All posts tagged: colleges

Selective colleges try harder to get rural students to attend : NPR

Selective colleges try harder to get rural students to attend : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Admitted students and their families, including some from rural areas, take a tour of the Amherst College campus as they decide whether or not to enroll. Lucy Lu/The Hechinger Report hide caption toggle caption Lucy Lu/The Hechinger Report AMHERST, Mass. — Crowding around an Amherst College campus fire pit, earnest-looking high school seniors offered fire-building suggestions as intently as if they were taking a final exam. “This is our test of how rural you are,” the college’s assistant dean of admissions, Nathan Grove, joked before he finally got the neatly stacked logs to ignite so the group could make s’mores: “how good you are at making a fire.” The occasion was a two-day visit to encourage admitted applicants to enroll — including this particular group. These students hail from rural places where top-ranked private colleges like Amherst rarely used to recruit. This gathering around the fire pit was an attempt to make them feel welcome. “I was frankly sort of shocked that they cared about rural students,” said Jack Hancock, a high school senior from …

When Canvas crashed, colleges had no backup plan

When Canvas crashed, colleges had no backup plan

Published by Sam Flores

The nationwide Canvas outage that disrupted colleges and universities during finals week forced campuses across the country to improvise as faculty and students suddenly lost access to exams, assignments, grades and other course materials. Canvas is the online learning platform used by over 8,000 schools districts and universities, including all eight “Ivy League” schools. It is the central hub for each course, connecting teachers and students through course materials like discussion groups, assignments, grades, class files and an internal email system. Canvas parent company Instructure confirmed this week that it was responding to a “security incident” affecting the platform, which is used by thousands of schools and universities nationwide. On its public status page, the company acknowledged that “Canvas is currently unavailable for some users” while teams worked to investigate and restore service. The outage affected major institutions including Columbia University, Princeton University, Rutgers University and the University of California network, according to reporting from multiple university statements. At The University of Tampa, administrators told faculty the outage was disrupting “final exams, paper submissions, and …

Bard College’s president to retire after scrutiny of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein : NPR

Bard College’s president to retire after scrutiny of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Bard College President Leon Botstein speaks during the 153rd Commencement at Bard College, May 25, 2013, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Philip Kamrass/AP hide caption toggle caption Philip Kamrass/AP ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The longtime president of Bard College announced his retirement Friday, months after it was revealed that he had a much deeper relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than was previously known. Leon Botstein, who has been president of the small, liberal arts college in New York for a half century, will retire at the end of June, he wrote in an email provided to The Associated Press by Bard. In the note, Botstein, 79, didn’t mention the scrutiny of his ties to Epstein, except to say that he had waited to announce his retirement publicly until the completion of an independent review of his relationship with the notorious sex offender. He said he would remain on Bard’s faculty as a teacher and musician. Botstein was not accused of any involvement in Epstein’s exploitation and abuse of girls and women. But he was among a long list of …

Many private colleges at risk of closing : NPR

Many private colleges at risk of closing : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Izzy Johnson, left, and Jack Beatson are first-year students at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vt. The college has announced that it will close at the end of this semester. Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report hide caption toggle caption Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report CRAFTSBURY COMMON, Vt. — More than a dozen newborn lambs cavorted around a fenced-in yard beneath the scrutiny of their mothers and a few watchful students taking turns attending to them. The lambs’ successful births have been a needed bright spot at tiny Sterling College, which uses a 130-acre farm to teach agriculture and other disciplines in a part of northeastern Vermont so isolated there’s no cell service and it’s rare to see a passing car. LillyAnne Keeley, a senior, likes that remoteness. “We have a beautiful view,” said Keeley, in the barn where she’s come for her turn checking on the lambs. “There are beautiful sunsets here. I kind of take it for granted every day.” She and her classmates have started taking such experiences less for granted …

LA Needs 100,000 Construction Workers. Community Colleges Are Racing to Train Them

LA Needs 100,000 Construction Workers. Community Colleges Are Racing to Train Them

Published by Sam Flores

Hudson Idov wasn’t excited about any of his college options — that is, until his Los Angeles house burned down in the Palisades Fire his senior year of high school. Less than a week after graduation, he and one of his classmates enrolled in the carpentry program at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a community college just south of downtown. Their goal is to start a construction company one day and help rebuild the Palisades. “We have big, big 10-year plans,” he said during a break in his morning class. His personal tragedy drove the decision, but he also considers it wise to pursue a high-demand job, especially now. Before the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, Los Angeles was already short roughly 70,000 qualified construction workers. The destruction of thousands of homes and businesses during the fires made that problem even worse. The city now needs over 100,000 new workers in construction and construction-related careers, according to one state analysis, which estimates median pay at just under $30 an hour, though it varies depending on …

