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Tag: Higher education

  • With college bills due soon, families should know the risks of private student loans

    With college bills due soon, families should know the risks of private student loans

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    Carlo Prearo | Istock | Getty Images

    Max out federal aid first

    People should consider taking out a private loan only when they have reached the federal student loan limits and still need additional education financing, Kantrowitz said. (The most an undergraduate can borrow in government loans in an academic year is typically $12,500.)

    But, Kantrowitz said, “borrowing private loans may be a sign of overborrowing, so they should do so with caution.”

    One rule of thumb is that students shouldn’t borrow more in college than they expect to earn as their starting salary. You can look up annual average incomes for different occupations at the U.S. Department of Labor’s website.

    Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group for federal and private lenders, said private student loans can fill the gap for those who’ve exhausted federal aid and scholarships.

    “But you need to do your research like with any other loan, and make sure to never borrow more than you absolutely need,” Buchanan said.

    Scrutinize repayment terms and protections

    Federal student loans offer a variety of protections, including forgiveness programs and interest-pausing forbearances, that most private lenders do not provide, said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit. 

    “We almost always advise against private loans,” Mayotte said in an earlier interview.

    She also described severe terms private lenders may enforce.

    “If you cannot make the payments, the lender can sue to get access to wage garnishment, asset seizure such as bank accounts, and that’s for both the borrower and the cosigner,” Mayotte said.

    As Mayotte pointed out, many private lenders require students to get a cosigner who is equally liable for the debt. If payment challenges arise, both people are on the hook.

    “I hear from borrowers and cosigners weekly who cannot afford the payments, and there’s just not any options I can give them,” she said.

    Pay attention to interest rates

    Private student loans can come with fixed or variable interest rates. Your rate can depend on you or your cosigner’s credit score, income and financial history.

    “Generally, borrowers should prefer a fixed rate in a rising-rate environment, even though the variable rates may start off lower,” Kantrowitz said. “Variable interest rates have nowhere to go but up.”

    Either way, the rates on private loans can be pricey.

    “I’ve heard of interest rates as high as 18% on private student loans,” Kantrowitz said.

    Official estimates on the average interest rates on private student loans range from 4% to 15%, according to the Education Data Initiative. For comparison, federal student loans for undergraduates currently come with a 5.5% interest rate.

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  • Florida’s feud with the College Board’s AP Psychology course explained | CNN

    Florida’s feud with the College Board’s AP Psychology course explained | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A long-simmering feud between the College Board, the non-profit that administers Advanced Placement courses, and Florida’s Department of Education became public this week, as officials argued over whether the Advanced Placement Psychology course could be taught in Florida without breaking state laws.

    In Florida, students are prohibited from learning about sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom.

    But the College Board says these lessons are a core component of the AP Psychology course and have refused to change the curriculum.

    On Thursday, the College Board announced that unless AP Psychology is taught in its entirety – including lessons on sexuality and gender – “the “AP Psychology” designation cannot be utilized on student transcripts.”

    The future of the course appeared to be in jeopardy until, late Friday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., informed school superintendents that students will be able to take the class “in its entirety” but only if the course is taught “in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate.”

    The public scuffle over the AP Psychology course is just the latest installment in an ongoing feud between the College Board and Florida education officials over what subjects can be taught in the state’s classrooms. Let’s discuss how we got here.

    In July, a new law came into effect in Florida that banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in pre-K through the 8th grade. For high school students, instruction must be “according to state standards,” the Board of Education said.

    But over the last year, Florida’s education officials have amended state standards to effectively ban all students from learning about sexual orientation and gender identity.

    The changes are in line with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vow to eradicate so-called “woke” gender ideology from Florida’s classrooms.

    In 2022, the governor signed a bill titled “Parental Rights in Education,” which prohibited discussion of gender and sexuality issues in kindergarten through third grade. The bill also gave parents the right to take legal action if a school violates the law. DeSantis has since amended the law to prohibit instruction on sexuality and gender from pre-K through the eighth grade.

    The governor has said he believes parents should “have a fundamental role in the education, health care and well-being of their children.”

    Supporters say the bill allows parents to decide when to talk to their children about LGBTQ+ topics instead of the schools. But critics have dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law and say it will further marginalize LGBTQ+ students.

    The College Board’s AP Psychology course is organized into nine units of study. The unit on developmental psychology includes lessons on gender and sexual orientation.

    According to the College Board, the course asks students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.”

    These lessons are now considered illegal under Florida law.

    In June, Board of Education officials sent a letter to the College Board requesting the non-profit “conduct a thorough review” of all Advanced Placement courses to ensure they were compliant with Florida law.

    In a statement, the College Board equated the request to censorship.

    “(We) will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics. Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline,” the non-profit said.

    Advanced Placement courses are standardized to ensure students who pass the final exam can transfer college credits to participating colleges and universities nationwide. The College Board has said all required topics, including sexual orientation and gender identity, must be included for the course to be designated advanced placement and count toward college credit.

    This isn’t the first time the College Board has sparred with the Florida Board of Education over what can be taught in Advanced Placement classes.

    Earlier this year, DeSantis rejected the non-profit’s AP African American Studies course because it included lessons on reparations, Black queer studies, and the Movement for Black Lives.

    The College Board initially attempted to revise the course framework, but the decision sparked outrage among academics and activists who said students should learn the “full history” of the Black experience in America.

    “We have learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies and know that we must be clear from the outset where we stand,” the non-profit later said in a statement.

    With days to go until students return to school, the College Board announced it would not remove AP Psychology lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. Instead, the non-profit advised school districts to “not to offer AP Psychology until Florida reverses their decision and allows parents and students to choose to take the full course.”

    Florida education officials responded by accusing the non-profit of “hurting Florida students.”

    It is unclear how the state’s directive to teach the course “in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate,” will be enforced.

    “AP Psychology is and will remain in the course directory making it available to Florida students,” Diaz said in a statement.

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  • Condoleezza Rice Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Condoleezza Rice Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Condoleezza Rice, former US secretary of state.

    Birth date: November 14, 1954

    Birth place: Birmingham, Alabama

    Birth name: Condoleezza Rice

    Father: John Wesley Rice Jr., minister and dean

    Mother: Angelena (Ray) Rice, a high school teacher

    Education: University of Denver, B. A., 1974; University of Notre Dame, Master’s degree, 1975; University of Denver, Ph.D., 1981

    Name is from the Italian “con dolcezza” meaning “with sweetness.”

    She enrolled in the University of Denver at the age of 15, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. at the age of 19.

    At the University of Denver, she studied under Josef Korbel, the father of Madeleine Albright.

    Has served on the boards of Dropbox, Chevron, Charles Schwab, the University of Notre Dame, and the Rand Corporation, among others.

    She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

    As a professor at Stanford, she won the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

    1981 – Appointed to the faculty of Stanford University as a professor of political science.

    1986 – Serves as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while also an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

    1989 – Appointed Special Assistant to President George H. W. Bush for National Security Affairs.

    March 1991 – Resigns as Senior Director of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

    1993 – Becomes the first woman and the first African-American to become provost of Stanford University. She was also the youngest person ever appointed provost.

    June 1999 – Resigns as Provost of Stanford University but remains a faculty member.

    January 22, 2001-2005 – National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush. She is the first woman to hold this post.

    October 5, 2003 – The White House announces the formation of the Iraqi Stabilization Group, headed by Rice. The group will consist of four coordinating committees: counter-terrorism, economic development, political affairs, and media relations. The committees will be headed by four of Rice’s deputies and will include representatives from the CIA and the under-secretaries from the State, Defense and Treasury Departments.

    April 8, 2004 – Rice testifies in public, under oath before the 9-11 Commission after weeks of requests for her to do so. She has previously met with the Commission in private.

    November 16, 2004 – President Bush announces his nomination of Rice as secretary of state.

    November 20, 2004 – Rice is released from Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC., after undergoing a uterine fibroid embolization the day before.

    2004-2007 – Time Magazine names Rice as one of the World’s Most Influential People.

    January 26, 2005 – Confirmed as US secretary of state by a vote of 85 to 13 in the Senate. She is the first African-American woman to hold this position.

    January 28, 2005-January 20, 2009 – Serves as the 66th US Secretary of State.

    July 24, 2006 – Arrives in the Middle East to discuss a peace plan between Israel and Lebanon after violence erupts.

    August 16, 2008 – Oversees a cease-fire agreement between Russia and Georgia.

    September 5, 2008 – Meets with Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, the first visit by a US secretary of state to Libya since 1953.

    January 28, 2009 – Stanford University announces that Rice will return “as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.”

    February 2009 – Agrees to a three-book deal with Crown Publishers starting with a memoir about her years in the George W. Bush Administration.

    November 2009 – Is a founding partner of the RiceHadley Group (now Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC), an advisory firm, along with former George W. Bush Administration National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

    July 28, 2010 – Plays the piano during a performance with the “Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin and the Philadelphia Orchestra for a charity event to raise money for inner city music education.

