Tag: Events

Miles College has signed an agreement to buy the 192-acre campus of Birmingham-Southern College—which closed abruptly earlier this year due to financial issues—Al.com reported.

Though the purchase price was not disclosed, the campus was recently valued at $65 million. Alabama A&M University had also expressed interest in buying it, reportedly offering $52 million for the site in May and then $65.5 million in June, local media reported.

Miles, a historically Black college, is located less than 10 miles from Birmingham-Southern.

BSC’s sudden closure came after officials undertook a yearlong effort to keep the campus open, which included legislation proposed by BSC alumni to create a unique state loan program for struggling private colleges. However, Alabama treasurer Young Boozer III, who oversaw loan applications for the program, denied BSC’s request for $27 million. Birmingham Southern officials accused Boozer of undermining the Legislature and acting in bad faith in denying the loan; he argued that BSC represented a “terrible credit risk” and lacked collateral. The college closed a few months after the loan was denied.

Birmingham-Southern officials said in a statement they were pleased with the sale of campus.

“Our hope has been to find a buyer whose mission paralleled BSC’s mission of educating young people for lives of service and significance, and whose presence on the Hilltop would also benefit the surrounding communities who have been such good neighbors to BSC for more than 100 years,” the college’s president, Daniel B. Coleman, said in a statement. “With its roots in the Methodist tradition of service and its commitment to preparing young people for lives of leadership, Miles College fits that description. We will continue to work diligently with [Miles College] President Bobbie Knight and her team to ensure a smooth pathway to closing the sale.”

As senior fellow at UPCEA, the online and professional education association, and professor emeritus from the University of Illinois Springfield, I am fortunate to devote recent efforts to track, analyze and project the impact of technologies in higher education. Beginning with my first instructor appointment in 1972 and continuing throughout the ensuing 52 years, I have closely followed, administered, researched, published and taught about the application of technologies in enhancing learning and teaching in higher education.

It has been an exciting ride from analog technologies such as film and audio tape of the early years to digital transformations that brought the web and online learning to students and faculty worldwide supported by a host of platforms and supportive technologies. Now, in a convergence of generative AI technologies bringing the agency, autonomy and even robotic embodiment, we face a moment that promises to dwarf that half century of advancements and higher education changes in the space of the coming months and grow through the years ahead.

To effectively envision the near future of generative AI in higher ed, we need to at least briefly consider the context of the broader economy, the general fiscal condition of higher education, the state of development/deployment of new and emerging AI technologies, and the emerging demand for graduates, upskilled and reskilled workers with certificates from colleges and universities.

In general, we see evidence in the broader business and industrial world that there is an enthusiasm for AI as a way to attain efficiency and effectiveness, even in roles traditionally held by humans. The shift is already taking place in the tech field. In this column, we have previously documented instances in which corporate leaders of IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and TurboTax have justified massive layoffs to launch AI initiatives and AI has taken over duties that were previously held by people. In an article, “Generative AI Update for 2024,” in the European Business Review earlier this year, my colleague Katherine Kerpan of the University of Illinois Chicago and I documented the beginnings of this movement, including strategies for ethically supporting workers with out-of-date, less efficient skills and approaches to their work. Suffice it to say that the competing forces of efficiency and innovation are driving the adoption of these technologies beyond the academy.

Meanwhile, a significant number of institutions of higher education are suffering from lower revenues and operating margins. Last month, Forbes released its “Forbes College Financial Grades” list, noting, “About 55% of schools, or more than 480, earned a C or worse, compared to only 20% in fiscal 2021. One hundred and eighty-two schools earned a D, the lowest possible grade, up from 20 in fiscal 2021.” Earlier this year, John Marcus wrote in the Hechinger Report that “Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week.” Marcus documents that in far too many of the cases, surprised students are left in the lurch with a difficult road forward to completing degrees and certificates. Accrued student debt remains staggering, currently at one and three-quarters of a trillion dollars! A looming student demographic or enrollment cliff is scheduled to reach higher education in the next year. As a result of these factors, there is awareness and some anxiety in our field that we must become more efficient and effective in order to meet prospective student expectations and the intensity of competition that grows in our field as the number of institutions shrinks.

Research and development across the wide field of artificial intelligence is taking place at thousands of institutions and start-ups around the world. The recent release of OpenAI o1 is just the most recent, as I write this, of a long litany of incremental developments across platforms from some of the largest tech companies in the world to unleash the potential of AI in a wide variety of forms and ways. Taking just this one new development, we see the advent of level-two reasoning. In a report accompanying the release, OpenAI writes, “OpenAI o1 ranks in the 89th percentile on competitive programming questions (Codeforces), places among the top 500 students in the US in a qualifier for the USA Math Olympiad (AIME), and exceeds human PhD-level accuracy on a benchmark of physics, biology, and chemistry problems (GPQA).”

The report goes on to say, “We also evaluated o1 on GPQA diamond, a difficult intelligence benchmark which tests for expertise in chemistry, physics and biology. In order to compare models to humans, we recruited experts with PhDs to answer GPQA-diamond questions. We found that o1 surpassed the performance of those human experts, becoming the first model to do so on this benchmark. These results do not imply that o1 is more capable than a PhD in all respects—only that the model is more proficient in solving some problems that a PhD would be expected to solve.”

While the reasoning of o1 soars, we are witnessing the rise of autonomous artificial intelligent agents that are no longer simple chat bots. Instead, the agents that will be flooding the market this fall and beyond are able to accomplish complex, multistep, changing tasks. As Amazon Web Services explains it,

Far more complex tasks also can be accomplished. We have seen multiple experiments using such agents in Minecraft as described in Toms Guide. Multiple societies have been formed and fascinating communities have been built by intelligent agents that have been given purposes and goals by humans. They organize and even in some cases implement democracies.

That leads us to a glimpse into higher education in the coming year. Given this background, join me in envisioning how we might begin using these technologies. I see us replacing midlevel administrators with intelligent agents that can efficiently and effectively make decisions that are thoroughly documented and adaptive to changing goals and outcomes. Such areas as admissions, financial aid, the division of financial affairs, facilities scheduling, human resources and many more are offices where some staff may first become artificial staff.

Startling as it may seem to some, I can see these advanced models, such as those with Ph.D. reasoning, filling adjunct faculty posts while overseen by human professors. The long-running OpenAI-funded Khanmigo project demonstrates that key teaching, tutoring and personalization skills can be delivered by generative AI.

