lights after receiving an alert about the shooting at 4:22 p.m. Saturday in a campus lab.

    “While I was hiding in the lab, I heard the police yelling outside but my friends and I were debating whether we should open the door, since at that moment the shooter was believed to be (nearby),” he said in a text.

    Law enforcement experts say colleges are often at a disadvantage when responding to threats like an active shooter. Their security officers are typically less trained and paid less than in other law enforcement departments. They also don’t always have close partnerships with better-resourced agencies.

    Often, funding for campus police departments is not a top priority, even for schools with ample resources, said Terrance Gainer, a former Illinois law enforcement official who later served as the U.S. Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.

    “They just aren’t as flush in law enforcement as you would think. They don’t like a lot of uniformed presence, they don’t like a lot of guns around,” said Gainer, who is now a consultant. “Whether it’s Brown or someone else, a key question is, what type of relationship do they have with the local police department?”

    At Utah Valley University, where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a shooter on a school building roof last summer, the undersized campus police department never asked neighboring agencies to assist with security at the outdoor Kirk event that attracted thousands, an Associated Press review found.

    Providence has an emergency alert system, but it switched from a mobile app to a web-based system in March. The new system requires someone to register online to receive alerts — something not all residents knew.

    Emely Vallee, 35, lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Brown with her two young children. She said she received “absolutely nothing” in alerts. She relied instead on texts from friends and the news.

    Vallee had expected to be notified through the city’s 311 app, but hadn’t realized that Mayor Brett Smiley phased out the app in March. Smiley said his administration sent out multiple alerts the day of the shooting using the new 311 system and has continued to send them.

    Hailey Souza, 23, finished her shift at a smoothie shop just off-campus minutes before the shooting. Everything seemed normal and quiet, Souza said.

    But driving home, she saw a boy bleeding on the sidewalk. “Then everyone started running and screaming,” she said. Souza said she saw a bystander rip off his T-shirt to help.

    The shop Souza manages, In The Pink, is a block from the engineering building. One of the shooting victims, Ella Cook, was a regular at the store, Souza said. Cook had come in a few days earlier and said her last final was Saturday.

    Souza later learned that police came by the store to tell her co-workers about an active shooter. But Souza never received an emergency alert. “Nothing,” she said.

    ___

    Wieffering, Tau and Slodysko reported from Washington. McDermott reported from Providence. Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Matt O’Brien in Providence and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.

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  • Fear grips Brown University after shooter kills 2 and wounds 9 as police search for shooter

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    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Hundreds of police officers were scouring the Brown University campus along with nearby neighborhoods and poring over video in the hunt for a shooter who opened fire in a classroom, killing two people and wounding nine others.

    The search stretched late into the night, well after the shooting erupted Saturday afternoon in the engineering building of the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, during final exams.

    Surveillance video released by police shows the suspect, dressed in black, calmly walking away from the scene. His face is not visible and investigators said it wasn’t clear whether the suspect is a student.

    The suspect was last seen leaving the engineering building and some witnesses told police the suspect, who could be in his 30s, may have been wearing a camouflage mask, Providence Police Deputy Chief Timothy O’Hara said.

    University President Christina Paxson said she was told 10 people who were shot were students. Another person was injured by fragments from the shooting but it was not clear if the victim was a student, she said.

    The search for the shooter paralyzed the campus, the nearby neighborhoods filled with stately brick homes and the downtown in Rhode Island’s capital city. Streets normally bustling with activity on weekends were eerily quiet.

    Students sheltered in place for hours into the night. Officers in tactical gear led students out of some campus buildings and into a fitness center where they waited. Others arrived at the shelter on buses without jackets or any belongings.

    Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom. Outer doors of the building were unlocked but rooms being used for final exams required badge access, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said.

    He encouraged people living near the campus to stay inside or not return home until a shelter-in-place order was lifted.

    “The Brown community’s heart is breaking and Providence’s heart is breaking along with it,” Smiley said.

    Authorities believe the shooter used a handgun, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Democratic Gov. Dan McKee vowed that all resources were being deployed to catch the suspect. Rhode Island has some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S.

    Nine people with gunshot wounds were taken to Rhode Island Hospital, where one was in critical condition. Six required intensive care but were not getting worse and two were stable, hospital spokesperson Kelly Brennan said.

    Engineering design exams were underway when the shooting occurred in the Barus & Holley building, a seven-story complex that houses the School of Engineering and physics department. The building includes more than 100 laboratories, dozens of classrooms and offices, according to the university’s website.

    Emma Ferraro, a chemical engineering student, was in the building’s lobby working on a final project when she heard loud pops coming from the east side. Once she realized they were gunshots, she darted for the door and ran to a nearby building where she sheltered for several hours.

    Eva Erickson, a doctoral candidate who was the runner-up earlier this year on the CBS reality competition show “Survivor,” said she left her lab in the engineering building 15 minutes before shots rang out.