    October 12, 2010 – Rice’s memoir, “Extraordinary, Ordinary People,” is released. The book details Rice’s childhood in segregated Alabama.

    November 1, 2011 – Rice’s memoir, “No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington,” is published.

    August 20, 2012 – Along with financier Darla Moore, becomes the first woman admitted as a member to Augusta National Golf Club.

    October 16, 2013 – Rice is announced as one of 13 members of the College Football Playoff selection committee.

    May 3, 2014 – Rice declines to speak at Rutgers University’s May 18th commencement after students and faculty opposed her support of the Iraq war.

    May 9, 2017 – Rice’s book, “Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom,” is published.

    October 11, 2017 – It is announced that Rice has agreed to chair the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball.

    May 2018 – Rice and co-author Amy Zegart’s book, “Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity,” is published.

    January 28, 2020 – Rice announces she will be the next director of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank.

    September 1, 2020 – Rice assumes her position as director of the Hoover Institution.

    July 11, 2022 – The Denver Broncos announce Rice is joining the NFL team’s new ownership group.

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  • Schools are teaching ChatGPT, so students aren’t left behind | CNN Business

    Schools are teaching ChatGPT, so students aren’t left behind | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    When college administrator Lance Eaton created a working spreadsheet about the generative AI policies adopted by universities last spring, it was mostly filled with entries about how to ban tools like ChatGPT.

    But now the list, which is updated by educators at both small and large US and international universities, is considerably different: Schools are encouraging and even teaching students how to best use these tools.

    “Earlier on, we saw a knee–jerk reaction to AI by banning it going into spring semester, but now the talk is about why it makes sense for students to use it,” Eaton, an administrator at Rhode Island-based College Unbound, told CNN.

    He said his growing list continues to be discussed and shared in popular AI-focused Facebook groups, such as Higher Ed Discussions of Writing and AI, and the Google group AI in Education.

    “It’s really helped educators see how others are adapting to and framing AI in the classroom,” Eaton said. “AI is still going to feel uncomfortable, but now they can now go in and see how a university or a range of different courses, from coding to sociology, are approaching it.”

    With more experts expecting the continued application of artificial intelligence, professors now fear ignoring or discouraging the use of it will be a disservice to students and leave many behind when entering the workforce.

    Since it was made available in late November, ChatGPT has been used to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. It has drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists and passed exams at esteemed universities. The technology, and similar tools such as Google’s Bard, is trained on vast amounts of online data in order to generate responses to user prompts. While they gained traction among users, the tools also raised some concerns about inaccuracies, cheating, the spreading of misinformation and the potential to perpetuate biases.

    According to a study conducted by higher education research group Intelligent.com, about 30% of college students used ChatGPT for schoolwork this past academic year and it was used most in English classes.

    Jules White, an associate professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University, believes professors should be explicit in the first few days of school about the course’s stance on using AI and that it should be included it in the syllabus.

    “It cannot be ignored,” he said. “I think it’s incredibly important for students, faculty and alumni to become experts in AI because it will be so transformative across every industry in demand so we provide the right training.”

    Vanderbilt is among the early leaders taking a strong stance in support of generative AI by offering university-wide training and workshops to faculty and students. A three-week 18-hour online course taught by White this summer was taken by over 90,000 students, and his paper on “prompt engineering” best practices is routinely cited among academics.

    “The biggest challenge is with how you frame the instructions, or ‘prompts,’” he said. “It has a profound impact on the quality of the response and asking the same thing in various ways can get dramatically different results. We want to make sure our community knows how to effectively leverage this.”

    Prompt engineering jobs, which typically require basic programming experience, can pay up to $300,000.

    Although White said concerns around cheating still exist, he believes students who want to plagiarize can still seek out other methods such as Wikipedia or Google searches. Instead, students should be taught that “if they use it in other ways, they will be far more successful.”

    Diane Gayeski, a professor of communications at Ithaca College, said she plans to incorporate ChatGPT and other tools in her fall curriculum, similar to her approach in the spring. She previously asked students to collaborate with the tool to come up with interview questions for assignments, write social media posts and critique the output based on the prompts given.

    “My job is to prepare students for PR, communications and social media managers, and people in these fields are already using AI tools as part of their everyday work to be more efficient,” she said. “I need to make sure they understand how they work, but I do want them to cite when ChatGPT is being used.”

    Gayeski added that as long as there is transparency, there should be no shame in adopting the technology.

    Some schools are hiring outside experts to teach both faculty and students about how to use AI tools. Tyler Tarver, a former high school principal who now teaches educators about tech tool strategies, said he’s made over 50 speeches at schools and conferences across Texas, Arkansas and Illinois over the past few months. He also offers an online three-hour training for educators.

    “Teachers need to learn how to use it because even if they never use it, their students will,” Tarver said.

    Tarver said that he teaches students, for example, how the tools can be used to catch grammar mistakes, and how teachers can use it to assist with grading. “It can cut down on teacher bias,” Tarver said.

    He argues teachers could grade students a certain way even if they’ve improved over time. By running an assignment through ChatGPT, and asking it to grade the sentence structure on a scale from one to 10, the response could “service as a second pair of eyes to make sure they’re not missing anything,” Tarver said.

    “That shouldn’t be the final grade — teachers shouldn’t use it to cheat or cut corners either — but it can help inform grading,” he said. “The bottom line is that this is like when the car was invented. You don’t want to be the last person in the horse and buggy.”

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  • Biden cancels $72 million in student loan debt for borrowers who went to for-profit Ashford University | CNN Politics

    Biden cancels $72 million in student loan debt for borrowers who went to for-profit Ashford University | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Even though President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was blocked by the Supreme Court earlier this year, his administration is moving forward with more targeted student debt cancellations allowed under existing programs.

    The Department of Education said Wednesday that it is canceling $72 million in federal student loan debt for more than 2,300 borrowers who attended the for-profit Ashford University in California.

    Altogether, the Biden administration has approved the cancellation of more than $116 billion of student loan debt for over 3.4 million people – about 1.1 million of whom are borrowers who were misled by a for-profit college and granted relief under a program known as borrower defense to repayment.

    This student debt forgiveness program has been in place for decades and allows people to apply for debt relief if they believe their college misled or defrauded them.

    “My administration won’t stand for colleges taking advantage of hardworking students and borrowers. As long as I am president, we will never stop fighting to deliver relief to borrowers who need it – like those who attended Ashford University,” Biden said in a statement.

    The Department of Education found that Ashford University made “numerous substantial misrepresentations” to borrowers between March 1, 2009, and April 30, 2020. The school is now known as the University of Arizona Global Campus.

    The Education Department’s review was based on evidence presented in court by the California Department of Justice during its successful lawsuit against the school and its parent company at the time, Zovio.

    The court ruled in favor of the state in March 2022, ordering a penalty of more than $22.37 million – which is the subject of an ongoing appeal.

    “As the California Department of Justice proved in court, Ashford relied extensively on high-pressure and deceptive recruiting tactics to lure students,” James Kvaal, the US under secretary of education, said in a press release.

    Borrowers whose debt relief applications have been approved due to this action can expect to receive an email in September. They will not have to make any payments on the loans being discharged when monthly payments resume in October after the expiration of the pandemic-related pause.

    Last year, Biden announced a plan to cancel up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for low- and middle-income borrowers. The proposal would have forgiven roughly $420 billion for tens of millions of borrowers, but it was knocked down by the Supreme Court and never took effect.

    The Biden administration has been successful in other efforts to provide narrower student debt relief. Not only has it made it easier to apply for debt cancellation under the borrower defense program, but it also expanded eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which wipes away outstanding debt for public sector workers after they make 10 years of qualifying payments.

    In August, the administration launched a new income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), that will reduce monthly payments and the amount paid back over time for eligible student loan borrowers.

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  • Displaced Afghan students face uncertain future as they await approval to come to US | CNN Politics

    Displaced Afghan students face uncertain future as they await approval to come to US | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    For a group of roughly two dozen displaced Afghan university students, the future feels uncertain.

    They’ve already uprooted their lives once, fleeing Kabul – where they were studying at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) – when Afghanistan fell back under Taliban rule and the university was shuttered two years ago.

    They were among the 110 AUAF students who were able to evacuate to Iraqi Kurdistan to continue studies at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani with the help of both universities, former Iraqi President Barham Salih, and a group called the Afghan Future Fund.

    Now, the 23 students are awaiting approval to come to the United States, where they have been accepted into universities and received scholarships through the Qatar Scholarship for Afghans Project to finish their undergraduate degrees or pursue graduate ones.

    “It’s been a year since my graduation. I’m still here, waiting,” one student in Iraq told CNN.

    “I am left with uncertainty now,” a second student said, telling CNN that they fear they will be left “in limbo.”

    CNN is not using the names of the students to protect their safety.