On some enterprising campuses, I can see robotic embodied intelligent agents by the end of 2025. I envision autonomous intelligent robots working shoulder to shoulder with students, faculty and administrators in the library, the dining halls, health services, international student services, physical plant, campus grounds and many other units.

I hope you will follow the hyperlink citations to learn more about the topics in this column. Then, perhaps, you will begin forming your own vision of how and when these technologies will roll out in your university. This vision will help you to inform your university’s future and your own personal career plans.

My kids are teenagers now, 16 and 13. In recent years, weight sets have replaced Lego sets, video games have replaced board games and pins on Pinterest have replaced chalk on boards. While my wife found nearly every transition emotional and significant, it was not until it came to boxing up and donating our picture books that I began to ask, with a tear or two in my eye, “Is it me, or is it dusty in here?” To be clear, I have nothing against the young adult genre and still own my old copies of both Animal Farm and The Lord of the Flies, but, candidly, I miss the simplicity, poignancy and imagery of fairy tales and children’s stories, perhaps because the old adage is true: A picture is worth a thousand words.

And so, while hundreds of thousands of words have filled online and print publications over the last decade in an effort to describe the significant challenges facing American higher education enrollment, the truth is we could sum it up with three pictures and a short story: the Cliff, the Pandemic and the Hurricane.

The Cliff

Once upon a time, there was a demographer named Nathan Grawe who lived in the far northern reaches of our fair land. One day, in his map-filled study at Carleton Castle, he looked into his crystal ball and saw something disturbing. As he peered closely, he realized that there was a Cliff far in the distance that posed a threat to the kingdom’s colleges. So, Sir Nathan bubble-wrapped his crystal ball, rolled up his maps and began traveling the countryside warning leaders about what he had seen.

In board rooms filled with fruit trays and cheese platters, he announced to trustees, presidents and legislators, “Beware of 2025 and beyond! The Cliff is coming! The birth dearth is real! You need to change your ways now if you want to protect your campuses. There will not be an endless supply of traditional students in the future. The top of the funnel is shrinking!”

While some buried their heads in their hands or the proverbial sand and were slow to make changes, many deans and directors of admission unsheathed their quills and began drafting fancy documents called Strategic Enrollment Plans to prevent their college from falling off the side of the coming cliff. While these plans varied from campus to campus, they often included urging leaders to invest in some combination of the following tactics: robust transfer articulation agreements, dual-enrollment programs and partnerships, an expansion of online courses and degrees, international student recruitment, and enhanced service to graduate and adult learners.

The Pandemic

In the spring of 2020, while campuses fortified their gates and enrollment sentries kept their binoculars focused on the Cliff, a terrible sickness struck the land. Like a thief in the night, COVID-19 came with no warning and brought chaos, confusion and controversy to colleges, ultimately altering postsecondary plans for thousands of American students. Classrooms, dorm rooms and board rooms were evacuated, quads became ghost towns, and the same leaders who had been making long-term plans to weather the Cliff now had to make real-time decisions about how to keep students healthy and safe while juggling the significant budgetary implications of online course delivery and plummeting auxiliary revenues.

Ultimately, however, while time was in short supply, money was not. Far away in the nation’s capital, Congress passed magical scrolls like the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which included a Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. In total, HEERF provided more than $14 billion of emergency funding to higher education, including more than $6 billion directly to students in the form of emergency grants.

As a result, fair reader, contrary to the apocalyptic rhetoric you will inevitably find in the dark corners of the interwebs, nonprofit college closures (executed and planned) have averaged just a little over one per month since 2020. Unbeknownst to kingdom sages, however, more challenges loomed.

The Hurricane

As campuses welcomed their students back in fall 2023, dark clouds began to crest the horizon. The winds picked up and brought with them word of a slow-moving form—nay, storm—called FAFSA.

Students and families waited patiently. October came—but no FAFSA. Halloween and Thanksgiving gave way to the winter break and still no FAFSA. Alas, it was not until the day of our Lord, Dec. 30, 2023, that the FAFSA arrived. And with it, turbulence, disturbance and perturbance from all corners of the land.

Throughout the spring the FAFSA storm raged. Technology failed, the Department of Education flailed, financial aid directors wailed and no student aid offers were mailed.

In highly ranked, well-resourced, nationally prominent institutions, orders were sent posthaste: “Leverage the endowment! Make way for the CSS Profile! Keep the oil lamps lit for weary financial aid staff members!” However, in the universities serving the highest numbers of low- and middle-income students, cash reserves and financial aid staff members were in short supply. Despite the noble efforts of the weather-weary crew, the storm waters continued to rise and the onslaught of federal failures and foibles dampened morale and enrollment prospects.

Compounding and confounding the problem, this occurred just as COVID relief dollars were drying up, and unlike during the Pandemic, there was not another injection of federal cash to provide students with timely financial aid.

And that brings us, reader, to today …

The Eye

Summer news coverage described something called “a closing FAFSA completion gap”—from a year-over-year deficit of 40 percent in the spring to recent reports putting that number under 10 percent. Yet news of hope and light may merely be a sign we are in the Eye of the Hurricane, because just as there was a significant time lapse between the FAFSA opening and colleges receiving student data, there is a similar chasm between FAFSA completion and a student actually receiving aid and therefore gaining the confidence needed to begin college. As a result, I fear regional public colleges and more accessible private colleges are most likely to see significant enrollment declines when census totals are published later this fall.

On the brink of the Cliff and with the federal dollars from the Pandemic now gone, the Hurricane is likely to be the accelerator of drastic measures in the year ahead (layoffs, furloughs, sales of property and more) as we emerge from the Eye into the winds and rains again.

Storm Preparation

Jeremy Singer, currently on loan from the College Board to the Department of Education, has stated that this year’s FAFSA will again not open to all students on Oct. 1, but he promises a Dec. 1 launch at the latest. Yet at this point, most financial aid directors in our story have one eyebrow raised in suspicion at any statement emanating from the Education Department’s heralds.

What should the year ahead hold?

1. At the campus level: The last year has shown the urgent need for institutions to invest in their financial aid information systems and staff. (See: financial aid directors’ raised eyebrows on the prospect of a smooth aid year.)
2. At the state level: Continued efforts to incentivize FAFSA completion for graduating seniors and analysis of higher education appropriations, particularly surrounding comprehensive financial aid programs.
3. At the federal level: Continued advocacy to increase the value of Pell Grants and increased funding to the Office of Federal Student Aid.
4. At the Department of Education: In true fairy tale style, lock whoever is working to fix the FAFSA in a tower and throw away the key until it is done; invest in the integration of systems to ease the burden of applying for federal financial aid; integrate AI assistance within the FAFSA to facilitate accuracy and timeliness.

