BURLINGTON, Vt. — Hopeful young entrepreneurs in business schools routinely pitch ideas for startup companies as part of their classroom assignments. But the ones who were doing it at the University of Vermont were still in high school.

It was the inaugural Vermont Pitch Challenge, to which nearly 150 teams from 27 states and seven countries had submitted their entrepreneurial brainstorms. The final five had come to the campus to battle it out for the grand prize: a full-tuition scholarship to UVM.

Their ideas included a website to help previously incarcerated applicants get jobs, a nonprofit to provide mental health support to competitive snowboarders, a medical device to prevent the recurrence of a herniated disk, a company to rent equipment to farmers in St. Croix and an invention to sustainably recharge laptops, phones and tablets.

This competition wasn’t solely about helping the planet or improving medicine, health, employment opportunities or agriculture, however.

It was part of a long-term strategy to increase the number of men at a university where women now outnumber them by nearly two to one.

Painstaking research had suggested that entrepreneurship programs could appeal to high school boys considering going to college. The findings appeared to be right: More boys than girls had entered the pitch contest. And the university hoped that some would eventually enroll.

The approach is among a fast-growing number of efforts to increase the number of men in college, which has been declining steadily.

“We thought that this idea would attract men,” said Jay Jacobs, UVM’s vice provost for enrollment management, who declared himself pleased with the results. “We thought that this idea would attract racial and ethnically diverse students. We thought that this idea would attract what I’ll call geographically diverse students, students not just from Vermont or New England.”

The university needs all of those kinds of recruits. Vermont has the nation’s third-oldest population, by median age, making it harder to find students generally. That’s even before a dramatic decline in the number of 18-year-olds about to hit the rest of the rest of the country starting next year.

“Here, we’ve already felt the impacts of the quote, unquote ‘demographic cliff,’ ” said Jacobs. “We want to make sure that we are in front of any eligible student who is able to pursue their education at the University of Vermont, or in the state of Vermont.”

That particularly includes men. The proportion of applicants to the university who are male has declined from 44 percent in 2010 to 33 percent today, an analysis of federal data shows.

Related: Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents

“I definitely do notice that,” said Melinda Wetzel, a junior who was having coffee with a friend in the student center. “In my big lecture halls, I’d say there are more women. And I do have one small class where there is only one guy.”

It isn’t just this university that’s searching for new ways to recruit men.

The number of men enrolled in college nationwide has dropped by more than 157,000, or almost 6 percent, in just the last five years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The proportion of college students who are men is now a record-low 41 percent, the U.S. Department of Education says. That’s a complete reversal of the situation 50 years ago, when men outnumbered women in college by about the same extent.

Men are also 7 percentage points more likely than women to drop out, the Clearinghouse reports.

“At conferences, when we’re in rooms together, we all know that this male enrollment gap is something that we’re going to have to deal with,” said Jacobs, whose office window overlooks the university’s grand historic main quad.

The ways universities are trying to address this vary widely.

The University of Montana — whose enrollment overall has fallen from nearly 16,000 to about 10,000 in the last 10 years, and 58 percent of whose undergraduates are women — found in focus groups that many of the men it was trying to recruit were interested in the outdoors. So this spring it sent targeted emails to prospective students highlighting its hunting class, forestry program and recreational opportunities.

“Have you ever eaten fresh meat that you harvested yourself?” one of the emails asks. “Apply to UM and develop a closer bond to the landscape than ever before.” Another shows a brawny, bearded man cutting wood. “Embrace the wilderness, embrace the axe,” it says. “There are few other connections with the natural world better than swinging a sharp axe with the smell of pine in your nose.”

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

Admitted applicants considering whether or not to enroll are also sent bingo-style checkoff cards with images of hiking, ski and cowboy boots. Other promotional materials include images of country-and-western shows on campus.

Housing deposits from men — which is how the university measures who will be enrolling in the fall, as it doesn’t require enrollment deposits — are up since the campaign began, said Kelly Nolin, director of undergraduate admissions.