    More than 100 displaced Afghan students – 80 of whom were in Iraq – have already come to the US, where they are studying at more than 45 universities, according to sources familiar with the situation.

    The sources told CNN that most of the students are coming to the US as Priority 1 (P-1) refugees – a program they qualify for because of their affiliation with AUAF. The university received significant funding from the US government over the course of a decade and was targeted by suspected Taliban militants in a deadly 2016 attack. Its campus was seized by the Taliban almost immediately after the US military completed its withdrawal in August 2021.

    The 23 students who remain in Iraq have not received P-1 approval yet. Sources say this is likely due to a security review process.

    The students told CNN they don’t have any clear sense of when they will get approval to come to the US, and they are worried about what the continued delay means for their future.

    Those who spoke to CNN have already had to defer their enrollment once, and likely will have to do so again as the start of fall semester looms. The second student said they had lost admission at their first university in the US because they were unable to travel there and enroll.

    “This is basically my last hope,” this student said, noting they do not want to lose admission again.

    “I do not want to lose another year of my life,” the first student said.

    “I really want to study. I have worked really hard when I was in Afghanistan to get the chance of going to AUAF,” they said.

    “I’m never going to give up on education,” they added.

    “We Afghans lost almost everything, and this scholarship in the US is a very big opportunity for us,” a third student told CNN.

    Going back to Afghanistan is not an option for these students, particularly those who are female. This is why they have sought the P-1 refugee status, which would give them a pathway to settle in the US after university.

    The Taliban has enacted harsh restrictions against women and girls since coming back into power in two years ago. Girls and women have been barred from higher education and numerous work sectors; have been refused access to public spaces; have been ordered to cover themselves in public; and have had their travel abroad restricted.

    “Anything that women do in Afghanistan is banned right now. You cannot exist as a woman,” the first student said.

    For now, there are substantial efforts underway to try to get the students cleared to come to the US as soon as possible, with students reaching out to their prospective future members of Congress and advocates engaging with various agencies of the US government.

    A US State Department spokesperson said they are “aware of the Afghan students at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani,” but could not comment on individual cases.

    “Case processing in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program can be lengthy, however, we continue to prioritize processing cases of our Afghan allies and are working hard to speed up case processing across the USRAP,” the spokesperson said.

    Vance Serchuk, an Afghan Futures Fund board member, said that his organization and others like Education Above All, Qatar Fund For Development, and the Institute of International Education “are committed to helping displaced Afghan students from the American University complete their education and realize their potential in safety.”

    “These young people made the choice to attend the American university in Afghanistan at great risk to themselves; Americans now cannot be indifferent to their fate,” he said.

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  • Pathify Further Distances Itself From the Pack in H1 2023

    Pathify Further Distances Itself From the Pack in H1 2023

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    Pathify smashes past the 100 customer milestone as institutions look to revolutionize the student technology experience.


    DENVER, July 20, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Pathify — the only centralized user experience hub for higher ed — continued to set the pace in the ever-evolving higher ed digital experience race by flying well beyond the 100 customer milestone, while also maintaining a high level of operational efficiency. This coincides with many institutions needing to replace legacy portals over the next year.

    “With several established app companies appearing to shift focus away from higher ed, and a really well-established legacy portal being sunsetted in less than a year, our phone is basically ringing off the hook,” said Pathify’s Chief Revenue Officer Matt Hammond. “That said, I’m probably most proud of how we continue to build the company in a sustainable manner. It’s critical we maintain the health of the business through this surge and it’s really rewarding to have successfully made the transition from start-up to growth company.”

    Some of the schools contributing to this growth in the first half of 2023 include:

    • Grand Valley State University
    • Santa Barbara City College
    • Touro College
    • Nova Southeastern University
    • University of Southern Indiana
    • Des Moines Area Community College
    • Augusta University

    “This momentum absolutely sets the tone for the back half of the year and beyond,” said Pathify’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Chase Williams. “We have several incredible product releases planned that will be nothing short of transformative. Everything we do is designed to support our new and existing customers to reach levels of success they didn’t imagine possible.”

    Pathify fills the massive user experience void at the center of the higher education digital ecosystem, delivering a personalized user experience unifying technology, content, communications and people. Offering highly personalized experiences for users at every point in their journey, the Engagement Hub encourages system-agnostic integrations, collaborative social groups, personalized tasks and multi-channel communication with full web/mobile parity.

    The aforementioned institutions join existing customers such as Utah State University, Rutgers University, Brigham Young University — and many more.

    About Pathify

    Obsessed with making great technology while developing incredible long-term relationships with customers, Pathify remains hyper-focused on creating stellar experiences across the entire student lifecycle — from prospect to alumni. Delivering cloud-based, integration-friendly software designed to drive engagement, Pathify pushes personalized information, content, and resources to the right people, at the right time — on any device. Led by former higher ed executives, entrepreneurs, and technology leaders, the team at Pathify focuses every day on the values Impact, Wit, Contrast, Technique and Care. 

    Learn more at pathify.com.

    Source: Pathify

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  • Wesleyan To End Legacy Admissions In Light Of SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling

    Wesleyan To End Legacy Admissions In Light Of SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling

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    Wesleyan University’s president announced Wednesday that the school is formally eliminating its legacy admissions policy in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action.

    The prestigious Connecticut college’s decision follows outrage from Democrats, who say if the court insists on doing away with a program designed to help minorities access higher education after centuries of racial discrimination, then universities should also be banned from giving a leg up in the admissions process to children of alumni and donors.

    Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth said in his announcement Wednesday that while legacy status has played a “negligible role” in the private university’s admissions for many years, the school is officially ending the policy.

    “We still value the ongoing relationships that come from multi-generational Wesleyan attendance, but there will be no ‘bump’ in the selection process,” Roth said. “As has been almost always the case for a long time, family members of alumni will be admitted on their own merits.”

    Wesleyan “has never fixated on a checked box indicating a student’s racial identification or family affiliations,” Roth continued, but rather “taken an individualized, holistic view of an applicant’s lived experience—as seen through the college essay, high school record, letters of recommendation, and interactions with our community.”

    While it’s true that some top universities accept more legacy students each year than Black and Latino students combined, a Duke University study found that the “increase in diversity resulting from the elimination of legacy and athlete preferences pales in comparison to the diversity benefits stemming from racial preferences.”

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  • ‘Race neutral’ replaces affirmative action. What’s next? | CNN Politics

    ‘Race neutral’ replaces affirmative action. What’s next? | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    When the Supreme Court cut affirmative action out of college admissions programs Thursday, it did not outlaw the goal of achieving diversity, but it set a new “race-neutral” standard for considering applicants.

    That term – “race neutral” – does not appear in the opinion of the court, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, which states that colleges and universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin.”

    But when Roberts clarifies that students can still refer to their race in admissions essays, explaining challenges they’ve overcome, he and the majority are buying into the idea of race neutrality.

    Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote his own concurring opinion, uses the term “race neutral” repeatedly, offering it as an antidote to affirmative action.

    Pointing to efforts in California and Michigan to enroll diverse classes at top universities even after voters in those states ended affirmative action, Thomas says race-neutral policies can “achieve the same benefits of racial harmony and equality without any of the burdens and strife generated by affirmative action policies.”

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor shot back at Thomas and the majority, rejecting the term.

    “The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored,” she wrote.

    For more on this view, read this piece in The Atlantic by scholars Uma Jayakumar and Ibram Kendi: “‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal.’”

    If the experience of California and Michigan – where voters ended affirmative action programs years ago – is any indication, we can expect that the representation of Black and Latino students at top-level universities will fall.

    Those states argued in briefings to the court that their race-neutral efforts have not been completely successful, particularly at top-tier, flagship public schools, in creating environments that are inclusive for all.

    California has, according to its brief, tried race-neutral measures that “run the gamut from outreach programs directed at low-income students and students from families with little college experience, to programs designed to increase UC’s geographic reach, to holistic admissions policies.”

    While it has made strides, it says, there is a shortfall “especially apparent at UC’s most selective campuses, where African American, Native American, and Latinx students are underrepresented and widely report struggling with feelings of racial isolation.”

    In California, half of the college-age population – 18-24 – is Latino, according to data from the Public Policy Institute of California. Compare that with just 27% of enrollees for 2022 at the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses who the UC system categorizes as Hispanic/Latinx.

    On the other hand, less than 13% of the college-age population is Asian, compared with 38% of UC enrollees.

    A little more than quarter of college-age Californians are White, compared with 18% of UC enrollees.

    Five percent of UC enrollees are African American, which is about on par with the 5.6% of college-age Californians who are Black.

    The figures change in comparison with the system overall at UC Berkeley, the system’s flagship undergraduate campus, where a smaller portion of entrants in 2022 were categorized as African American / Black (3.6%) and Chicanx / Latinx (21.1%), and more were White (30.7%) and Asian (52.1%).