While our story started with a demographer looking into the future, historians are likely to look back at the confluence of the Cliff, the Pandemic and the Hurricane as the story of how the landscape of higher education changed forever.

The good news is I have a box full of lighthearted children’s books in my garage if you want to borrow one.

The End

Pennsylvania State University temporarily removed dozens of newspaper racks across campus on Wednesday because three displayed ads for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and six others displayed ads for voter registration, allegedly violating university policy.

According to a statement from the university, the issue was with the advertisements on top of the racks—not with the paper itself. Officials said the ads violated regulations on advertising and use of campus facilities. They added, “The racks were removed for only a short period of time to remove the advertising and have been put back in place so that the papers can be easily accessed on campus.”

The racks, taken on Wednesday with no notice to the newspaper staff, were returned with the ads removed on Friday afternoon.

In an interview with TribLive, Wayne Lowan, manager of The Daily Collegian, called the move “overreach” by officials and said the newspaper may have to reimburse advertisers. The Daily Collegian’s editor in chief, Amy Schafer, condemned the move as censorship in an article in the student newspaper, arguing the removal was a “violation against free speech.”

Outside groups also expressed concern.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote in a social media post that the group was “investigating” reports that Penn State removed newspapers and newsstands from campus, adding that “@penn_state can’t use advertising regulations to stifle the free press.”

Penn State officials denied stifling the student newspaper in their statement: “The goal was to quickly rectify the situation and ensure that all advertisements in violation of University policies were removed. Our intention was never to stifle news delivery, and we value the service and mission of The Daily Collegian.”

He wrote philosophy with a hammer, and 124 years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings still shatter idols. His influence transcends academic philosophy, permeating popular culture, literature and political thought. No other great thinker could inspire a No. 1 single on Billboard’s Top 100.

Nietzsche’s critiques of traditional morality and his vision of the Übermensch provide a blueprint for navigating a world where old certainties have collapsed and new values must be forged. His enduring appeal stems from his bold confrontation with the uncomfortable truths of existence, offering a philosophy that addresses both individual empowerment and the existential crises of modernity.

His radical critiques of morality, religion and both high and popular culture continue to resonate with those seeking answers in a fractured, decadent and nihilistic world. Few philosophers have so successfully combined deep philosophical insight with a provocative, aphoristic style that challenges long-held beliefs.

Nietzsche’s call for the re-evaluation of values and his life-affirming vision provide guidance for those living in a world where older belief systems have crumbled and new frameworks must be created. His critiques of religion, conventional morality and the herd mentality remain as relevant today as they were in the 19th century, continuing to inspire academic debate and public fascination.

His writings endure because they speak to the core struggles of modern existence: the search for meaning in a world without absolutes, the tension between individualism and conformity, and the challenge of creating values in the face of nihilism. Nietzsche’s audacious challenge to the foundational beliefs of Western thought, particularly Christianity and democracy, still resonates with those questioning the status quo, while his vision of the Übermensch inspires those seeking new ways of living and thinking.

His philosophy is as controversial as it is influential because it offers no easy answers, only the challenge of self-overcoming and creating meaning in a world stripped of divine guidance. Nietzsche’s thought speaks powerfully to those seeking a path beyond nihilism, rooted in strength of will, creativity and the affirmation of life. His ideas continue to resonate not just because they reject traditional morality, but because they provide a framework for rethinking both individual and collective life in a post-religious, post-metaphysical world.

Nietzsche’s vision—beyond good and evil and beyond God—remains as radical and relevant today as when he lived.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. This captures his rejection of conventional morality, which he believed was life-denying, rooted in weakness and imposed artificial constraints on human potential. Nietzsche argued that traditional morality, particularly Christian morality, arose from ressentiment, a form of resentment harbored by the weak against the strong. For him, it was a tool of control used by the powerless to subdue those with strength, health and power.

Slave morality. Traditional Christian morality glorified meekness, humility, pity, submission, asceticism and self-denial while suppressing natural human instincts and assertiveness. In contrast, Nietzsche praised the “master morality” of ancient aristocratic cultures, which valued strength, nobility, power and creativity. Master morality, in Nietzsche’s view, affirmed life, with all its hardships and struggles, by embracing human potential and individual excellence. He viewed suffering as a necessary component of growth and self-overcoming, not something to be avoided or morally condemned.

“God is dead and you have killed him.” Here, he was referring to the decline of religious belief and the collapse of traditional, God-centered systems of meaning and morality. As society moved away from religious faith, traditional morality became untenable. This left individuals facing an existential challenge: the task of creating new values in the absence of divine authority.

For Nietzsche, the death of God represented both a cultural crisis and an opportunity. It signaled a vacuum of meaning, which could lead to nihilism—the belief that life has no inherent purpose or value. But Nietzsche also saw it as a chance for humanity to embrace its will to power, create new values and live authentically according to individual will and instincts.

“Nihilism stands at the door.” With the “death of God,” Nietzsche believed society faced an existential crisis—nihilism—the belief that life lacks inherent purpose or value. The collapse of religious belief left a vacuum of meaning, causing people to struggle with despair, meaninglessness and moral relativism. However, Nietzsche saw this as an opportunity for individuals to create their own values, embrace their will to power and adopt a more life-affirming outlook.

For centuries, traditional morality provided meaning, but once rejected, it left a moral and existential void. Nietzsche viewed nihilism not as an endpoint but as a necessary stage for humanity to pass through. Overcoming nihilism, he argued, required creating new, life-affirming values grounded in individual will and creativity, replacing the old framework with one that is dynamic and empowering

The will to power. This is the fundamental drive in all living beings to assert themselves, grow and overcome obstacles. Nietzsche believed that traditional morality suppressed this natural drive by promoting self-denial, humility and obedience.

For Nietzsche, the will to power was not about physical dominance or control over others; it was a creative force, a drive for self-mastery and excellence. He argued that traditional morality suppressed this natural drive by promoting submission, humility and obedience. Instead, Nietzsche believed individuals should embrace their will to power and strive for greatness, rather than succumbing to passivity and submission

The Übermensch. Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch describes the individuals who transcend ordinary humanity, who create their own value system and live beyond conventional morality, religious beliefs and societal norms. The Übermensch embodies the will to power, mastering life through self-overcoming and creative force.