    The engineering and thermal science student shared candid moments on “Survivor” as the show’s first openly autistic contestant. She was locked down in the campus gym following the shooting and shared on social media that the only other member of her lab who was present was safely evacuated.

    Brown senior biochemistry student Alex Bruce was working on a final research project in his dorm directly across the street from the building when he heard sirens outside.

    “I’m just in here shaking,” he said, watching through the window as armed officers surrounded his dorm.

    Students in a nearby lab turned off the lights and hid under desks after receiving an alert about the shooting, said Chiangheng Chien, a doctoral student in engineering who was about a block away from the scene.

    Mari Camara, 20, a junior from New York City, was coming out of the library and rushed inside a taqueria to seek shelter. She spent more than three hours there, texting friends while police searched the campus.

    “Everyone is the same as me, shocked and terrified that something like this happened,” she said.

    Brown, the seventh oldest higher education institution in the U.S., is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges with roughly 7,300 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students. Tuition, housing and other fees run to nearly $100,000 per year, according to the university.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Seung Min Kim in Washington, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City, Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, Martha Bellisle in Seattle and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

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  • Billionaire Palantir cofounder calls elite college undergrads a ‘loser generation’ as data reveals rise in students seeking support for disabilities | Fortune

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    That reality is showing up on a campus. A growing share of college students are seeking medical evaluations for ADHD, anxiety, and depression—and requesting academic accommodations such as extended time on exams and papers. At some of the country’s selective universities, the numbers are striking: more than 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard are registered as disabled. At UMass Amherst, it’s 34%; Stanford, 38%, according to data analyzed by The Atlantic.

    While it’s clear that many students requesting accommodations do so for legitimate medical reasons and that increased diagnoses may reflect greater mental-health awareness, some experts have raised concerns about overdiagnosis and whether universities are making it too easy for students to qualify. And the debate has set off a wildfire on social media this week, catching the attention of high-profile business leaders, including Joe Lonsdale, the billionaire venture capitalist and Palantir cofounder.

    Lonsdale’s response offered no sympathy. “Loser generation,” he wrote in reaction to a graph showing the rising number of undergraduate students reporting disabilities.

    “At Stanford it’s a hack for housing though and at some point I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.”

    He argued that families have been slowly using disability accommodations to give their children an academic advantage—when they might not actually need it.

    “Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honor in the 2010’s,” Lonsdale wrote earlier this month on X. “Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.”

    And while it’s unclear how many students, if any, are trying to game the system, Lonsdale has made his broader view clear: he doesn’t think universities are preparing young people—or evaluating them—in ways that matter.

    “No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities,” he added.

    Fortune reached out to Lonsdale for further comment.

    Lonsdale’s complicated history with higher education

    Though a Stanford alum himself, Lonsdale has a complicated history with the institution and higher education more broadly.

    In the early 2010s, while serving as a mentor in a Stanford tech entrepreneurship course, Lonsdale was accused of sexual assault by a student—and banned from mentoring undergraduates for 10 years and from campus entirely. The assault charges were later dropped, but Lonsdale acknowledged violating a rule prohibiting consensual relationships between mentors and students.

    Less than a decade later, in 2021, Lonsdale cofounded his own school—the University of Austin—with Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, and others. The institution prides itself on freedom of speech and overcoming the “mediocrity” of traditional higher education. It welcomed its first group of undergraduates last fall and remains unaccredited.

    The school has drawn support from Lonsdale’s fellow Palantir cofounder and Stanford alum Alex Karp, who has also criticized the college system.

    “Everything you learned at your school and college about how the world works is intellectually incorrect,” Karp, Palantir’s CEO, told CNBC earlier this year.

    Instead, the 58-year-old said Palantir is building a new credential “separate from class or background,” that is the “best credential in tech.”

    “If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian,” Karp said during an earnings call earlier this year. “No one cares about the other stuff.”

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  • How to connect with old friends and why it matters

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    NEW YORK (AP) — When Jennifer Austin met Molly in second grade, they quickly became best friends. They giggled through classes until the teacher separated them, inspiring them to come up with their own language. They shared sleepovers and went on each other’s family vacations.

    But they gradually drifted apart after Austin’s family moved to Germany before the girls started high school. Decades passed before they recently reconnected as grown women.

    “Strong friendships really do stay for the long haul,” Austin, 51, said. “Even if there are pauses in between and they fade, that doesn’t mean they completely dissolve or they go forgotten. They’re always there kind of lingering like a little light in the back.”

    Early friendships are some of the deepest: the schoolmates who shared bike rides and their favorite candy. The roommates who offered comfort after breakups. The ones who know us, sometimes better than we know ourselves.

    But as adults take on jobs and the responsibilities of homes and families, it can be challenging to stay connected with everyone we’ve loved.