    It’s also interesting to note that the Supreme Court exempted military academies from the decision. They can, presumably, still utilize affirmative action even though they are the higher learning institutions over which the federal government has the most control. The court, according to the majority opinion, feels the academies have “potentially distinct interests.”

    Those interests were perhaps outlined by former military leaders who wrote a brief last year arguing affirmative action aided national security.

    Meanwhile, even though race is off the table as a determinative factor, schools like Harvard University can and still will very much take into account whether an applicant’s parents went there, how much their parents might be able to donate and whether an applicant can help their sports teams.

    “While the actual language of the Supreme Court will come across as very intellectualized and esoteric, as if in a classroom, in reality, how will this work?” wondered Laura Coates, CNN’s chief legal analyst, appearing on the network Thursday.

    “How will you be able to have certain color blindedness but then at the same time allowed to take into account one’s experiences when race has been a part of that? That’s the devil in the details of every affirmative action case.”

    CNN’s Nicquel Terry Ellis wrote about what the data suggests will happen:

    A study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that colleges and universities are less likely to meet or exceed their current levels of racial diversity in the absence of race-conscious admissions. They are also less likely to reflect the racial makeup of the population graduating from the nation’s high schools.

    Zack Mabel, a researcher for Georgetown’s Center for Education and the Workforce, told her race-neutral practices have not driven the diversity many colleges hoped for, and some students are simply not applying. Read more from Terry Ellis.

    Creating a more equitable and representative workforce has been a public aim in corporate America, where companies have created diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, departments. Multiple corporations – from Apple to IKEA – asked the Supreme Court to allow affirmative action to continue so that their potential workforce is more diverse.

    But efforts to recruit students of color in the race-neutral, post-affirmative-action world will be complicated in states where there is a growing backlash to diversity efforts.

    CNN’s Leah Asmelash recently wrote:

    More than a dozen state legislatures have introduced or passed bills reining in DEI programs in colleges and universities, claiming the offices eat up valuable financial resources with little impact.

    “The ruling by the Court’s six Republican-appointed justices prevents higher-education institutions from considering race in admissions precisely as kids of color, for the first time, comprise a majority of the nation’s high-school graduates,” writes Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN.

    He suggests the decision will “widen the mismatch between a youth population that is rapidly diversifying and a student body that is likely to remain preponderantly white in the elite colleges and universities that serve as the pipeline for leadership in the public and private sectors.”

    Rather than ease social tension, he argues, the new race-neutral requirement could actually propel it.

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  • Largest Private Scholarship Provider Responds to Landmark Decision on Affirmative Action

    Largest Private Scholarship Provider Responds to Landmark Decision on Affirmative Action

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    Press Release
    •

    Jun 30, 2023 14:59 EDT

    Scholarship America President & CEO Mike Nylund has released the following statement in response to the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action and race-conscious admissions.


    MINNEAPOLIS, June 30, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    In response to the United States Supreme Court’s historic ruling curtailing race-conscious admissions decisions in higher education, Mike Nylund, president and CEO of Scholarship America, released the following statement.  

    “As colleges and universities evaluate and potentially redesign their admissions processes based on this week’s SCOTUS decision, private-sector scholarships will play a larger role in closing racial gaps in postsecondary education enrollment and completion.   

    “Research from Scholarship America and other industry leaders indicates scholarships have the biggest impact on graduation rates for Black, Indigenous, and Latino/a students with high financial need — but that today, these students are the least likely to benefit from private scholarships. In an effort to continue supporting these students in the wake of the decision, Scholarship America will continue our work to get as many scholarship dollars as we can to the students facing the most need.  

    “While the Court’s opinion did not directly address whether processes beyond admissions would be impacted by the Court’s decision, we understand that the impact of the ruling could potentially extend to prohibiting universities from considering race in awarding financial aid. As the nation’s largest provider of private scholarships, however, Scholarship America remains firmly committed to ensuring that students from all backgrounds have the ability to obtain a high-quality degree or credential.” 

    Scholarship America will continue working with our more than 1,000 partners — including over 100 companies on the Fortune 500 — to grow the role of private scholarships and create a new roadmap for directing funding to the students who need it most. To learn more, visit ScholarshipAmerica.org. 

    About Scholarship America 

    Scholarship America is a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate barriers to educational success so that any student can pursue their dream. Since it was founded in 1958, Scholarship America has distributed $5.1 billion to 3 million students, making it the nation’s largest private scholarship provider. Learn more at scholarshipamerica.org. 

    Source: Scholarship America

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  • Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges as unconstitutional

    Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges as unconstitutional

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    The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the affirmative action admission policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.

    The ruling is a massive blow to decades-old efforts to boost enrollment of minorities at American universities through policies that took into account applicants’ race.

    “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion, which all five of his fellow conservative justices joined in.

    Roberts wrote said that both Harvard’s and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

    “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” Roberts wrote, finding that the universities’ policies violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The clause bars states from denying people equal protection under the law.

    Protesters gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as affirmative action cases involving Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions are heard by the court in Washington on Monday, October 31, 2022.

    Bill Clark | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

    The chief justice added, however, that “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”

    Justice Clarence Thomas, a Black conservative who wrote a concurring opinion, said that the schools’ affirmative action admissions policies “fly In the face of our colorblind Constitution.”

    “Two discriminatory wrongs can not make a right,” wrote Thomas.

    In her dissent to the majority, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is Black, called the ruling “truly a tragedy for us all.”

    Her fellow liberal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said, “Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

    Sotomayor, calling the ruling “profoundly wrong” and “devastating,” said that the majority “holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits.”

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

    Getty Images

    In doing so, she argued the Supreme Court “cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

    Thursday’s ruling dealt with two separate, but related cases, one for Harvard, the other for UNC.

    In the Harvard case, the vote on the decision was 6-2, with Jackson taking no part in considering the case. Jackson last year during her Senate confirmation hearings agreed to recuse herself in the case involving Harvard, whose Board of Overseers she served on until early 2022.

    Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court before oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC.

    Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

    In the UNC case, the vote was 6-3, with Jackson participating in considering the case and dissenting with Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s third liberal.

    President Joe Biden said, “The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision.”

    “Discrimination still exists in America,” Biden said at the White House, repeating that phrase several times. “Today’s decision does not change that.”

    Asked by a reporter if “this a rogue court,” Biden paused at a door he was about to exit through, and was silent for several seconds.

    “This is not a normal one,” Biden finally said.

    People exit Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 29, 2023.

    Joseph Prezioso | AFP | Getty Images

    Harvard in a lengthy statement said, “We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.”

    But the statement added, “In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.”

    Harvard, which began classes in 1636, did not admit Black undergraduates until 1847, the university noted.

    UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, in a statement, said, “Carolina remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond.”

    “While not the outcome we hoped for, we will carefully review the Supreme Court’s decision and take any steps necessary to comply with the law,” Guskiewicz said.

    Jean Camejo, a student at the University of North Carolina, speaks on campus to Reuters about affirmative action as the Supreme Court weighs the issue of race-conscious admissions to colleges, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., March 28, 2023. 

    Jonathan Drake | Reuters

    Former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, in a statement said, “This is a great day for America.”

    “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be!” said Trump, who graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school like Harvard, after growing up the son of a wealthy New York real estate developer.

    CNBC Politics

    Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:

    In a footnote to the majority opinion in the case, Roberts indicated that the decision does not apply to the United States military academies.

    The Biden administration had filed a legal brief arguing that race-based admissions to American colleges further “compelling interests” at the military academies, Roberts noted.

    “No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context,” he wrote. “This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”

    NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson blasted the ruling, saying in a statement, “Today the Supreme Court has bowed to the personally held beliefs of an extremist minority.”

    “We will not allow hate-inspired people in power to turn back the clock and undermine our hard-won victories,” said Johnson.

    “The tricks of America’s dark past will not be tolerated. Let me be clear – affirmative action exists because we cannot rely on colleges, universities, and employers to enact admissions and hiring practices that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion. Race plays an undeniable role in shaping the identities of and quality of life for Black Americans.”

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  • StudentBridge and Full Measure Merge to Revolutionize Higher Education Recruitment and Enrollment

    StudentBridge and Full Measure Merge to Revolutionize Higher Education Recruitment and Enrollment

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    Two edtech trailblazers announced they are joining forces today, bringing colleges an unparalleled suite of enrollment lifecycle solutions.


    ATLANTA, June 6, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    As many higher education institutions struggle to recruit and retain students amid increased competition, StudentBridge announced today its merger with Full Measure Education. Combining the strengths of both companies, this union offers colleges and universities a streamlined, one-stop-shop approach for achieving their enrollment goals. 

    “Our companies have been closely aligned in mission, vision, and culture over the years as we’ve taken different approaches to solving some of the same challenges,” said Greg Davies, founder and CEO of Full Measure. “This merger presented a timely, natural opportunity to better support our education partners, the students they serve, and our employees.”