Rather than relying on inherited truths or succumbing to nihilism, the Übermensch rises to the challenge of the existential crisis created by the death of God. This individual takes responsibility for creating new values and purposes, affirming life in all its complexity, including its suffering.

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” Nietzsche believed that truth is not objective or fixed but always shaped by human perspectives, biases and interpretations. Whether moral or scientific, truths are not universal but are constructed based on subjective experiences, cultural contexts and power dynamics. Nietzsche emphasized that those in positions of power generally determine what is accepted as truth in any given society and that truth is shaped by those who control its narrative.

Rather than seeing truth as static, Nietzsche saw it as constantly evolving, shaped by different interpretations over time. He encouraged embracing multiple perspectives, recognizing that different interpretations coexist and offer partial insights into reality.

Nietzsche’s challenge to the idea of objectivity and his argument about the role of power in constructing knowledge continues to inspire critiques of dominant cultural narratives, such as the way media, education or political institutions shape our perception of reality, by reflecting dominant Western, patriarchal or colonial perspectives.

“Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses.” He argued that reason imposes artificial structures on life, often in conflict with more authentic, instinctual experiences. Nietzsche’s exploration of the tension between reason and instinct and his analysis of repressed desires and sublimation, anticipated many concepts in psychoanalysis.

Nietzsche’s ideas about unconscious drives, repression and the sublimation of desires laid the foundation for the work of Freud and Jung. His examination of how hidden forces shape human behavior and his critique of traditional morality and guilt paved the way for psychoanalysis. Nietzsche provided a framework for understanding the tension between instinctual desires and societal expectations, a theme that became central to modern psychology.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” Here, he suggests that when individuals or societies engage in a prolonged struggle against evil, corruption or malevolent forces, they risk adopting the very traits they are fighting against. The very act of fighting evil can lead to moral compromise or corruption, causing one to become monstrous in their methods or mindset. This reflects Nietzsche’s concern about losing one’s moral compass or humanity in the process of battling destructive forces, whether those forces are external (like oppressive regimes or ideologies) or internal (personal demons, destructive emotions or obsessions).

He also warns about the existential dangers of spending too much time contemplating the absence of inherent meaning, purpose or moral absolutes in life. Those who spend too much time contemplating with this abyss risk becoming psychologically or spiritually consumed by it, losing their own sense of purpose or moral direction. The abyss gazes back in the sense that it can profoundly affect and transform the individual who engages with it, often in destructive ways.

Nietzsche’s radical critique of traditional morality, religion and modern culture, along with his disdain for mass culture and democracy, provides a powerful lens through which to examine today’s world of consumerism, social media and populist politics. His call to create new systems of ethics, meaning and authority speaks to current societal shifts, while his rejection of pity and critique of compassion challenge many of today’s moral and ethical norms.

In a world dominated by consumerism and social media, Nietzsche’s critique of mass culture remains strikingly relevant. He saw mass culture as promoting conformity, mediocrity and the suppression of individual greatness in favor of the herd mentality—a critique that applies directly to how social media often encourages groupthink, superficiality and the commodification of identity.

In a society where self-worth is often measured by likes, followers and crowd approval, Nietzsche’s emphasis on self-overcoming and individual excellence serves as a counterpoint to the pervasive power of peer pressure. His idea that people should rise above the herd mentality and create their own values feels especially relevant in an age of digital hyperconformity.

Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power—the fundamental drive to assert oneself and create meaning—offers a sharp critique of today’s consumer-driven society. Consumerism encourages passive consumption and materialism as a substitute for authentic personal empowerment or creativity. Nietzsche would argue that true fulfillment comes from overcoming obstacles and creating something meaningful, not from acquiring material goods or chasing external validation through social media. His philosophy challenges the emptiness of consumer culture by urging individuals to define their own values and pursue personal growth, rather than succumbing to shallow consumer desires.

Nietzsche was also critical of democracy, which he saw as promoting mediocrity by empowering the herd at the expense of exceptional individuals. The rise of populism today—characterized by appeals to mass sentiment and oversimplified rhetoric—mirrors Nietzsche’s concerns about mass politics. Populism thrives on emotional manipulation, which Nietzsche would have seen as detrimental to the development of strong, independent individuals. His warning against the tyranny of the majority and the leveling effects of democracy remains relevant as populism suppresses intellectual complexity and undermines political nuance.

Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch—the individuals who transcend societal norms and create their own values—presents an alternative vision of leadership, in contrast to populism’s appeal to mass sentiment. Nietzschean leadership is based on self-mastery, vision and personal excellence, not on pandering to the desires of the masses. Nietzsche’s ideal leaders shape their own path, create meaning and lead by example—unlike populist leaders who cater to collective fears and resentments.

At a time when individuals are bombarded by societal expectations, media pressures and external validation, Nietzsche’s philosophy of self-overcoming offers a path to authentic personal empowerment. His rejection of passive conformity and insistence that individuals define their own values is deeply relevant to modern discussions about mental health, identity and autonomy. Instead of relying on external approval, Nietzsche encourages individuals to confront their own challenges, embrace their will to power and achieve personal excellence through self-mastery.

Social media fosters a performative sense of self, where people curate an image based on what they believe others will approve of. Nietzsche would likely view this as surrendering to the herd mentality and a failure of personal authenticity. His philosophy calls for living in alignment with one’s true desires and instincts, rather than conforming to external expectations—an idea that has great relevance in today’s hyperconnected, performative culture.

Nietzsche famously rejected pity and compassion, seeing them as signs of moral weakness that perpetuate suffering and stagnation. While modern ethics often prioritize empathy and compassion for the vulnerable, Nietzsche’s critique of pity was not a callous disregard for others. Instead, it was a rejection of the notion that alleviating suffering should come at the expense of individual growth and self-overcoming.

He feared that excessive compassion could lead to a culture of victimhood, where the focus is on alleviating pain rather than empowering individuals to confront and overcome their challenges. In today’s debates on social justice, Nietzsche’s perspective forces us to ask, how do we balance empathy and compassion with empowerment and personal responsibility? Can social justice efforts help people without fostering dependency or stifling individual potential?

While Nietzsche’s rejection of compassion may seem harsh in light of today’s humanitarian efforts, his critique challenges us to consider the role of empowerment in addressing suffering. Rather than merely alleviating suffering, Nietzsche would urge us to promote strength, resilience and self-mastery in the face of adversity. This idea could resonate in contemporary discussions about balancing charity with empowerment in social programs—ensuring that aid promotes self-sufficiency and dignity rather than reinforces helplessness.

Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, which transcends the binary of good and evil, invites us to rethink moral concepts often taken for granted in contemporary ethical debates. In an era of increasing polarization around moral and political issues, Nietzsche’s philosophy challenges us to question our moral assumptions and look at ethics from a more individualistic perspective. He encourages the creation of new values based on personal strength and life-affirmation, rather than adhering to traditional moral frameworks that suppress individuality.

Nietzsche’s emphasis on individual autonomy, self-overcoming and the rejection of herd morality contrasts sharply with contemporary movements focused on collective responsibility and social justice. While Nietzsche’s ideas promote personal empowerment and the creation of individual values, modern social justice efforts focus on systemic change through collective action and empathy for the marginalized. These differences invite a deeper exploration of how Nietzsche’s ideas can coexist with, or challenge, contemporary movements for justice and equality.

In a world where consumerism, social media and populist politics shape much of modern life, Nietzsche’s philosophy challenges us to reject mediocrity, prioritize empowerment over passive empathy and break free from the tyranny of the crowd. Over a century after his death, Nietzsche’s call to reject conformity and cultivate a life of authentic meaning remains a powerful antidote to the superficiality of social media and the conformist pull of populist politics.

Let’s heed Nietzsche’s call to create new systems of values—grounded in personal strength, creativity and self-overcoming. His philosophy offers a compelling alternative to the mindless consumption and empty rhetoric that dominate much of our public discourse.

Nietzsche also urges us to confront the complexities of compassion and empowerment. In an age of social justice and humanitarian efforts, he encourages us to balance empathy with the drive to cultivate strength, resilience and autonomy in ourselves and others. While his rejection of pity may seem harsh, it compels us to think critically about how we support others without fostering dependency or stifling potential.

Nietzsche’s ideas challenge us to rise above the noise of the crowd, embrace our will to power and create a life that affirms our highest potential—one that transcends the shallow values of consumerism and the pull of the herd. In today’s complex world, his philosophy offers a path not just to survive but to thrive—authentically and independently.

To improve student outcomes, colleges and universities have shortened academic terms, condensing content and providing more flexibility for students to enroll in classes.

Research from Ad Astra finds students who take eight-week courses are more likely to attempt higher annual credit loads, which is tied to completion rates. Restructuring the academic calendar to provide these experiences, however, requires larger institutional investment and buy-in from across campus.

Setting the stage: Short courses last around eight weeks, or half of a traditional academic term. Several community colleges employ this strategy, and more institutions are considering implementing short terms, says Ad Astra president Sarah Collins. In a recent meeting with regional four-year public universities, around 50 institutions indicated they’re exploring shortened terms or different types of terms.

Ad Astra studied 15 community colleges and found 30 percent of students had completed an eight-week course, but only 2 percent were able to complete all of their courses in an eight-week format.

The pros: Short courses have a variety of benefits to the institution and students, including:

• Additional opportunities for enrollment. With shorter terms, there are more on-ramps for students to participate in higher education beyond the typical fall and spring semesters. This gives learners flexibility in the timing of their courses, as well.

• More narrow content focus. Typically, students who enroll in short courses take fewer credits per term, compared to a traditional 14-week term, allowing them to prioritize just those classes. “What we hear from students is the ability to focus just on two subjects, as opposed to taking four or five classes, is something that’s so important,” says Laura Hunter, vice president of solution strategy at Ad Astra.
• Chances for recovery. If students do not meet satisfactory academic expectations in a course, shorter courses allows them to recover in less time because they don’t have to wait up to 14 weeks.
• Appeal to nontraditional students. A May 2024 Student Voice survey from Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found one in five students believe their institution offering courses on an eight-week accelerated basis is among the most important actions administrators could take to increase their academic success. Students taking more than a typical course load (24 percent), online learners (23 percent) or those who work full-time (22 percent) were more likely to say this would improve their academic success.

The opportunities: Flipping the entire institution to an eight-week term schedule is “a big undertaking,” Hunter says, requiring operational work, as well as change management and pedagogical focuses. As colleges and universities create more opportunities for short terms, Ad Astra experts highlight areas for development and future focus to see the best outcomes.

• Program alignment. At present, many short course offerings are one-offs or not built into a sequence that allows students to complete their entire degree or certificate in the eight-week format. Part of this is due to shared governance and the role of faculty participation in building short courses, but it can create gaps in the student experience where it’s impossible to finish a major entirely in short courses, Collins says. Looking at programs in thematic ways, like metamajors, can be one way to ensure that the entirety of students’ programs are available in the short-course model.
• Student persistence. Current research from Ad Astra found, among colleges that offer 16-week and eight-week terms, students tend to perform worse in their second eight-week term compared to their first. Based on this data, Ad Astra sees opportunities for intentional retention and persistence strategies that are tied to student success, rather than just seeing the second term as an enrollment opportunity. Advising is one area to focus on, making sure students receive frequent support as they move through the shorter terms to track or coach them, Collins says.
• Pedagogy and teaching. Creating shorter terms requires course redesign to deliver content in an effective manner at a faster pace. Institutions can invest in faculty development to motivate and incentivize strategic decision-making on the part of instructors. “You can’t just condense the material. It does require a little bit more of informational design, instructional design,” Hunter says.

Get more content like this directly to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here. 

This article has been updated to correct Laura Hunter’s name.

Few institutions are slower to change than the legal profession and higher education. But a remarkable transformation is happening across law schools nationwide—most are now allowing students to earn money and academic credit for field placement work. And they have the American Bar Association to thank for it.

While the concept that people with specialized skill should be fairly compensated for their work might not seem like a revolutionary idea in 2024, it is. Professional schools across disciplines require that graduate students complete a certain number of hours of experiential education in internships. And almost universally, graduate schools place them in unpaid field placements.

Social work students, who must complete at least 900 credited internship hours, have begun organizing to protest these norms. According to a 2020 study, social work students in the U.S. cumulatively contribute 123 million hours of unpaid field placement work by the time they graduate, the equivalent of more than $1 billion in labor. The students are getting paid through their learning, or so the theory goes.

But this theory is based on a higher education paradigm of an earlier era —when graduate students were financial dependents of their parents and the cost of education was manageable. Educational institutions have opened their doors to more diverse students but have been reluctant to adapt to an influx of nontraditional students who do not have parents to support them and may themselves be supporting their parents.