“Ultimately all students want to know, ‘Am I going to fit in? Do I belong?’ ” said Nolin.

Among prospective applicants who are increasingly asking those questions, she said, are men from religious conservative families, at a time when universities are accused of being bastions of left-wing cancel culture. “We want them to know they won’t be criticized for their beliefs.”

Further west, the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center has gotten money from the ECMC Foundation to help community colleges enroll and retain more Black and Hispanic men and other men of color. (ECMC is also among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

“If, in fact, colleges and universities want to recruit and enroll and ultimately retain and graduate more men, they have to have a strategy,” said Shaun Harper, founder and executive director of the center. “It has to be based on input and insights from college men themselves.”

Instead of trying to figure out why so many men forgo college or give up on it after starting, he said, institutions should ask, “Wait a minute, what about the ones who are here and are successful?” Harper said. “What were the factors that enabled their enrollment and their ultimate degree attainment? There’s a lot that we can learn from them that we could scale and adapt to everyone else.”

He and others said they were skeptical of some efforts to enroll more men, such as doubling down on sports by adding more men’s teams in the hope that it will lure more male students, as some colleges are doing.

Related: Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?

“They’re not all on sports teams. So that shouldn’t be the only lever that we pull,” said Harper. And even if highlighting hunting might be effective in Montana, “it feels so presumptuous about what really appeals to men. I’m just not sure that institutions understand the full range of young men’s interests, and so they tend to default to things like forestry and outdoor adventures. I’m not sure that would work in California or Maryland.”

Whatever does work, universities are under growing pressure to figure it out. Overall enrollment has declined by 16 percent in the 10 years through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the U.S. Department of Education. Another 11 to 15 percent decline is projected to begin next year.

And there are signs that the problem of attracting men is only likely to get worse.

Of high school boys in Vermont whose parents don’t have four-year degrees, for instance, only 45 percent aspire to go to college themselves, down from 58 percent in 2018, and much lower than the 68 percent of girls who do, a survey found. Even among high school students with at least one parent who has a bachelor’s degree, 87 percent of girls say they want to go to college, compared to 78 percent of boys.

The problem begins early. Girls do better in high school than boys, and are more likely to graduate. In the 37 states that report high school graduation rates by gender, 88 percent of girls finished high school on time, compared to 82 percent of boys, a 2018 study by the Brookings Institution found. Boys are more likely to think they don’t need a degree for the jobs they want, the Pew Research Center found, or go into the trades. Even if they do enroll in colleges, work opportunities lure them away. Men who dropped out of community college are more likely than women to say it was because of other work opportunities, according to a survey by the think tank New America.

That went through John Truslow’s mind when he was deciding whether or not to go to college.

“There was a point where I wasn’t thinking about college” and considered going into the trades or the military, said Truslow, who ultimately decided to major in business at UVM.

Among his male high school classmates who didn’t go to college, said Truslow, who was playing pool in the student center, some couldn’t afford it. “But most of the ones that didn’t directly go to college, it was mostly academic. They just weren’t feeling school and they wanted to do something else.”

A third of men compared to a quarter of women said they didn’t go to or finish college because they just didn’t want to, Pew found.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Richard Reeves, who studies this problem, said it may be more a result of having so successfully encouraged women to get degrees than having discouraged men.

“I think actually what’s probably happened is the opposite — that we’ve sent a really strong and positive message to girls and women. But we haven’t had similar messages for boys and men,” said Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.

“We’ve now got to do a little bit of self-correction here and say, look, of course we want girls and women to continue to rise in the education system, but we don’t want to leave the boys and men behind.”

Reeves said that, just as male-dominated programs in engineering and business have made extra efforts to recruit women, female-dominated fields such as healthcare and education should now reach out to men.

“That’s another thing that higher education institutions can do, is look at their courses and see where are the gender splits the greatest,” he said. “Rather than thinking the football team is the answer, maybe more men in your nursing school is the answer.”