    Historically, both companies emphasized personalization and data, deploying differing highly effective methods that resonate with Gen Z. While StudentBridge focused on helping schools convert stealth visitors earlier in the funnel with authentic video-centric content, Full Measure prioritized engagement further down the funnel with direct messaging and influencer-style content.

    “What excites me about combining these companies is how highly complementary they are,” said Jonathan Clues, founder and CEO of StudentBridge. “I’ve known Greg Davies for years, giving me a chance to really get to know Full Measure and see how neatly their approach aligned with our own top-of-funnel efforts. By joining forces, we’re helping colleges and universities attract more, amaze more, and achieve more.”

    The resulting entity, which will retain the StudentBridge name, fuses authentic storytelling with industry-leading technology and personalized digital experiences to meet the unique needs of every enrollment team. This offers multiple benefits for institutions and students alike, including data-rich student profiles, simplified vendor management, and cohesive experiences across the student journey. 

    “We’re now able to better help colleges and universities consistently create memorable moments at more key conversion points that then become increasingly personalized based on students’ unique interests, needs, and goals,” said Davies.

    Summing up, Clues said, “Students have to navigate multiple waypoints in the search and decision-making stages. Our goal is to alleviate friction from that process to help them identify their perfect fit and for our partners to attract right-fit students who are more likely to stay and matriculate.”

    The StudentBridge headquarters will remain in Atlanta with Clues continuing as CEO and Davies assuming a board position.

    Those looking to learn more about the merger can schedule a meeting. 

    About StudentBridge

    Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with a global team of experts, StudentBridge fuses authentic storytelling with industry-leading technology and personalized digital experiences to help over 500 higher education institutions attract more, amaze more, and achieve more. Learn more at www.studentbridge.com. 

    About Full Measure

    Previously headquartered in Washington, D.C., Full Measure Education partnered with over 250 higher education institutions to employ a mobile-first approach that improves the student journey — from initial interest and touring campus to getting accepted and beyond. Learn more at www.fullmeasure.io.

    Source: StudentBridge

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  • Pathify Selected by Brigham Young University-Hawaii to Personalize Student Experience

    Pathify Selected by Brigham Young University-Hawaii to Personalize Student Experience

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    The institution plans to implement Pathify to optimize the digital campus experience for students.


    DENVER, May 18, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Pathify — the premier centralized user experience hub for higher ed — is honored to welcome Brigham Young University-Hawaii to their expanding community of partners committed to improving the student technology experience. The institution, which is part of the nationwide Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, plans to implement Pathify to optimize the digital experience for students.

    “We are excited about the many different features that the Pathify portal provides,” said Leilani Guerrero, Manager of Digital Communications at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. “Being able to make resources available by groups and communicate with those individual groups is very important when we have such a diverse and international student body with different needs. Pathify also allows us to provide a customizable repository of tools and allows for two-way communication between students and departments.”

    Pathify fills the massive user experience void at the center of the higher education digital ecosystem, delivering a personalized user experience unifying technology, content, communications and people. Offering highly personalized experiences for users at every point in their journey, the Engagement Hub encourages system-agnostic integrations, collaborative social groups, personalized tasks, and multi-channel communication with full web/mobile parity.

    “BYU-Hawaii represents a unique partner and use case for our platform,” said Matt Hammond, Chief Revenue Officer at Pathify. “Their unique campus environment and distinct institutional culture create an exciting opportunity for how they utilize Pathify to support their students. We can’t wait to see the awesome work they do!”

    BYU-Hawaii joins the Pathify customer community along other recent customers such as Howard Payne University, Aquinas College, and their sibling institution – Brigham Young University-Idaho.

    About Brigham Young University-Hawaii

    Brigham Young University-Hawaii is the preeminent international center of learning in the Pacific. Its small campus is a unique laboratory of intercultural leadership development, where a diverse population of 3,200 students representing over 70 countries live, study and work together. Small classes taught by expert faculty empower students to master a challenging and relevant curriculum. Affordable tuition, financial aid, and online study options make this valuable education more accessible. Operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a total BYU-Hawaii education involves not only intellectual learning and career preparation, but also moral, ethical, and spiritual enrichment. All the while, students enjoy living and learning in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Graduates go forth to serve, prepared to promote peace and prosperity as leaders worldwide.

    Learn more at byuh.edu.

    About Pathify

    Obsessed with making great technology while developing incredible long-term relationships with customers, Pathify remains hyper-focused on creating stellar experiences across the entire student lifecycle. Delivering cloud-based, integration-friendly software designed to drive engagement, Pathify pushes personalized content to the right people, at the right time — on any device. Pathify is led by former higher ed executives, entrepreneurs and technology leaders.

    Learn more at pathify.com.

    Source: Pathify

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  • The demographic makeup of the country’s voters continues to shift. That creates headwinds for Republicans | CNN Politics

    The demographic makeup of the country’s voters continues to shift. That creates headwinds for Republicans | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Demographic change continued to chip away at the cornerstone of the Republican electoral coalition in 2022, a new analysis of Census data has found.

    White voters without a four-year college degree, the indispensable core of the modern GOP coalition, declined in 2022 as a share of both actual and eligible voters, according to a study of Census results by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in electoral turnout.

    McDonald’s finding, provided exclusively to CNN, shows that the 2022 election continued the long-term trend dating back at least to the 1970s of a sustained fall in the share of the votes cast by working-class White voters who once constituted the brawny backbone of the Democratic coalition, but have since become the absolute foundation of Republican campaign fortunes.

    As non-college Whites have receded in the electorate over that long arc, non-White adults and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Whites with at least a four-year college degree, have steadily increased their influence. “This is a trend that is baked into the demographic change of the country, so [it] is likely going to accelerate over the next ten years,” says McDonald, author of the recent book “From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

    From election to election, the impact of the changing composition of the voter pool is modest. The slow but steady decline of non-college Whites, now the GOP’s best group, did not stop Donald Trump from winning the presidency in 2016 – nor does it preclude him from winning it again in 2024. And, compared to their national numbers, these non-college voters remain a larger share of the electorate in many of the key states that will likely decide the 2024 presidential race (particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and control of the Senate (including seats Democrats are defending in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.)

    But even across those states, these voters are shrinking as a share of the electorate. And McDonald’s analysis of the 2022 results shows that the non-college White share of the total vote is highly likely to decline again in 2024, while the combined share of non-Whites and Whites with a college degree, groups much more favorable to Democrats, is virtually certain to increase. The political effect of this decline is analogous to turning up the resistance on a treadmill: as their best group shrinks, Republicans must run a little faster just to stay in place.

    Especially ominous for Republicans is that the share of the vote cast by these blue-collar Whites declined slightly in 2022 even though turnout among those voters was relatively strong, while minority turnout fell sharply, according to McDonald’s analysis. The reason for those seemingly incongruous trends is that even solid turnout among the non-college Whites could not offset the fact that they are continuing to shrink in the total pool of eligible voters, as American society grows better-educated and more racially diverse.

    Given that minority turnout fell off, the fact that the non-college White share of the total 2022 vote still slightly declined “has to be a huge cause for concern for Republicans at this point,” says Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic political targeting firm. If more of the growing pool of eligible minority voters turn out in 2024, he says, “it is not unreasonable to expect” that the non-college White voters so critical to GOP fortunes could experience an even “steeper decline” in their share of the total votes cast next year.

    That prospect remains a central concern for the dwindling band of anti-Trump Republicans who fear that the former president has dangerously narrowed the GOP’s appeal by identifying it so unreservedly with the cultural priorities and grievances of working-class White voters, many of them older and living outside of the nation’s largest and most economically productive metropolitan areas.

    McDonald’s “data support what is self-evident: that Trumpism peaked in 2016, and that it leads to a dead end,” says former US Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican. “We saw this in 2018 when Republicans lost the House; we saw it in 2020 when they lost the presidency and the Senate, and we saw it in last year when Republicans were supposed to have big gains in both chambers and [did not]. All of these failures can be attributed to Trumpism. These data just confirm what is visible to the naked eye.”

    Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, says these slow but steady long-term changes in the electorate leave him convinced that the ceiling for Trump’s potential support in 2024 is no more than 46% of the vote. But Democrats, he believes, still face the risk that the clear majority in the electorate opposed to Trumpism will not turn out in sufficient numbers or splinter to third-party options if they do. Both dangers, he argues, are most pronounced for the diverse younger generations that have never found President Joe Biden very inspiring and have not received sufficient messaging and organizing attention from Democrats.

    The political impact of those younger voters, he warns, could be blunted by the proliferation of red state laws making it more difficult to vote and Democrats focusing too much “on chasing this mythical [White] swing voter that doesn’t look like that Millennial or Gen Z voter we are relying on.”

    Overall voter turnout in 2022 was high compared to almost all previous midterms, but below the peak reached in 2018, when a greater share of eligible voters turned out than in any midterm election since 1914, according to McDonald’s calculations.