In the face of widespread opposition by the legal academy, the ABA, which accredits law schools, lifted a long-standing prohibition on paid student externships for credit in 2016. Opponents predicted irreparable harm to the quality of experiential legal education, arguing that allowing students to be directly paid for credit-bearing field placements could undermine their educational value. But those who adopted paid policies early have not regretted it. In fact, a published empirical examination on paid legal externships found that they were just as good as, if not better than, unpaid ones.

The ABA recently doubled down on its position. In August, the ABA House of Delegates adopted Resolution 514, pushing law schools that have not lifted their bans on paid externships to do so. It also urged legal employers to actually pay students, noting that such compensation promotes “a culture of respect for student labor.” Since many legal placements are at for-profit institutions, or government and nonprofit organizations with sizable budgets, the ask is not unreasonable.

As more employers recognize that pay is essential to attract and retain diverse talent, law schools are falling in line. In its third survey report on this issue (which I co-authored), the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) found that, in 2023, 57 percent of responding law schools allowed paid externships, up from just 34 percent in 2018. And nearly one-third of others were considering changing their policies.

But not all students are benefiting from these liberalized policies. Regional norms vary widely, with upward of 71 percent of Pacific Coast and 86 percent of Southwest and Upper Plains law schools allowing pay, compared to fewer than 40 percent of law schools in the South. And it’s not just students in the South being left behind. Students at tier-four law schools are now the least likely to benefit from policies that allow for paid field placements, with little momentum toward reform.

At the heart is a perception problem that allowing pay is distasteful and will cause reputational damage to the law school. And with curricular reform generally requiring faculty approval, many program administrators have little leverage over law faculty largely out of touch with their students’ economic realities. Given the rapid pace of change and mounting positive evidence, this ABA resolution might finally push some law school administrators off the fence.

Even with more flexible policies, only six law schools responding to the 2023 CLEA survey said that a majority of their student externs receive pay. But the paradigm can shift, and relatively quickly. I direct the legal externship program at the University of Baltimore, where—through a combination of direct pay and state public service funding—87 percent of our fall 2024 law school externs are paid. And we only lifted the ban on pay two years ago. Both students and employers report that pay is improving the quality of work and leading to more long-term jobs.

With the ability to earn money doing legal work by day, students are able to study at night rather than start their DoorDash shifts. And students with more time to study should make all professors sleep better at night.

Rising costs of living and increasing student housing rates have exacerbated college retention efforts as campus leaders look to tackle a rising concern: basic needs insecurity.  

A lack of essential resources such as food, housing and clothing and general financial strain are two of the top reasons students say they leave college.  

To address this issue and provide resources to students, the University of Houston opened its Center for Student Advocacy and Community in 2020, which houses some of the university’s essential needs programs.

In this episode, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with the University of Houston’s Center for Student Advocacy and Community director, Michael Crook, and associate director, Kevin Nguyen, to learn more about how the center operates, the ties between basic needs and student success and some of the center’s future goals. 

Listen to the episode here and learn more about The Key here.  

Read a transcript of the podcast here. 

In July, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland applied to hold a vigil on Oct. 7. The university granted the application but, after receiving numerous complaints, made a threat assessment, found “no immediate or active threat,” then still canceled the event—and, in an extraordinary and unlawful move, banned all expressive events on campus that are not university-sponsored on that date.

This may be the most egregious example of universities trying to appease pro-Israel forces by preventing protests against Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, but as students return to campus, colleges are rewriting policies that will have dire consequences on university life for years to come.

In a historic first, New York University changed its student code of conduct policy last month to make Zionist—a religious nationalist ideology—a protected identity, not unlike being Black or female. The new policy—which NYU claims is not new at all—details at length that it is now prohibited and punishable to refuse to work with a Zionist, ostracize Zionists or disseminate tropes about Zionists. These rules also apply off campus.

At Columbia University, the administration recently released recommendations from an antisemitism task force that stipulated that student groups “should have a robust consultation process before issuing statements or joining coalitions” and decried that groups “should not issue statements unrelated to their missions.” (This was in response to a number of social justice, identity-based and other student groups putting out statements critical of Israel and joining Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of groups organizing on campus.) The task force also recommended that Columbia use a highly problematic definition of antisemitism that includes “certain double standards applied to Israel” for “pedagogy and training purposes,” including in new mandatory antibias training for teaching assistants.

Universities, public and private, are bombarding students with reminders on time, place and manner restrictions—First Amendment parlance that is typically used to ensure that the state only restrict speech in a viewpoint-neutral manner, but that has instead been wielded like sledgehammers to limit protest activity and punish deviance after colleges have supposedly neutrally amended their policies to limit the exact type of speech activity used by pro-Palestinian activists.

In the same breath, colleges claim that they remain committed to academic freedom, the right to protest and freedom of expression. In another extreme example, University of Wisconsin at Madison updated its expressive activity policy in a manner seemingly straight out of 1984, banning any speech activity short of “individuals speaking directly to one another” within 25 feet of a building, a policy UWM constitutional law professor Howard Schweber called “clearly unconstitutional” because it covers “an enormous and almost incalculable amount of First Amendment–protected expression in ways that have nothing to do with ensuring access to university buildings.”

Indeed, my office, Palestine Legal, is receiving a surge of reports of students being censored and punished as they return to school, often under the pretext that support for Palestinian rights (or wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, or scarves) violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by creating a hostile environment for Jews, even though Jewish students are at the center of many of the protests and wear Palestinian scarves. Often, no reason is given.

On one campus, students were slapped with conduct violations for writing an op-ed discussing a Gaza encampment in positive ways. Potlucks for Palestine have been canceled. Professors who reference Gaza or Palestine in their courses are told those courses are not fit for the curriculum, or having their syllabi scrutinized—or turned over to Congress in a manner reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Adjuncts have been fired. Tenure-track professors suspended. Tenured professors investigated.

None of these ham-fisted actions are likely to stop the growing opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza, though that is what they are no doubt designed to do.

Students and professors are watching a genocide being live-streamed before their eyes. Though many Israel supporters eschew the word, it is a term based in fact and law, and administrators should understand what is galvanizing students and professors to act. Genocide and Holocaust scholars are calling what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide. The International Court of Justice and a U.S. federal court ruled it might be a genocide, and the ICJ is investigating further. Students are aware of this and know their colleges are complicit in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, which is why they are calling for divestment, as they did during South African apartheid. Repression did not stop students from noisy, discomforting, controversial protests of the Vietnam War, and it will not stop students from protesting the U.S.-backed war on Gaza.