But the football team could be one of many answers. Among the more subtle efforts to attract men at UVM, the university encourages its students, faculty and staff to wear its colors, green and gold, on Fridays — the days when most prospective applicants are touring the campus. “School spiritedness” is another attribute that research showed appeals particularly to men.

“Coincidentally, Fridays are some of our highest visit volume days, yes,” said Jacobs, smiling.

 UVM campus counselors say men who do enroll are less likely to join extracurricular clubs or seek help when they need it. Some men have “this lack of connection,” said Evan Cuttitta, the university’s coordinator of men and masculinities programs. “They have less experience in managing stress and advocating for themselves” and often aren’t as good at “that practice of asking for help.”

So the university has also started a program for Black and Hispanic male students that provides them with peer and professional mentors, summer internships, networking events and priority registration.

All these steps to increase male enrollment appear to be having some effect.

Identical twins Pierson and Parker Jones of Lutz, Florida, found themselves in Vermont for the entrepreneurship competition. It put the University of Vermont on their radar, they said.

“We haven’t looked at the University of Vermont,” Pierson Parker said. “But after this pitch, we’re definitely going to look into it. Because it’s definitely more interesting now.”

This story about recruiting men to college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Liam Elder-Connors. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

The post Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

To boost enrollment and meet workforce needs, many states are offering free community college programs. It’s a well-intentioned (and bipartisan) idea to help people get the credentials they need, and states build their supply of college-educated workers.

But does free really mean free? Do these programs effectively bring students back to college? And does saying something’s free diminish its value?

Research shows that free college has had some effect, but not as much as you might think.

It doesn’t mean that students still don’t have to pay for food, rent, books, supplies, transportation and other living costs, which at community colleges often cost more than taking classes. That can stop them from taking states up on the offer. And private colleges and universities vying for the same students quietly oppose having to compete with free.

We’ll tell you what you need to know about free college. You’ll also find a searchable database of free college programs at the end of this transcript.

“College Uncovered” is made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Listen to the whole series

Scroll to the end of this transcript to find out more about this topic, and for links to more information.

Kirk: Can we get a Guinness and a pint of Jack’s Abbey?

Bartender: You got it.

Kirk: Thanks.

Jon. What are we doing? I thought we were podcasting.

Kirk: We are, Jon, but we’re also grabbing a pint at a local bar — cheers! — and getting some free snacks.

Jon: I like free. Hey — wouldn’t it be great if college was free?

Jack Freer: Yeah, not everyone is born with the same economic opportunities.

Shane Garrity: Yeah, college is a time where you can make so many friends, so many connections that can carry you forward into your personal and professional life.

Lila Cardillo: I think making college, like, ridiculously expensive, just, you know, doesn’t qualify a lot of people for entering certain professions. And just so it makes the wealth divide greater.

Kirk: That’s Jack Freer, Shane Garrity, and Lila Cardillo.

I mean, politically speaking, Jon, when it comes to college, perhaps nothing is more popular than free. And, again, that’s politically speaking.

Jon: Yeah. Of course, political talk is also free, or at least cheap. And if you stand in front of a group of Americans at, say, a bar like this one and say, ‘Hey, maybe everybody doesn’t need a college degree,’ most of the bar will not their heads and probably agree with you.

Kirk: But then if you say, ‘Yo, we all have to agree that young people need more than a high school degree to get a good job’ — nowadays, everybody at the bar will also not their head in agreement.

Jon: That’s why a lot of states are ending up in the middle. They’re making community college free.

Kirk: So where do I sign up? I love free stuff — like these bar snacks. But is free college really free? You might be surprised to hear the answer.

Kirk: This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work.

And we should note here, Jon, that our little podcast is already free, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts.

Jon: Yeah, it is, but it’s also priceless, Kirk. I’m Jon Marcus at The Hechinger Report …

Kirk: … and I’m Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don’t want you to know how they operate. So GBH …

Jon: … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you.