    Turnout last year fell most sharply among minorities: while 43% of all eligible non-White voters showed up in 2018, that slipped to just 35% last year, McDonald calculates. Turnout among eligible college-educated White voters also dropped from an astronomical 74% in 2018 to just over 69% last year. White voters without a four-year college degree actually came closest to matching their elevated 2018 performance, slipping only slightly from just over 45% then to about 43% last year.

    But turnout is only one of the two factors that shape how large a share of actual voters each group comprises, which is the number that really matters in determining election outcomes. The other factor is how large a share of the pool of potential eligible voters each group represents. Turnout, in effect, is the numerator and the share of eligible voters the denominator that combined produce the share of the total vote each group casts during every election.

    As McDonald found, the long-term trends in the eligible voter pool – the denominator in our equation – continued unabated in 2022. Whites without a college degree fell to just over 41% of eligible potential voters. That was down 3.2 percentage points from their share of the eligible voter population in 2018 – which was itself down exactly 3.2 percentage points from their share in 2014. In turn, from 2014 to 2022, college-educated White voters slightly increased their share of the eligible voter pool and minorities significantly increased from 30.5% then to nearly 35% now.

    Netting together both the turnout results and these shifts in the eligible voter pool, McDonald found that working-class White voters in 2022 declined as a share overall, whether compared either to the last few midterm elections or the most recent presidential contests.

    In 2022, Whites without a college degree cast 38.3% of all votes, he found. That was down from 39.3% in 2018 and more than 43% in 2014, according to his calculations. That finding also represented a continued decline from just over 42% of the vote when Trump won the 2016 presidential election and 39.9% in 2020 – the first time non-college Whites had fallen below 40% of the total presidential electorate in Census figures.

    Whites with at least a four-year college degree were the big gainers in 2022: McDonald found they cast nearly 36% of all votes last year, compared to a little over-one-third in both 2018 and 2014 and a little less than that in the 2020 presidential year. Burdened by lower turnout, the non-White share of the total vote slipped to just over one-fourth, down slightly from 2018, but still higher than in the 2014 midterms. The minority share of the total vote was considerably larger in 2020, reaching nearly three-in-ten in Census figures.

    All of this extends very consistent long-term trends. Census data analyzed by the non-partisan States of Change project show that non-college Whites have fallen from around two-thirds of the total vote under Ronald Reagan, to about three-fifths under Bill Clinton, to less than half under Barack Obama, to the current level of just under two-fifths. Over those same decades, college-educated Whites have grown from about two-in-ten to three-in-ten voters, while minorities have increased from a little over one-in-ten then to nearly three-in-ten now.

    Other respected data sources differ on the share of the total vote comprised by these three big groups: the Pew Validated Voter study and the estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, both put the share of the vote cast in 2020 by non-college Whites slightly higher, in the range of 42-44%.

    But both also show the same core pattern as the Census results do, with the share of the total vote cast by those non-college Whites declining by about two percentage points every four years. The Edison Research exit polls conducted for a consortium of media organizations, including CNN, changed its methodology in a way that makes long-term comparisons impossible. But, similarly to McDonald, the exits found the non-college White share of the total vote declining to 39% in 2022 from 41% in 2018, with minorities also slightly falling over that period, and college-educated Whites growing.

    The trend lines that McDonald documented for last year suggest it’s a reasonable prediction that non-college Whites will again decline as a share of total voters by two points over the period from 2020 to 2024. That would push their share of the national 2024 vote down to below 38%, with more minority voters likely filling most of that gap and the college-educated Whites growing more modestly to offset the rest.

    McDonald says the basic dynamic reconfiguring the voting pool is that many Baby Boomers and their elders are aging out of the electorate. That’s both because more of them are dying or they are reaching an advanced age where turnout tends to decline, either for infirmity or other obstacles. Those older generations are preponderantly White (about three-fourths of seniors are White), and fewer have college degrees, which were not as essential to economic success in those years, McDonald points out. Meanwhile, a larger share of young adults today hold four-year degrees, and the youngest generations aging into the electorate every two years are far more racially diverse. According to calculations by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank, young people of color now comprise almost exactly half of all Americans who turn 18 and age into the electorate each year.

    “We are right now at the teetering edge of the influence of the baby boomers,” says McDonald. “They are just starting to enter those twilight years in their turnout rates, while other [more diverse] groups are maturing. So we are right at that cusp – that critical point of where things are going to start changing.”

    The impact of these changes on the outcomes of elections, as McDonald says, is very incremental, “like the proverbial frog in the boiling water.” One way to understand that dynamic is to assume that Whites without a college degree on the one hand, and minorities and college-educated Whites on the other, all split their vote at roughly the same proportions as they have in recent elections. If the former group declines as a share of the electorate by two points from 2020-2024 and the latter groups increase by an equal amount, that change alone would enlarge Biden’s margin of victory in the two-party vote from 4.6 percentage points to 5.8, Bonier calculates. Republicans would need to increase their vote share with some or all of those groups just to get back to the deficit Trump faced in 2020 – much less to overcome it.

    Ruy Teixeira, a long-time Democratic electoral analyst who has become a staunch critic of his party, argues exactly that kind of shift in voting preferences could offset the change in the electorate’s composition – and create a real threat for Biden. Even though Biden is aggressively highlighting his efforts to create blue-collar jobs through “manufacturing and infrastructure projects that are starting to get off the ground,” Teixiera recently wrote, a “sharp swing against the incumbent administration by White working-class voters seems like a very real possibility.”

    Teixeira, now a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, also maintains Democrats face the risk Republicans can extend the unexpected gains Trump registered in 2020 with non-White voters without a college degree, especially Hispanics.

    Curbelo, the former congressman, shares Teixeira’s belief that Democratic liberalism on some social issues like crime is creating an opening for Republicans to gain ground among culturally conservative Hispanics. “If they are not careful, they can jeopardize their potential gains from Republicans doubling down on Trumpism by alienating themselves from minority voters who may identify with some of the [Democrats’] economic policies but who do not necessarily identify with the party’s victimhood narrative about minorities,” Curbelo says.

    Still, Curbelo warns that Republicans are unlikely to achieve the gains possible with minority voters so long as they are stamped so decisively by Trump’s polarizing image. And polling has consistently found that while many non-college Hispanic voters hold more moderate views on social issues than college-educated White liberals, those minority voters are not nearly as conservative as core GOP groups, like blue-collar Whites or evangelical Christians.

    As Teixeira has forcefully argued in recent years, such demographic change doesn’t ensure doom for Republicans or success for Democrats. Among other things, that change is unevenly distributed around the country, and the small state bias of both the Electoral College and the two-senators-per-state rule magnifies the influence of sparsely populated interior states where these shifts have been felt much more lightly.

    Yet, even so, the long-term change in the electorate’s composition, along with the Democrats’ growing strength among white-collar suburban voters, largely explains why the party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections – something no party has done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.

    And even though Whites without a college degree exceed their share of the national vote in the key Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, their share of the vote is shrinking along the same trajectory of about 2-3 points every four years in those states too, according to analysis by Frey. Meanwhile, in the Sun Belt battlegrounds of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, more rapid growth in the minority population means that blue-collar Whites will likely comprise a smaller portion of the eligible voter pool than they do nationally.

    Trump, with the exception of his beachhead among blue-collar minorities, has now largely locked the GOP into a position of needing to squeeze bigger margins out of shrinking groups, particularly non-college Whites. It’s entirely possible that Trump or another Republican nominee can meet that test well enough to win back the White House in 2024, especially given the persistent public disenchantment with Biden’s performance. But McDonald’s 2022 data shows why relying on a coalition tilted so heavily toward those non-college Whites becomes just a little tougher for the GOP in each presidential race.

    While Trump or another Republican certainly can win in 2024, Bonier says, “he has reshaped the party in such a way that they have a very narrow path to victory.”

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  • How to negotiate your college’s financial aid offer | CNN Business

    How to negotiate your college’s financial aid offer | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    So you want to improve your college’s financial aid package? Fine. Just don’t have your mom call the college to do the negotiating.

    For most high school seniors, “decision day” is May 1, the deadline for students to alert a college or university that they are accepting an offer of admission. For many, if not most, students and their families, finances play a role in that decision.

    The average cost of attending a four-year college in the United States is $25,707 per year, or $102,828 over four years, according to an April 2023 report by Education Data Initiative. Out-of-state students at state schools pay $44,014 per year; while, private, nonprofit university students now average a whopping $54,501 per year.

    But several financial aid officers and college admissions counselors who spoke with CNN said students don’t realize that they can appeal a college’s aid offer — not only by May 1, but all year long. In some cases, filing an official financial aid appeal may even delay the deadline for putting down a deposit. So it can pay off handsomely to haggle.

    Grace Wilson, a freshman now at Northeastern University in Boston, was dismayed when the initial financial aid package offered by the school last year wasn’t what she needed. Her family had a budget of $38,000 per year, but the total cost of attendance was $47,358.