Administrator anxiety over campus protests is understandable, given opposition from powerful donors, but knee-jerk acquiescence to Israel supporters will not only not make the “problem” of campus protests for Palestinian human rights go away, but it could have immense ramifications for other disenfranchised groups wishing to speak.

Such policies could open the door to other ethno-nationalist ideologies receiving protection, as Zionism has at NYU. For example, Hindu nationalists could file discrimination complaints against Dalit students for criticizing the caste system, citing Hinduphobia. Right-wing Christian groups could file bias complaints against LGBTQ+ or feminist students for “ostracizing” those who express antitrans or antichoice views.

Already, white nationalists feel oppressed and discriminated against by DEI—often code for Black people rightly having a place in society. Will white students who oppose integration or don’t believe slavery was so bad be able to invoke antibias laws against a Black student who wishes not to be in a study group with said white student—or calls such views racist on social media, or in a public park?

And what does it mean to prohibit “certain double standards applied to Israel” in classroom discussions and lectures, and who decides? How many other countries need to be criticized before Israel is mentioned? Are rights groups like Amnesty International that have accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians applying double standards to Israel? How would this even work on a course on Israel and Palestine? Would a Palestinian student be subject to disciplinary hearings for mentioning that Israel killed a cousin in Gaza?

What is often missing from the conversation is how all of this is also racist and discriminatory against Palestinians—the only group that is forbidden from talking about their oppressor without first mentioning an undisclosed number of other nations engaged in similar bad acts.

Moreover, rewriting policies and subsequently expelling students for small deviations is not good for the university. One only need to look at Florida, which both passed a law forbidding universities from spending money on activities and clubs promoting DEI and also attempted to summarily ban Students for Justice in Palestine from all campuses last fall.

For administrators looking to wield time, place and manner restrictions like a cudgel against students (or their allied professors), ask yourselves, would the same action with any other message be treated this way? Students know how climate justice protesters calling for divestment—who also occupied buildings and engaged in sit-ins in previous years—were listened to rather than handcuffed. They have heard of their college’s notable traditions of social justice and have seen images of protesters from a bygone era brandished on websites. They see how quick administrators are to issue draconian punishments without notice or hearings, pointing to time, place or manner or other rules when it comes to protests against Israel’s genocide—while breaking their own rules on due process or expression. There are two words for this, and it is called viewpoint discrimination—and it violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the highest law of the land.

And while private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, the vast majority have made commitments to free expression and are bound to apply their policies in a nondiscriminatory manner.

It does not have to be this way. Several colleges have actually sat down to talk to their students, listened to their proposals and/or agreed to their demands, such as improving transparency in investments, extending invitations to students to speak to trustees about divestment —or actually divesting from companies aiding Israel’s violations.

There will be pressure to censor and punish. Donors have pulled funding. Congress is issuing subpoenas requiring colleges turn over records of “anti-Israel” speech and activity. The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University have all resigned as a result of how they handled campus support for the Palestinian cause.

On top of that, pro-Israel groups are flooding colleges with engineered complaints, lawsuits and legal threats demanding that universities punish and stop speech activity that causes discomfort to those Jewish students who support Israel’s war in Gaza and other policies toward the Palestinians. These lawsuits are often designed to get courts and universities to redefine what it means to be Jewish, by claiming that Zionism is a core part of Jewish identity—even though many Jews are non- or anti-Zionist—thus making speech critical of Zionism and Zionists punishable. Indeed, many of the targets of antisemitism complaints are Jewish themselves.

When it comes to the future of freedom of speech and academic inquiry on U.S. campuses, Palestine is the canary in the coal mine. This year, administrators must choose: Do they want their legacy to be one of kowtowing to donors and Congress or standing up for academic freedom, freedom of expression and an antiwar protest movement that future generations will no doubt view as a righteous one?

Internet giants have been urged to block advertisements for contract cheating websites by a global alliance of higher education regulators.

The Global Academic Integrity Network (GAIN), representing 40 standards agencies, has written to platforms including Google, X and LinkedIn, urging them to “take a stand and join the fight against academic dishonesty” by blocking links to essay mills, which allow students to pay someone to write an assignment on their behalf.

Many leading sectors have passed laws outlawing contract cheating, including England, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, as well as several U.S. states—with legislation often explicitly banning the advertising of such services.

But GAIN’s open letter warns that recent years “have witnessed a proliferation in the marketing and promotion of online cheating services across digital platforms.”

It invites internet giants to form a partnership with higher education regulators to review and uphold community guidelines on essay mills, arguing that this would “significantly reduce the visibility and impact of essay mills and contract cheating services and send a powerful message worldwide about the value of legitimate academic achievements.”

Warning that essay mills undermine “students’ learning and their qualifications,” the letter says they have “proliferated across borders and become a global problem.”

“This is not an issue which educators and institutions can tackle alone. It is the shared responsibility of all—from tech companies to regulators, individual higher education institutions and learners—to address this challenge,” the letter says.

“It is only through a more systematic, global approach and unified action that we can hope to enhance and safeguard the integrity of academic quality and qualifications, and protect student well-being and society’s trust in the professions we rely upon.”

Following the passing of England’s law banning contract cheating in 2022, Alex Burghart, who was then the skills minister, wrote to search providers warning them that they would be “facilitating an illegal activity” if they continued to show ads for essay mills.

That same year, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) said it had managed to block Australian access to 40 contract cheating websites that were collectively attracting almost half a million visits every month.

TEQSA has founded the new network, along with Quality and Qualifications Ireland. Other member organizations include the U.K.’s Quality Assurance Agency, France’s High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and Canada’s Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board.

However, universities are already facing fresh questions about how to protect academic integrity in the age of generative artificial intelligence, amid signs that essay mills are having to shift their business models in the face of more students using the likes of ChatGPT to generate answers that rival the standard on offer from contract cheating sites.

Outgoing University of Arizona president Robert Robbins is officially leaving his role next month but will continue to collect a paycheck through July 2026, The Arizona Daily Star reported.

While the Arizona Board of Regents is reportedly still in legal discussions over his pay and responsibilities, ABOR told the newspaper it would “honor the terms of President Robbins’ contract.” Robbins currently earns a base salary of $734,407 a year. His pay was cut by 10 percent in March, amid a $177 million deficit that upended the university’s finances.

It is unclear whether Robbins will see any salary reduction through the duration of his contract or if he will have a faculty position at Arizona.