    Technology plays a role, too. Loneliness has increased since the television was invented and intensified with the introduction of smartphones, according to psychologist Marisa Franco, a University of Maryland assistant clinical professor and author of “Platonic,” a book about the science of attachment.

    Once they’ve lost touch with friends, some people are reluctant to reach out, fearing rejection. But most of those on the receiving end appreciate the effort more than we expect, Franco said.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    “People are delighted to hear from their old friends and open to connections,” she said.

    Franco suggests reminiscing about a shared memory to span the time and distance. It can be something as simple as, “This pic came up and I just realized I wanted to check in on you,” she said. Propose a meetup. If the friend lives far away, try scheduling a phone date to catch up.

    Below, six people who tried to rekindle lost friendships reflect on distance, loss and reconnection.

    A missing piece

    Heather Robb and Laine DiPasquantonio were nearly inseparable in their 20s, when they both lived in Boston. They went to concerts and vacationed together. DiPasquantonio was there when Robb met her future husband and attended their wedding as a bridesmaid.

    But sometime after Robb married and DiPasquantonio moved to Colorado, their circle of friends scattered. They became busy raising children, juggling jobs and caring for aging parents.

    “It’s terrible because you don’t know it’s happening,” Robb, 60, said in a joint interview. “I think it was simply space and time. We were all in different cities, we were all in that busy time of toddlers.”

    Years passed with occasional holiday cards and texts but few meaningful interactions. DiPasquantonio saw photos on social media of Robb skiing and traveling with other friends. “I wasn’t sure there was so much room for me, from a distance,” she said.

    “Aww, I feel badly about that,” Robb replied. “I would argue that’s the bad side of social media.”

    The women found their way back to each other when Robb, president of Heather Robb Communications, had a business trip to Denver in April. She called to see if DiPasquantonio wanted to get dinner. “I didn’t know if she was going to be that happy to hear from me. I actually had some trepidation in reaching out,” Robb said.

    When she did, Robb learned her friend was about to undergo surgery for breast cancer. Instead of meeting for dinner, DiPasquantonio, a placement specialist at Harmony Senior Referrals, invited Robb to stay for the weekend. A mutual friend flew out to join them.

    “I was so tickled that you called and wanted to get together. It was awesome,” DiPasquantonio, 63, said during their interview. “What took us so long, right?”

    They’ve remained close since.

    “It just feels so good. It feels like there was a missing piece,” Robb said.

    Just do it

    Reyna Dominguez, 18, had the same best friend since first grade. But when Dominguez moved from Long Island to Brooklyn, her friend began college. Dominguez started working in a salon and their schedules didn’t align. About six months passed without communication.

    After graduating cosmetology school, Dominguez texted her friend to share the news.

    “I was a bit anxious that she was not going to respond. But she did, and I was so relieved and happy,” Dominguez said.

    Now they’re in touch about once a month and planning to get together.

    “It’s important to stay in touch because sometimes I do get lonely, like I have no one to really talk to,” Dominguez said. “But with her, she knows all about my life.”

    Dominguez encourages anyone considering reaching out to an old friend to go ahead. “I say just do it. You have nothing to lose,” she said. “I guess the worst they could do is not respond to you, but I feel like you’ll still be happy with the thought, ‘I tried.’”

    Staying close

    Andrew Snyder’s best friend since 5th grade lives a plane ride away, but that hasn’t stopped them from keeping in touch. They call or email each other at least once a month and see each other several times per year.

    At key points in their lives, they’ve visited each others’ homes “so when we talk about things, we actually can understand,” said Snyder, 50, who teaches philosophy and economics in New York City.

    Living in different cities means it requires work to stay connected, but it’s important to Snyder, who feels that friendships are thinning out as people spend more time looking at cellphone screens.

    “Friendship and cooking your own food, and exercising and being outside, these are the things that used to be real life, and now I think they’re all fading,” Snyder said. “I don’t think the real issue is time anymore. I think the real issue is a sense of overwhelm and a sense of depletion that we all feel.”

    No regrets

    Kim Ventresca, 22, drifted from her best friend while attending college. She reached out a few times and they reconnected when the friend was having a rough time. But they stopped talking again when Ventresca was going through mental health and relationship challenges. Eventually, the other young woman told Ventresca she no longer wanted to be friends.

    “I’ve got some new friends now, and I feel like it’s probably better because some things happen for a reason,” she said. “I’m hoping that she’s alright and that she is doing OK.”

    Ventresca, who works as a social media manager and receptionist in New Jersey, said she still recommends reaching out to missed friends, even if it’s awkward.

    “The worst thing that happens is you get ‘left on read’ or delivered or declined,” she said.

    Secret language

    After Austin’s family moved to Germany, she didn’t see her childhood best friend again for 20 years, through a chance meeting on a New York City subway platform. They reconnected briefly, but contact lapsed again.