    After a concerted campaign by Wilson, Northeastern offered her an additional federal grant of $9,495, she said, and a work-study arrangement sweetened the deal. For this fall, she has also negotiated a tuition offset for working as a Resident Assistant.

    But there are right, and some very wrong, ways to go about haggling with your chosen college. Here, according to college financial aid and admissions officers, consultants and students, are the steps to take:

    Email, don’t call, and handle it yourself.

    The appeal should be coming from students, not parents, said Miranda McCall, Duke University’s Assistant Vice Provost and Director of Undergraduate Financial Support.

    “We always love to see students take the incentive to understand their offer and take control of their financial future… It is never wrong for a student to take the lead. It’s the first step in the financial confidence that will serve them well after college, too,” McCall told CNN.

    Pleading backfires, use math.

    The amount offered was reached after using formulas, discussion and a standardized form — the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). So, students have to establish why they need more. With the financial aid office, don’t brag or boast: Each school has a different system and preferences, but the general rule is to send an appeal letter for need-based scholarships or funds to the financial aid office and, separately, for merit-based scholarships to the admissions office.

    Explain what has changed in your circumstances.

    Events such as job loss, divorce, sudden death of family members, high unreimbursed medical expenses and more can change the equation. “If there has been a significant reduction in income compared to your application, inform the school’s financial aid office; in some cases, financial aid can increase,” said Phil Asbury, Director of Financial Aid of Northwestern University in Illinois.

    Asbury explained that around 10% of families experience a material shift in circumstances after applying and the university offers an online form for special appeal through its website. Make sure it contains new information, not a second submission of your original application.

    Reach out to professors, coaches or administrators you know at the college.

    Just don’t have your recommendations, or famous alumni, call up, as impressive as you think that might be. Financial aid offers won’t discuss your offer with them.

    Add proof.

    Document a parent’s loss of a job, for example, divorce, or of an unexpected expense. The forms applicants should attach include an income reduction form, federal tax returns and W2 and severance or unemployment benefit paperwork.

    “Include a clear explanation of what has changed financially for the student, with any supporting documentation. The opportunity to increase need-based aid depends on the accuracy of your documented financial change and the financial ability of the school to make a change,” John Leach, Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment and University Financial Aid at Emory University, told CNN.

    Be specific on the amount you need.

    Financial aid officers like to help, and will try to accommodate you if there are funds available. Also, disclosing an amount up front will save a student time if the amounts are too far apart.

    Replace out-of-date information.

    This year’s FAFSA “uses 2021 tax return data and now it’s 2023,” said Vicki Vollweiler, a founder and CEO of College Financial Prep. One of her client’s families went through a divorce during the college application process, she said. That student was able to receive an additional $10,000. “Students definitely should file an appeal and the school might be able to help out and offer more in funding.”

    Document aid offers you received from other colleges.

    “Especially if you get a higher offer from a comparable school, that is a school competitor, [disclose that] they’ve given you a better package. That means there must be some discrepancy,” said Bethany Goldszer, education expert and owner of Stand Out College Prep in New York.

    But make sure the schools are comparable. Comparing a generous offer from a non-competitive school to one from a highly selective one may make the financial aid officers think you don’t understand the value they are offering.

    It’s never too late.

    Northwestern has a “priority deadline” so that the financial office can notify students early, but students can still apply for financial aid all year round. “It doesn’t mean that we run out of funding,” said Asbury. “Don’t get too discouraged if [deadlines] are already past, you can still apply for the financial aid.”

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  • New University Rankings From Interstride Highlight International Student Employment Outcomes

    New University Rankings From Interstride Highlight International Student Employment Outcomes

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    First-of-its-kind report highlights top U.S. universities based on international student support and employment outcomes.


    SAN FRANCISCO, April 24, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    As growth in international student enrollment at U.S. universities struggles to keep pace with other competing nations, it is critical to highlight what matters for international students: employment outcomes. Interstride, a leading higher-education technology platform, has launched its inaugural U.S. university rankings for international students. The rankings highlight over 170 higher-ed institutions based on international students’ employment outcomes after graduation. 

    Interstride’s report ranks U.S. universities on five key factors: the number of international students enrolled, students’ success in finding temporary employment through the Optional Practical Training (OPT) and the STEM OPT Extension programs, alumni’s success in securing permanent residency through employment, and the number of international staff and faculty employed. 

    “International students consider employability during the admissions process, yet there is no easy, unbiased way to judge that,” said Nitin Agrawal, Interstride co-founder and CEO. “International students heavily rely on rankings, but they don’t show how universities perform on career outcomes. So, we wanted to change that.”   

    Interstride’s university rankings help international students identify universities that are exhibiting leadership in attracting, retaining, and supporting international students in finding employment in the U.S. This differs from traditional rankings with opaque methodologies, subjective metrics, and indicators that have little impact on international students and their career outcomes. 

    Interstride’s rankings, in contrast, highlight what matters to international applicants and students: career support and employment outcomes. With international student enrollment growing at a faster rate in competitor markets such as the U.K., Canada, and Australia, employability is an important differentiation factor for U.S. universities. 

    “Schools can benefit from this new data as it will allow them to compare their own efforts at international student recruitment and job placement with other schools,” said Agrawal.   

    Interstride’s full rankings can be viewed here.

    Source: Interstride

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  • Optica Publishing Group Announces Launch of Optica Quantum

    Optica Publishing Group Announces Launch of Optica Quantum

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    New, online-only Gold Open Access journal to rapidly disseminate high-impact research results across many sectors of quantum information science and technology.


    WASHINGTON, DC, April 14, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    On World Quantum Day, Optica Publishing Group announced it will begin publishing a new journal in September 2023 dedicated to highly selective results in quantum information science and technology (QIST). The new journal, Optica Quantum, joins the Society’s portfolio of the most-cited journals in optics and photonics and will provide the community with articles of the same exceptional standards for quality, novelty, and significance as its parent journal, Optica. 

    The concept of quantum light serves as a foundation for many quantum technologies and ongoing research areas involving security, communications, computing, machine learning, sensing, and more. To support this rapidly growing field, Optica Quantum will be dedicated to QIST as enabled by optics and photonics, publishing theoretical and experimental research as well as technological advances and applications of quantum optics. 

    Dr. Michael G. Raymer, Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Founding Director of the Oregon Center for Optical Molecular and Quantum Science, University of Oregon, USA, will serve as the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal. Raymer has been on the forefront of the quantum information revolution and has been instrumental in a number of key initiatives that have advanced the field. He successfully lobbied the US Government to approve the US National Quantum Initiative Act in 2018, which greatly boosted research and development in this area. A few years later, in 2020, Raymer launched Optica’s Quantum 2.0 topical meeting to help scientists and engineers focus on and resolve key challenges facing the QIST community today.

    “I am honored to be entrusted with the founding editor-in-chief position for Optica Quantum,” said Raymer. “Through my volunteer work with and support from Optica, I’ve been part of and witnessed the major impact that a professional society can have in advancing quantum science and technology. With the help of a distinguished editorial board, I intend for Optica Quantum to become a one-of-kind journal that provides top-caliber articles and mini-reviews from a Society publisher that’s been in the field for more than 100 years.”

    Optica Quantum will rapidly publish original peer-reviewed, high-impact research results, provide state-of-the art reviews of both emerging and established subareas of optics- and photonics-related QIST, and share opinions from recognized authorities on new directions for this critical field. 

    “Optica Publishing Group continually seeks ways to better serve the global optics and photonics community. With the acceleration of quantum research across the globe, there’s an increasing need to curate, publish and perpetually archive the latest and most significant research from the leaders in the field. Optica Quantum will not only achieve this, but it will also foster increased synergies among academia, industry, and government agencies interested in QIST developments,” said Elizabeth Nolan, Optica Deputy Executive Director and Chief Publishing Officer. 

    Optica Quantum will open for submissions in June 2023. Article Processing Charges for this Gold Open-Access journal will be waived for all articles published this year. 

    About Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA)

    Optica Publishing Group is a division of the society, Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide. It publishes the largest collection of peer-reviewed and most-cited content in optics and photonics, including 18 prestigious journals, the society’s flagship member magazine, and papers and videos from more than 835 conferences. With over 400,000 journal articles, conference papers and videos to search, discover and access, our publications portfolio represents the full range of research in the field from around the globe.

    Source: Optica Publishing Group

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  • Republicans Across The U.S. Are On A Crusade To Eliminate College Diversity Programs

    Republicans Across The U.S. Are On A Crusade To Eliminate College Diversity Programs

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    Republicans have already made critical race theory, a college-level academic theory that examines the role of institutional racism in American society, the boogeyman du jour for conservative parents across the country. Now, they are aiming higher.

    In more than a dozen states, Republicans have introduced legislation aimed at gutting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the country’s universities and colleges. One of the early significant efforts came from Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is in the midst of an effort to turn Florida’s colleges into a haven for conservative ideology.

    But other GOP-controlled states like Iowa and Texas are introducing bills that will ban DEI efforts, programs and initiatives in their respective states, smearing them as part of the left’s so-called woke agenda.