Okay, so the number of people in the U.S. with some college credit, but no degree or certificate to show for it — that number keeps growing. It’s now north of 40 million, the highest that it’s ever been. And since the pandemic, hundreds of thousands more students have dropped out, most of them low income or the first in their families to go to college. That’s the idea behind free community college. It’s a chance to woo those students back.

Kirk: Right. More states are offering free community college. Two thirds of states now have some form of free, from Michigan to New Mexico, Rhode Island to Oregon. The details differ from state to state, but free college has widespread support.

Community colleges like it because they’re facing an enrollment plunge. Businesses like it to meet their need for skilled workers. And it’s just plain good for students, who see their lifetime earnings rise. Or that’s the thinking. But it’s not quite so simple.

So do these new programs help students graduate on time and with less debt? You might be surprised to learn that free college isn’t as effective at helping students finish college as you’d think.

Today on the show: ‘The Real Cost of Free.’

I went over to Bunker Hill Community College here in Boston to meet Magno Garcia. Since he graduated from high school, Garcia has enrolled in Bunker Hill three times off and on, commuting from his home in nearby Chelsea. Back then, Garcia worked long hours in retail and as an air-conditioner technician so he could avoid student loan debt. He wanted a degree in accounting so he could move up to management at the HVAC company. But the first two times he enrolled, he ran out of cash, time and energy.

Magno Garcia: I wasn’t really motivated, so it was, like, the worst idea, because I paid for everything out of pocket.

Kirk: What do you think you needed at the time?

Magno Garcia: Guidance. I never felt like I had someone that was, like, ‘Hey, I’m here to help.’

Kirk: Overwhelmed, Garcia dropped out twice to put food on the table and pay rent. He kept working retail. He was also devoting time to a personal passion: producing his own music videos on YouTube. Now, at 34 years old, Garcia is back at Bunker Hill. And, Jon, guess what drew him back to college?

Jon: Let me guess. Was it because it was free?

Kirk: Indeed it was. Massachusetts recently began offering free community college for anyone over the age of 25 without a degree.

Magno Garcia: I’m taking advantage of that.

Kirk: Massachusetts education officials say returning students like Garcia are responsible for the first public college enrollment increase in nine years. Enrollment in public four-year colleges slowed, but community college enrollment in Massachusetts rose by 8 percent last year. All 15 community college campuses, including Bunker Hill, saw a spike. But that’s not necessarily the full story.

Davis Jenkins: It’s good news in that there’s been some stabilization, but, overall, you know, enrollment’s down.

Jon: Davis Jenkins studies community colleges at Columbia University. Despite the recent uptick, Jenkins points out that community college enrollment in Massachusetts is actually down nearly 40 percent since 2014. It’s also down nationwide. The number of community college students across the country dropped nearly 30 percent over the last 10 years.

Davis Jenkins: Community college enrollment was hit hardest during Covid, and it had been dropping for a decade before that.

Jon: To get more students back in classrooms, some political leaders want to expand free community college to all state residents, regardless of age.

But free doesn’t always work out for students. Because, while, yes, removing financial barriers is a good thing, many still can’t afford to stop working and focus on their studies. So they don’t graduate. While federal data doesn’t tell us the racial makeup of the 40 million Americans with some college and no degree, researchers say they’re likely to be more diverse, the first in their families to go to college and from low-income backgrounds, compared to their peers who did graduate.

Amanda Fernandez: We certainly have a long, long way to go — in particular, for Latino students who still to this day are experiencing the ramifications of an inequitable education, and in particular during the pandemic, when these issues were exacerbated.

Kirk: Amanda Fernandez is CEO of Latinos for Education. She says free community college signals progress. But a poll commissioned by Latinos for education and the nonprofit Mass., Inc. finds disparities in attitudes about going to college among people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. And Latino parents were the least likely to say their child participated in college prep programs. Another survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education finds Latinos with a high school degree are more likely to be unsure how to enroll and how to pay for college.