    Molly’s 2021 visit with one of her children to a college near Austin’s home provided another chance to restore the friendship. They’ve remained close since.

    “Something at that point just shifted,” Austin, owner of KindPoint Communications, said. “Things really picked up and we just basically outright said, ’Let’s just keep this momentum going. Let’s not wait another 20 years.’”

    ___

    Send your wellness questions and story ideas to [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well.

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  • Foreign enrollment at US colleges holds steady, for now, despite Trump’s visa crackdown

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    WASHINGTON — Foreign students enrolled at U.S. colleges in strong numbers this fall despite fears that a Trump administration crackdown would trigger a nosedive, yet there are signs of turbulence as fewer new, first-time students arrived from other countries, according to a new report.

    Overall, U.S. campuses saw a 1% decrease in international enrollment this fall compared with last year, according to a survey from the Institute of International Education. But that figure is propped up by large numbers of students who stayed in the U.S. for temporary work after graduating. The number of new students entering the United States for the first time fell by 17%, the sharpest decrease since the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Some universities are seeing backslides that have punched big holes in tuition revenue, but overall the falloff is less severe than some industry groups had forecast. Researchers credit colleges for helping students navigate visa issues through the summer.

    “I think colleges and universities did absolutely everything in their power to advocate to get these students to the United States,” said Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation and learning for the institute.

    At DePauw University, a Catholic university in Chicago, the number of international graduate students fell by almost 62% this fall, a driving factor in recent spending cuts. The university president blamed student visa troubles and declining interest to study in the U.S., calling it a “massive” disruption.

    Overall, nearly 60% of colleges reported a decrease in new foreign students this fall, the survey found, while 30% saw increases and others held even. More than 800 schools responded to the survey, which offers an early look at trends before full data is released next year.

    The Trump administration has sought to reduce America’s reliance on foreign students. The White House is pushing colleges to cap enrollment of foreign students and enroll more from the U.S. In June, the State Department began screening visa applications more closely after temporarily halting all interviews.

    Visa processing has continued to lag in some countries, including India, the largest source of America’s foreign students. Education firms have reported that future college students are now showing decreased interest in the U.S. and more in Europe and Asia. While international enrollment remained relatively steady, there are concerns about its sustainability.

    “There are warning signs for future years, and I’m really concerned about what this portends for fall ’26 and ’27,” said Clay Harmon, the executive director of AIRC: The Association of International Enrollment Management, which represents colleges and recruitment agencies.

    Foreign students make up about 6% of America’s college students but they play an outsize role in campus budgets. Most pay higher tuition rates and don’t get financial aid, effectively subsidizing U.S. students. Their numbers are far higher at elite campuses, often making up a quarter or more of the student body.

    International students at the graduate level saw the biggest backslide this fall, with a 12% drop. That was mostly offset by rising numbers of students participating in Optional Practical Training, which allows students to stay in the U.S. for temporary work after graduating. Undergraduate numbers ticked up slightly.

    Graduate students make up the biggest share of foreign students in the U.S., often coming for science, math and business programs. Numbers had already started leveling off last year after a post-pandemic surge, but the recent turmoil appears to have accelerated the downturn. In the survey, colleges that saw decreases cite factors including visa issues and other travel restrictions.

    Many smaller and regional colleges have reported downswings, especially among master’s and doctoral students.

    In a recent campus address, the president of the University at Albany said a decrease in foreign graduate students was having a “disproportionate impact” on the school’s budget. At Kent State University in Ohio, falling international numbers required an additional $4 million in cuts to balance the budget, the president wrote in an October update.

    Even the biggest public universities weren’t immune. The University of Illinois’ flagship campus saw its international numbers dip, fueled by a 6% drop in graduate students. At the University of Michigan, foreign graduate enrollment fell by a similar share. Arizona State University, which has more foreign students than any other public campus, saw its overall numbers fall by 3%.

    Universities are offering wider flexibility to students who couldn’t make it to campus this fall, according to the survey. Almost three-quarters are allowing foreign students to defer their enrollment to the spring term, and more than half are allowing deferrals until fall 2026.

    Colleges in other countries, meanwhile, have sought to capitalize on the disruption, said Joann Ng Hartmann, senior impact officer at NAFSA, an agency that promotes international education. In Germany, Canada and some other countries, colleges are ramping up efforts to recruit students who might be rethinking college in the U.S.

    “They have friendlier policies, and students realize that,” she said. “They have friendlier messaging for students that welcomes them.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Meet the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, who skipped finals to make an empire out of teaching AI ‘what only humans know’ | Fortune

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    In the spring of 2023, while his classmates at Georgetown were cramming for finals, Brendan Foody was busy testing out his new theory of work.

    “I knew I wanted to drop out before finals my sophomore year,” he told Fortune. “I just didn’t go to finals.”