    The bills’ proposals range from discontinuing the consideration of DEI statements that express a commitment to diversity to eliminating any diversity training at all. Much of the legislation is written in such a broad way that it’s difficult to understand which programs and campus activities would be affected.

    And while Republicans bemoan DEI efforts as examples of liberal ideology being forced upon them, advocates say their crusade against DEI constitutes a full-throated attack on the actual colleges.

    “This is about discrimination against people who have just begun to get access to these spaces,” Antonio Ingram, an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told HuffPost. “They’re being told the doormat is being rolled up, we’ve had enough.”

    Ingram said DEI initiatives aren’t just focused on Black students: Hispanic students, students with disabilities, women and students with veteran status, to name a few groups, all benefit.

    But just as panic about critical race theory spread from state to state, anti-DEI efforts and bills are now gaining traction wherever Republicans are in charge.

    In Iowa, where an anti-DEI bill has advanced through a state House committee, Republicans are regurgitating the same talking points that have become popular in conservative circles.

    “The DEI bureaucracies at our institutions of higher education have been used to push a woke agenda on the faculty, staff and students,” Iowa Republican state Rep. Taylor Collins told Fox News in March.

    Iowa’s public universities oppose the bill, saying that prohibiting the schools from spending money on DEI efforts could impact their federal grants and accreditation, and even scholarships meant for a specific demographic.

    In Missouri, Republicans authored bills that would ban DEI training at the state’s colleges and medical schools and prohibit schools from requiring DEI statements during the hiring process.

    But Texas appears to be the state attacking DEI initiatives with the most fervor. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott instructed state agencies and public universities to stop using diversity criteria in hiring, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said banning DEI is one of his top priorities for the legislative year.

    “We all feel like we need to self-censor. But how do you teach political science or civil rights without talking about race?”

    – Pat Heintzelman, president of the Texas Faculty Associates

    The Texas state legislature is currently considering three separate bills that could impact not just DEI programs but also what professors can say in their classes and their careers.

    “These bills would fundamentally change the way higher education works in Texas,” Ingram said.

    Texas’ S.B. 16 prohibits professors from teaching students in a way that “compels them to believe that one race or sex is superior.” S.B. 17 prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and penalizes those that violate the law by banning them from working at a public university for one year for the first violation and five years for the second violation.

    S.B. 18 ends tenure going forward for higher education professors. “This isn’t happening in a vacuum,” Ingram said. “It’s not a coincidence they want to end tenure just as we have brilliant Black, brown, and queer academics entering the space.”

    Professors in Texas are already feeling the effects of the proposals.

    “If you discuss something that has to do with race, you can get in trouble and you can get blacklisted,” Pat Heintzelman, the president of the Texas Faculty Associates, told HuffPost.

    “We all feel like we need to self-censor,” Heintzelman said. “But how do you teach political science or civil rights without talking about race?” She’s worried that this is just the beginning of what the Texas legislature has in store for colleges. “Maybe next it’ll be teaching evolution,” she said. “This is just the foot in the door.”

    Proponents of the anti-DEI measures can also attack these programs through the budget. Last week, an amendment in the Texas budget that prohibits universities from using state funds for DEI purposes passed the House.

    In recent years, attacking public institutions through bills that restrict, ban and defund them has become a cornerstone of GOP ideological beliefs. And though Republicans have zeroed in on K-12 education as well as public libraries, perhaps no place offers more of an introduction to progressive and diverse ideas than college.

    “The attacks on higher education,” Ingram said, “are really an attack on multiracial democracy.”

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  • Dr. Scott L. Thomas Named 12th President of Sterling College

    Dr. Scott L. Thomas Named 12th President of Sterling College

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    Craftsbury Common, VT, April 11, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Sterling College announces the election of Dr. Scott L. Thomas as the next President of the College. Thomas is currently the John P. ‘Jack’ Ellbogen Dean of the College of Education for the University of Wyoming. He brings more than 25 years of teaching and leadership experience at private and public institutions. A first-generation college student, Thomas has devoted his career to advancing programs and policies to expand access to quality college opportunities, ensure student success, and build diverse organizations. 

    Allison Hooper, Chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, made the announcement to the Sterling community on Tuesday. “The Trustees are grateful to Interim President Lori Collins-Hall for her leadership and deftness with which she has positioned the College for future success and a new president. Looking forward, we are not only humbled by Dr. Thomas’ credentials but also moved by his enthusiasm for Sterling’s ethos of community, the Work College model, and experiential learning. Furthermore, he stepped onto the Craftsbury campus in March and immediately connected with faculty, staff, and most importantly, students.”

    Wendy Koenig, Secretary of the Sterling Board of Trustees and Chair of the Presidential Search Committee, shared of the search, “The College selected Dr. Thomas from a robust national pool that reflected vast experience and expertise. Dr. Thomas was the clear choice, having a nuanced understanding of higher education and the eco-social crises at play, as well as the critical intersection of the two. His mission alignment, commitment to data-informed strategies, and strong belief in competency-based education make him the ideal choice for Sterling at this moment.”

    Thomas holds a BA in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy, Leadership, and Research Methods from the University of California, Santa Barbara. An avid surfer, Nordic skier, and outdoor adventurer, Thomas has led a life exploring and engaging with environments and cultures around the world. He understands firsthand the importance of place-based experiences, that scale matters, and has learned to hold deep respect for indigenous ways of knowing. Thomas says, “I have long admired the ways in which Sterling is steadfast to its mission; it has a special history that reflects its commitment to dynamic and engaging learning environments. I was stopped in my tracks upon seeing the job posting, was further inspired by my conversations with Sterling alumnx and current students and am deeply honored to be invited into Sterling’s story.”

    Thomas and his wife, Maia, will move to Vermont in June; his presidency will begin on July 1, 2023. Interim President Dr. Lori Collins-Hall will return to her role as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Sterling College. 

    Founded in 1958 in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, Sterling College advances ecological thinking and action through affordable experiential learning, preparing knowledgeable, skilled, and responsible leaders to face the ecological crises that threatens the future of the planet. Sterling is unique in that it emphasizes hands-on experiential learning, a strong sense of community, and values good work. Sterling operates as one of only nine colleges and universities recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a Work College, where all residential students are required to work as part of their educational experience, such as on the Sterling farm. The College is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education to offer degrees in Environmental Studies. Media requests can be directed to Christina Goodwin, Vice President for Advancement.

    Source: Sterling College

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  • 3 unions representing about 9,000 Rutgers University faculty and staff to begin historic strike over contract negotiations | CNN

    3 unions representing about 9,000 Rutgers University faculty and staff to begin historic strike over contract negotiations | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three unions representing about 9,000 Rutgers University faculty and staff will go on strike Monday morning after nearly a year of gridlocked contract negotiations, marking the first educator strike in the university’s nearly 257-year history, according to the unions.

    Members of the unions will form picket lines on Rutgers’s three main campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden, New Jersey, to demand salary increases, improved job security for adjunct faculty and guaranteed funding for graduate students, among other requests, union representatives said in a joint release.

    “Those closest to our learning and to the university’s mission to teaching, research and service deserve more than to merely be surviving and scraping by,” Rutgers masters student Michelle O’Malley said during a virtual town hall Sunday night.

    The three unions are Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral researchers and counselors; the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents part-time lecturers; and AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents faculty who teach at the university’s medical and public health facilities.

    While union leaders expect the action to halt instruction and “non-critical research,” the university is insisting most classes will continue. Clinicians at the university’s health facilities “will continue to perform patient care duties and critical research, while curbing voluntary work,” the unions’ release said.

    In guidelines posted in the case of a strike, the university advised students to continue to attend classes and complete assignments as normal.

    “To say that this is deeply disappointing would be an understatement,” Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway said in a letter to the community. According to Holloway, the two sides agreed to appoint a mediator just two days before the strike was announced.

    “For the past several weeks, negotiations have been constant and continuous,” the president said. “Significant and substantial progress has been made, as I have noted, and I believe that there are only a few outstanding issues. We will, of course, negotiate for as long as it takes to reach agreements and will not engage in personal attacks or misinformation.”

    Union representatives, however, insist that the university has refused to meet their central demands.

    “After sitting at the bargaining table for 10 months trying to win what we believe to be fair and reasonable things, like fair pay, job security, and access to affordable health care, and getting virtually nowhere on these core demands, we had no choice but to vote to strike,” Amy Higer, a part-time lecturer at Rutgers and president of the Adjunct Faculty Union, said in a statement.

    She continued, “We’ve heard management say that a strike will harm students. But you know what really harms students? The high turnover that results from paying teachers poorly and making them reapply for their jobs every semester.”

    New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy in a statement implored university and union bargaining committee representatives to meet in his office Monday “to have a productive dialogue.”

    In addition to the three groups that announced the strike, there are nine other unions seeking new contracts with the university, according to the unions’ release.

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