Trump’s Higher Education Crackdown: Visa Revocations, DEI Bans, Lawsuits and Funding Cuts | National News

Trump’s Higher Education Crackdown: Visa Revocations, DEI Bans, Lawsuits and Funding Cuts | National News

Published by Sam Flores

President Donald Trump wasted no time targeting higher education reform in his second term, kicking off a fight that often seemed personal. Education in recent years has been the battleground for culture war disputes from immigration to transgender rights along with political posturing on issues like student loan forgiveness, admissions practices and free speech on campus. Republicans have long been skeptical of higher education and accuse academics of indoctrinating youth with progressive ideologies, and Trump claimed that college campuses have been “infested with radicalism like never before.” Trump’s efforts revolve around curbing what he calls a “woke” agenda, with many of his steps aimed at reversing diversity, equity and inclusion policies that he says unfairly benefit some students over others. As president, Trump has leveraged the power of the federal government to threaten funding and restrict foreign student status, demanding an unprecedented role in university admissions, curriculum and operations. In many cases, he has used accusations of antisemitism or the credo of law and order as wedges to force broader scrutiny of higher education administrators …

Research Shows Elite Colleges Favor Admitting Students From Wealthy Families

Research Shows Elite Colleges Favor Admitting Students From Wealthy Families

Published by Jenni Sidey

With wealth comes privilege; that’s not exactly a novel concept. Unfortunately, that privilege is more than just a leg-up in many aspects of life, especially college admissions. A research study released on July 24, 2023, confirmed the inherent inequities of the college admissions process. The data analyzed by Opportunity Insights, a group of Harvard-based economists studying inequality, showed the extreme advantages rich applicants hold in getting into elite colleges. Rich kids are favored for admission to elite colleges.  The study determined that “children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores.” Halfpoint | Shutterstock Opportunity Insights based its research on federal records of college attendance and parental income taxes from 1999 to 2015, as well as standardized test scores from 2001 to 2015. The study also included anonymous internal admissions assessments of at least three of the 12 colleges studied, covering half a million applicants. The study found that even …

Colleges Are Stuck Between Bad Options for Fighting Hateful Ideas

Colleges Are Stuck Between Bad Options for Fighting Hateful Ideas

Published by Daniella Wilson

Pity Chris Summerlin, the dean of students at the University of Florida. He’s being sued by an anti-Semite, and that’s not the worst of his predicament. So far, judges who have ruled on the case have given mixed verdicts on whether he is likely to win or lose at trial. Summerlin deserves to lose on the merits: He expelled a law-school student for speech that, while morally degenerate, is properly protected by the First Amendment. And––this is the pitiable part––it’s easy to see how he might have concluded that giving a bigot grounds to win a civil-rights lawsuit was his best option. College deans and administrators keep confronting the same dilemma: They face intense pressure to punish speech that elicits fear or moral disgust on campus. They also have legal obligations—and face countervailing pressure—to refrain from violating the free-speech rights of students. They cannot always do both. The result is cases such as Damsky v. Summerlin—cases that might be avoided under a better approach to fighting anti-Semitism and other hateful ideas. Preston Damsky was a …

Could further education colleges get involved with university mergers? It might help meet Keir Starmer’s education goals

Could further education colleges get involved with university mergers? It might help meet Keir Starmer’s education goals

Published by skeptic

The merger of Kent and Greenwich universities is set to produce the UK’s first “super-university”. This structure will help the universities manage financial risks, while sustaining their distinctive identities. And the merger could also provide a model for the prime minister’s vision for post-compulsory education, outlined recently at the Labour party conference. Keir Starmer wants two-thirds of young people to enter higher or technical education or apprenticeships. This embraces both further and higher education, and it demands coherence between them. Building on the model agreed between Kent and Greenwich, that could be achieved by colleges joining universities within a single group. Further education colleges offer a high proportion of the nation’s technical qualifications and apprenticeships, which are central to the prime minister’s target. In towns without universities, colleges provide the route through post-compulsory education. This is often within group structures. Some already have links with higher education. London South East Colleges, for instance, has seven campuses, which reach south from Greenwich. The group also has a partnership with the University of Greenwich. Colleges have experienced …