    By then, Foody had already found something he couldn’t learn in a lecture hall. A few months earlier, at a hackathon in São Paulo, he and his co-founders had stumbled onto a simple but powerful model: match companies with skilled engineers abroad, handle the logistics, and take a small cut of each deal. Their first client agreed to pay $500 a week for a developer; Mercor paid the engineer roughly 70% and kept the rest as a service fee.

    What began as a way to connect talent soon evolved into something more ambitious: a marketplace where humans could help train the AI systems that might one day replace them. Mercor now hires professionals—consultants, lawyers, bankers, and doctors—to create “evals” and rubrics that test and refine models’ reasoning.

    “Everyone’s been focused on what models can do,” Foody said. “But the real opportunity is teaching them what only humans know—judgment, nuance, and taste.”

    Within nine months, he and his co-founders—high school friends and debate teammates Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha—had turned that fledgling idea into a company with a $1 million revenue run rate. The trio’s early success was less a fluke than a proof of concept: that the same structured reasoning they once practiced on the debate circuit could be codified to teach machines how to think.

    Two years later, Mercor has become a $10 billion company, turning the trio into the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. The product of that São Paulo experiment had transformed into one of the fastest-scaling startups of the AI era, attracting major investors who view it as a linchpin in the future of human-in-the-loop automation.

    To Foody, the leap from college dropout to billionaire founder was rational.

    “When I was in college, work was something I had to be disciplined to do,” he said. “When I started Mercor, it became something I couldn’t stop thinking about.”

    Foody still hasn’t taken a day off in three years. He says even when he’s at the dinner table with his parents, he thinks about work, which, to him, doesn’t feel like work. 

    “People burn out when they work hard on things that don’t feel compounding,” he explained. “I see the ROI of my time every day.”

    That mindset has become the philosophical core of Mercor’s mission. In Foody’s view, AI isn’t eliminating labor: it’s reallocating it. As software automates repetitive white-collar tasks, humans will move up the value chain, teaching machines how to reason, decide, and create. 

    “It’s like we have this bottleneck of only so much human labor in the economy,” he said. “That shape is going to change radically over the next decade.”

    How is Mercor alleviating the bottleneck? Its platform allows enterprises to commission thousands of micro-tasks that measure model performance in real professional contexts: writing a financial memo, drafting a legal brief, or analyzing a medical chart. Human evaluators grade each output against detailed rubrics, feeding structured feedback back into the model. Every evaluation helps AI learn how people make decisions, and how they measure quality.

    At the center of that system is APEX—the AI Productivity Index, Mercor’s proprietary benchmark for assessing how well AI performs economically valuable work. Rather than test abstract reasoning or mathematical puzzles, APEX evaluates large models on 200 tasks drawn from the workflows of investment bankers, lawyers, consultants, and physicians. To build it, Mercor enlisted a heavyweight advisory group that includes former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, ex-McKinsey managing partner Dominic Barton, legal scholar Cass Sunstein, and cardiologist Eric Topol. Each helped design the evaluation rubrics and case structures to mirror the realities of high-stakes professional labor.

    As the company puts it: “It’s great to have 10,000 PhDs in your pocket—it’s even better to have a model that can reliably do your taxes.”

    The implications of Mercor’s success are sweeping. In Foody’s eyes, this new labor market could employ millions of people globally while accelerating AI progress. 

    “We’ll automate maybe two-thirds of knowledge work,” he said. “And that’ll be incredible, because it lets us do things like cure cancer and go to Mars.”

    For investors, Mercor’s growth story is irresistible. It sits at the intersection of two seismic shifts: the mainstreaming of AI and the rise of flexible, project-based work. Each corporate client adds new evaluators, and each evaluator helps refine more models, creating a flywheel of both data and demand. 

    “We have one of the fastest revenue ramps of any company in history,” Foody said matter-of-factly.

    Foody likes to describe it as the next industrial revolution. He knows people are afraid of being replaced by AI, and constantly fields questions on the ethics of training AI to replace jobs. Foody argues we ought to just bite the bullet. 

    “It’s easy to fall into a Luddite mindset and see productivity gains as bad because they cause short-term job losses,” Foody said. “But every major technical revolution has ultimately made life better.”

    After the industrial revolution, the economy went from 75% of Americans working as farmers to about 1%, and that freed people to do everything else, Foody said. 

    “The challenge now is to be thoughtful about what comes next: the higher, better things humans will spend time on,” Foody said, “and how quickly we can help make that future real.”

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    Eva Roytburg

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  • Harvard says it’s been giving too many A grades to students | Fortune

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    More than half of the grades handed out at Harvard College are A’s, an increase from decades past even as school officials have sounded the alarm for years about rampant grade inflation. 

    About 60% of the grades handed out in classes for the university’s undergraduate program are A’s, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago, according to a report released Monday by Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Education. Other elite universities, including competing Ivy League schools, have also been struggling to rein in grade inflation. 