Robbins announced in April that he planned to step down when a new president was hired. ABOR recently hired University of Vermont president Suresh Garimella as U of A’s next leader.

University leaders have introduced various cost-cutting measures to shrink the budget deficit, which was estimated at $52 million in April. They include freezes on hiring, travel, compensation and construction projects, as well as the centralization of some departments. Officials have variously blamed the financial issues on a flawed budget model, an accounting error, overspending on strategic initiatives, excessive tuition discounting, inflation and the coronavirus pandemic.

The hunted becomes the hunter.

The Pac-12 Conference, whose ranks were depleted when most of its members bolted for more money from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conferences a year ago, on Thursday sought to breathe new life into the league by, in turn, snagging four members from the Mountain West Conference.

Only Oregon State and Washington State University remained in the Pac-12 after last summer’s defections, leading many to speculate that the West Coast league would no longer be viable as a freestanding conference—and would certainly no longer qualify as one of the autonomous Power Five leagues. Many expected the two universities to try to find a new home in one of the remaining four major college football leagues, but the decision to try to rebuild the Pac-12 suggests that they failed in that quest.

Instead, they announced Thursday that the conference would add Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State Universities and California State University, Fresno, from the Mountain West, beginning in 2026. That puts the Pac-12 membership at six, two short of what the league would need to requalify for NCAA membership after a two-year grace period ends.

“The collective six universities will collaboratively chart additional membership and other future conference considerations,” the Pac-12 said in a statement.

This set of moves will almost certainly spur other additional rounds of money-driven conference reshuffling as the Pac-12 continues to expand and the Mountain West seeks to replenish its ranks.

Traditional first-year students face a variety of transitions as they enter higher education, one significant change being a greater sense of autonomy as they move away from home.

Researchers at Washington State University wanted to understand how continued parental support during college could help mitigate negative health factors associated with starting college, such as increased stress, anxiety, depression and high-risk alcohol use.

The study of over 300 first-year college students found that those who did engage with their parents regularly were more likely to have a positive parent-student relationship, but only if the student reached out first.

The research offers insight into potential areas of strain or support that can improve parent-based interventions focused on promoting healthier parent-student relationships, which is tied to student success, according to the study.

The background: A 2024 survey of college students and parents, conducted by YouGov on behalf of UnitedHealthcare, found disparities between students’ mental health struggles and parents’ perceptions.

While 41 percent of college students said they’d experienced depression, only 18 percent of parents thought their children had ever been depressed. College students were less likely than their parents to say student-parent conversations around mental health were caring, supportive or empathetic, as well.

Previous research points to high-quality, supportive parent-student relationships and the positive connection to student success both during and after college, including less academic, social and emotional stress; increased functioning; and decreased feelings of loneliness, according to the research article.

The study: WSU researchers Jennifer Duckworth, Katherine Forsythe, Brittany Cooper and Laura Hill, alongside Matthew Bumpus, director of research and community impact at the Innovia Foundation, evaluated daily parent-student communication and how that impacted their relationship. The researchers looked at five factors: frequency, initiation of communication, modality, content and students’ perception of the relationship.

Initiation of communication is an important factor because it distinguishes between parental monitoring and voluntary disclosure from the child. Helicopter parenting, or hyperinvolved and overcontrolling behaviors, can be a risk factor for increased depression and anxiety among college students, whereas frequent communication is a positive outcome.

The demographics of students and parents can also highlight differences in communication. Female students are more likely to communicate frequently with parents compared to their male peers, and students from continuing-generation families are more likely to receive advice about the college transition compared to their first-generation peers.

Methodology: First-year WSU students and parents were recruited for the study prior to the start of the academic year, and all completed a baseline survey prior to the first day of classes. The survey sample includes 367 first-year undergraduates (ages 17 to 19) who completed at least one of seven daily surveys. Students were compensated up to $30 if they completed every survey.

Researchers quantified the data through days, asking students what they spoke about from the time they woke up to when they went to sleep, how many times they communicated with their parents, for how long and through what modalities, among other questions. Therefore, most results are calculated as percentages of days.

Results: On average, students communicated with a parent three out of four days for an average time of 25 minutes. When communicating with parents, most days students used text (68 percent of days) or phone calls (45 percent of days).

Parents gave advice around 40 percent of the days that they communicated with students. The most common conversation topics were studying or grades (48 percent of days), mental health (41 percent of days), or their friends and relationships (36 percent). Less common topics were drinking or substance use (14 percent of days) or time management (16 percent of days).

Female students were more likely to say they communicated with their parents than their male peers and to spend more time in those daily communications. Male students were more likely to say their parents initiated conversations with them.

Also on trend with previous studies, first-gen learners perceived their conversations with parents as less supportive compared to their classmates’. First-gen and students from racially and ethnically minoritized backgrounds also reported being honest less frequently with their parents and feeling less parental closeness at the baseline.

On average, more minutes spent communicating with parents was associated with increased positive feelings about the student’s relationship with the parent. Each day with some form of communication resulted in the student feeling more positive about their relationship, as well, particularly if interactions were longer or more frequent.

How the parent communicated was reflected in students’ feelings, too. Greater parental initiation of communication was associated with decreased positive feelings of the student-parent relationship, but perceived support could influence relationship perceptions positively.

So what? As higher education leaders look to increase student support and consider the role of parents and guardians in that work, researchers identified some trends that could be applied to institutional considerations.

• Students want support. Students reported feeling more positive sentiments toward their parents when they offered advice or discussed studying and grades, as well as discussion of friends and relationships. This could point to college students wanting their parents to be interested in their lives, researchers theorize. Family programming that looks to support students on their academic journey and new college experiences could be one way to emphasize this type of conversation. Alabama A&M University created parent webinars to help guide family members through the academic year to better support their learner.
• Inequities exist in on-campus connection. Continuing-generation students and ethnic and racial majority students were more likely to say they had in-person interactions with their parents, which researchers presume was tied to on-campus events. WSU has a tradition of Dads’ Weekend, which invites fathers to the university to participate in campus-led programming with their student. Lower first-gen and ethnic and racial minority participation could reflect lower levels of connection to university programming or less opportunity to travel to campus, which is something event coordinators can consider as they create parent-focused events. Duquesne University created a parents’ newsletter to make family members aware of upcoming events and other important details they may need.
• Texting communication is popular. The average student said they texted with their parents. This provides an opportunity for higher ed leaders to use texts for interventions and programming around student-parent relationships.

Get more content like this directly to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.