    The report’s author, Harvard undergraduate dean Amanda Claybaugh, urged faculty to curtail the practice of awarding top scores to the majority of students, saying it undermines academic culture. 

    “Current practices are not only failing to perform the key functions of grading; they are also damaging the academic culture of the college more generally,” she said in the report.

    Harvard’s academic programs are under additional scrutiny because of the Trump administration’s investigations into the university and broader efforts to remake higher education in the US. Federal officials have asked universities to sign a compact that includes commitments to “grade integrity” and the use of “defensible standards” when evaluating students.

    One reason why grade inflation has increased at Harvard is concern among faculty about being tougher than their peers and thereby discouraging enrollment in their courses, Claybaugh said in the study, which was reported earlier by the Harvard Crimson. 

    Administrators have contributed to the issue by telling professors they should be mindful that some students struggle with “imposter syndrome” or have difficult family situations, she said. In addition, Harvard students, while not the “snowflake” stereotypes they’re sometimes made out to be, pressure their professors for better grades, according to the report.

    The cutoff for earning summa cum laude honors at Harvard is now 3.989, higher than previous years. However, the number of first-year students with a 4.0 grade point average decreased by about 12% in the most recently completed academic year compared with the prior period. That’s a sign of progress and a reminder that the university isn’t “at the mercy of inexorable trends, that the grades we give don’t always have to rise,” Claybaugh said. 

    The Harvard report recommended that faculty share the median grades for courses and review the distribution of grades over time. A separate university committee is considering allowing faculty to give out a limited number of A+ grades, a break from Harvard’s current top grade of A. Such a move “would increase the information our grades provide by distinguishing the very best students,” Claybaugh said. 

    Administrators can also help mitigate grade inflation by better valuing rigorous teaching processes in faculty reviews, she said. 

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    Greg Ryan, Bloomberg

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  • Citi Foundation is putting $25M toward tackling young adults’ unemployment and AI labor disruptions

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Young jobseekers, challenged by a rapidly changing labor market, are having a tough time.

    The U.S. unemployment rate for 22- to 27-year-old degree holders is the highest in a dozen years outside of the pandemic. Companies are reluctant to add staff amid so much economic uncertainty. The hiring slump is especially hitting professions such as information technology that employ more college graduates, creating nightmarish job hunts for the increasingly smaller number who do complete college. Not to mention fears that artificial intelligence will replace entry-level roles.

    So, Citi Foundation identified youth employability as the theme for its $25 million Global Innovation Challenge this year. The banking group’s philanthropic arm is donating a half million dollars to each of 50 groups worldwide that provide digital literacy skills, technical training and career guidance for low-income youth.

    “What we want to do is make sure young people are as prepared as possible to find employment in a world that’s moving really quickly,” said Ed Skyler, Citi Head of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs.

    Employer feedback suggested to Citi that early career applicants lacked the technical skills necessary for roles many had long prepared to fill, highlighting the need for continued vocational training and the importance of soft skills.

    Skyler pointed to the World Economic Forum’s recent survey of more than 1,000 companies that together employ millions of people. Skills gaps were considered the biggest barrier to business transformation over the next five years. Two-thirds of respondents reported planning to hire people with specific AI skills and 40% of them anticipated eliminating jobs AI could complete.

    Some of Citi’s grantees are responding by teaching people how to prompt AI chatbots to do work that can be automated. But Skyler emphasized it was equally important that Citi fund efforts to impart qualities AI lacks such as teamwork, empathy, judgment and communication.

    “It’s not a one-size-fits-all effort where we think every young person needs to be able to code or interface with AI,” Skyler said. “What is consistent throughout the programs is we want to develop the soft skills.”

    Among the recipients is NPower, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve economic opportunity in underinvested communities by making digital careers more accessible. Most of their students are young adults between the ages of 18 and 26.

    NPower Chief Innovation Officer Robert Vaughn said Citi’s grant will at least double the spaces available in a program for “green students” with no tech background and oftentimes no college degree.

    Considering the tech industry’s ever-changing requirements for skills and certifications, he said, applicants need to demonstrate wide-ranging capabilities both in cloud computing and artificial intelligence as well as project management and emotional intelligence.

    As some entry-level roles get automated and outsourced, Vaughn said companies aren’t necessarily looking for college degrees and specialized skillsets, but AI comfortability and general competency.

    “It is more now about being able to be more than just an isolated, siloed technical person,” he said. “You have to actually be a customer service person.”

    Per Scholas, a tuition-free technology training nonprofit, is another one of the grantees announced Tuesday. Caitlyn Brazill, its president, said the funds will help develop careers for about 600 young adults across Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Chicago and the greater Washington, D.C area.

    To keep their classes relevant, she spends a lot of time strategizing with small businesses and huge enterprises alike. Citi’s focus on youth employability is especially important, she said, because she hears often that AI’s productivity gains have forced companies to rethink entry-level roles.

    Dwindling early career opportunities have forced workforce development nonprofits like hers to provide enough hands-on training to secure jobs that previously would have required much more experience.

    “But if there’s no bottom rung on the ladder, it’s really hard to leap up, right?” Brazill said.

    She warned that failing to develop new career pathways could hurt the economy in the long run by blocking young people from high growth careers.

    Brookings Institution senior fellow Martha Ross said Citi was certainly right to focus on technology’s disruption of the labor market. But she said the scale of that disruption is “too big for philanthropy” alone.

    “We did not handle previous displacements due to automation very well,” Ross said. “We left a lot of people behind. And we now have to decide if we’re going to replicate that or not.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Citi Foundation putting $25M toward tackling unemployment and AI labor disruptions

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Young jobseekers, challenged by a rapidly changing labor market, are having a tough time.

    The U.S. unemployment rate for 22- to 27-year-old degree holders is the highest in a dozen years outside of the pandemic. Companies are reluctant to add staff amid so much economic uncertainty. The hiring slump is especially hitting professions such as information technology that employ more college graduates, creating nightmarish job hunts for the increasingly smaller number who do complete college. Not to mention fears that artificial intelligence will replace entry-level roles.

    So, Citi Foundation identified youth employability as the theme for its $25 million Global Innovation Challenge this year. The banking group’s philanthropic arm is donating a half million dollars to each of 50 groups worldwide that provide digital literacy skills, technical training and career guidance for low-income youth.

    “What we want to do is make sure young people are as prepared as possible to find employment in a world that’s moving really quickly,” said Ed Skyler, Citi Head of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs Ed Skyler.

    Employer feedback suggested to Citi that early career applicants lacked the technical skills necessary for roles many had long prepared to fill, highlighting the need for continued vocational training and the importance of soft skills.

    Skyler pointed to the World Economic Forum’s recent survey of more than 1,000 companies that together employ millions of people. Skills gaps were considered the biggest barrier to business transformation over the next five years. Two-thirds of respondents reported planning to hire people with specific AI skills and 40% of them anticipated eliminating jobs AI could complete.

    Some of Citi’s grantees are responding by teaching people how to prompt AI chatbots to do work that can be automated. But Skyler emphasized it was equally important that Citi fund efforts to impart qualities AI lacks such as teamwork, empathy, judgment and communication.

    “It’s not a one-size-fits-all effort where we think every young person needs to be able to code or interface with AI,” Skyler said. “What is consistent throughout the programs is we want to develop the soft skills.”

    Among the recipients is NPower, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve economic opportunity in underinvested communities by making digital careers more accessible. Most of their students are young adults between the ages of 18 and 26.

    NPower Chief Innovation Officer Robert Vaughn said Citi’s grant will at least double the spaces available in a program for “green students” with no tech background and oftentimes no college degree.

    Considering the tech industry’s ever-changing requirements for skills and certifications, he said, applicants need to demonstrate wide-ranging capabilities both in cloud computing and artificial intelligence as well as project management and emotional intelligence.

    As some entry-level roles get automated and outsourced, Vaughn said companies aren’t necessarily looking for college degrees and specialized skillsets, but AI comfortability and general competency.

    “It is more now about being able to be more than just an isolated, siloed technical person,” he said. “You have to actually be a customer service person.”

    Per Scholas, a tuition-free technology training nonprofit, is another one of the grantees announced Tuesday. Caitlyn Brazill, its president, said the funds will help develop careers for about 600 young adults across Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Chicago and the greater Washington, D.C area.

    To keep their classes relevant, she spends a lot of time strategizing with small businesses and huge enterprises alike. Citi’s focus on youth employability is especially important, she said, because she hears often that AI’s productivity gains have forced companies to rethink entry-level roles.

    Dwindling early career opportunities have forced workforce development nonprofits like hers to provide enough hands-on training to secure jobs that previously would have required much more experience.

    “But if there’s no bottom rung on the ladder, it’s really hard to leap up, right?” Brazill said.

    She warned that failing to develop new career pathways could hurt the economy in the long run by blocking young people from high growth careers.

    Brookings Institution senior fellow Martha Ross said Citi was certainly right to focus on technology’s disruption of the labor market. But she said the scale of that disruption is “too big for philanthropy” alone.

    “We did not handle previous displacements due to automation very well,” Ross said. “We left a lot of people behind. And we now have to decide if we’re going to replicate that or not.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Indiana University fires student newspaper adviser who refused to block news stories

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    Tension between Indiana University and its student newspaper flared this week with the elimination of the outlet’s print editions and the firing of a faculty adviser, who refused an order to keep news stories out of a homecoming edition.

    Administrators may have been hoping to minimize distractions this homecoming weekend as the school prepares to celebrate a Hoosiers football team with its highest-ever national ranking. Instead, the controversy has entangled the school in questions about censorship and student journalists’ First Amendment rights.

    Advocates for student media, Indiana Daily Student alumni and high-profile supporters including billionaire Mark Cuban have blasted the school for stepping on the outlet’s independence.

    The Daily Student is routinely honored among the best collegiate publications in the country. It receives about $250,000 annually in subsidies from the university’s Media School to help make up for dwindling ad revenue.

    On Tuesday, the university fired the paper’s adviser, Jim Rodenbush, after he refused an order to force student editors to ensure no news stories ran in the print edition tied to the homecoming celebrations.

    “I had to make the decision that was going to allow me to live with myself,” Rodenbush said. “I don’t have any regrets whatsoever. In the current environment we’re in, somebody has to stand up.”

    A university spokesperson referred an AP reporter to a statement issued Tuesday, which said the campus wants to shift resources from print media to digital platforms both for students’ educational experience and to address the paper’s financial problems.

    Chancellor David Reingold issued a separate statement Wednesday saying the school is “firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media. The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.”

    It was late last year when university officials announced they were scaling back the cash-strapped newspaper’s print edition from a weekly to seven special editions per semester, tied to campus events.

    The paper published three print editions this fall, inserting special event sections, Rodenbush said. Last month, Media School officials started asking why the special editions still contained news, he said.

    Rodenbush said IU Media School Dean David Tolchinsky told him earlier this month that the expectation was print editions would contain no news. Tolchinsky argued Rodenbush was essentially the paper’s publisher and could decide what to run, Rodenbush said. He told the dean that publishing decisions were the students’ alone, he said.

    Tolchinsky fired him Tuesday, two days before the homecoming print edition was set to be published, and announced the end of all Indiana Daily Student print publications.

    “Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” Tolchinsky wrote in Rodenbush’s termination letter.

    The newspaper was allowed to continue publishing stories on its website.

    Andrew Miller, the Indiana Daily Student’s co-editor-in-chief, said in a statement that Rodenbush “did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition” and called the termination a “deliberate scare tactic toward journalists and faculty.”

    “IU has no legal right to dictate what we can and cannot print in our paper,” Miller said.

    Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said First Amendment case law going back 60 years shows student editors at public universities determine content. Advisors like Rodenbush can’t interfere, Hiestand said.

    “It’s open and shut, and it’s just so bizarre that this is coming out of Indiana University,” Hiestand said. “If this was coming out of a community college that doesn’t know any better, that would be one thing. But this is coming out of a place that absolutely should know better.”

    Rodenbush said that he wasn’t aware of any single story the newspaper has published that may have provoked administrators. But he speculated the moves may be part of a “general progression” of administrators trying to protect the university from any negative publicity.

    Blocked from publishing a print edition, the paper this week posted a number of sharp-edged stories online, including coverage of the opening of a new film critical of arrests of pro-Palestinian demonstrators last year, a tally of campus sexual assaults and an FBI raid on the home of a former professor suspected of stealing federal funds.

    The paper also has covered allegations that IU President Pamela Whitten plagiarized parts of her dissertation, with the most recent story running in September.

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  • Colleges are fighting to prove their return on investment

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?

    Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.

    Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.

    “Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”

    Most bachelor’s degrees are still worth it

    A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.

    A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70% of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53% in North Dakota to 82% in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.

    It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.

    Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.

    “A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.

    “I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”

    Lowering college tuition and improving graduate earnings

    American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.

    Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.

    The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.

    A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.

    “We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.

    The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.

    A disconnect with the job market

    Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52% of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.

    “No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.

    The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.

    A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.

    Others see transparency as a key solution.

    For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.

    Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93% produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.

    The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.

    Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.

    “In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Does college offer a return on investment? ‘It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago’ | Fortune

    [ad_1]

    For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?

    Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.

    Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.

    “Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”

    Most bachelor’s degrees are still worth it

    A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.

    A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70% of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53% in North Dakota to 82% in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.

    It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.

    Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.

    “A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.

    “I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”

    Lowering college tuition and improving graduate earnings

    American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.

    Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.

    The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.

    A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.

    “We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.

    The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.

    A disconnect with the job market

    Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52% of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.

    “No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.

    The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.

    A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.

    Others see transparency as a key solution.

    For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.

    Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93% produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.

    The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.

    Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.

    “In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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    Collin Binkley, The Associated Press

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  • Is college worth the cost? Universities work to show the return on investment

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?

    Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.

    Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.

    “Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”

    A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.

    A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70% of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53% in North Dakota to 82% in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.

    It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.

    Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.

    “A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.

    “I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”

    American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.

    Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.

    The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.

    A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.

    “We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.

    The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.

    Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52% of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.

    “No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.

    The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.

    A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.

    Others see transparency as a key solution.

    For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.

    Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93% produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.

    The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.

    Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.

    “In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”

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    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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