So I asked Amanda Fernandez: Is there an information gap?

Amanda Fernandez: It’s a communication gap and it’s a belief gap. And that’s where I think it’s actually lower-hanging fruit. Because our families want their children to go to college, but they don’t have the information about how to even get into an early college program, how to get into a vocational education program. And so, therefore, their students don’t believe or their children don’t believe that they can access higher education and therefore they lose interest.

Kirk: That interest is so important, right? Because in many Latino communities, this is often a family decision.

Amanda Fernandez: Our Latino families are having conversations with their kids about, ‘What are you going to do after high school?’ But they’re not confident in being able to say, ‘You will go to college because we know how to access financial aid, we know how to apply for it.’

Kirk: Does taxpayer support for free college programs help students access college, and — more importantly — graduate?

Amanda Fernandez: I do believe some of that scholarship money does go to other supports that are needed for persistence in the community college space. But, again, you have to think about the longer term and the realities of, you know, when the average age of our community college students is around 27 years old and they have lives and they have to support their own families and children and extended families, you have to support the continued persistence.

Kirk: Sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab agrees. Goldrick Rab is a senior fellow at Education Northwest, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon. She’s author of “Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid and the Betrayal of the American Dream.” And she’s a longtime advocate for free community college programs.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: For 20 years, my research has suggested that this is a very viable part of the solution, and that’s what I’d call it. I’d call it part of the solution.

Kirk: She says free community college will help close some of these gaps, but it’s not a panacea.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: It’s not meant to be all things. It’s not meant to solve every problem around college affordability, but it’s very clear that it’s targeted to the people who most need college to be affordable. Those are the people who right now are not going at all.

Jon: Goldrick-Rab says making college tuition free is not enough, because going to college costs much more than just tuition. Even if politicians do promote free college as the answer.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: They’re not accounting for the full range of costs. The number one college affordability issue in this country is housing. That’s what people are grappling with. And we’re not talking about that because most people don’t live on campus, for example.

Jon: Kirk, that’s one of the issues with these free programs. It’s not always clear what’s covered. For example, some provide funding for living expenses, but most of them do not.

The total cost of attending college includes food, housing, books, supplies, health care, transportation and a bunch of other costs. In fact, non-tuition expenses are the majority of the cost in public higher education. And if you want to find the true cost of attendance from a college, good luck, because that’s based on numbers provided by the colleges. They report them to the federal government. But they’re just estimates for everything except tuition and fees. And those estimates — they’re often grossly incorrect.

So for all of these reasons, supporters of free college say funneling everyone into a system where you’re supposed to graduate within two or four years is the wrong approach. It will only make educational inequities worse.

Kirk: And they say free community college changes who’s going to college. And it helps colleges reach students who will get the biggest return on investment.

Not everyone agrees with that logic, though, Jon. I went to Nashville, Tennessee, to check out the free college program there firsthand. Former Gov. Bill Haslam told me he had made the successful push for free community college because Tennessee employers need well-trained workers.

Bill Haslam: We had looked out at the state and realized that of all the jobs are going to exist in Tennessee in 2025, 55 percent of them would require a degree or certificate beyond high school.

Kirk: It was all about churning out more qualified workers and attracting companies to locate or relocate there. At the time Haslam said this, only a third of Tennessee’s population held a degree or certificate, so Haslam said he wanted to do something that would shock the system and then get people to think:

Bill Haslam: ‘Hey, I never thought that I would go to school, but maybe I will.’ If you haven’t grown up with the thought that college is a real possibility for you, then it’s not something talked about at the dinner table. It’s not on the radar screen.

Kirk: And it worked. At first.

Community college enrollments spiked 5 percent the first year, with thousands of low-income students taking up the offer. Students like Eric Bihembo, who immigrated from Uganda as a teen, signed up.

Eric Bihembo: College wasn’t on my radar.

Kirk: Did you think it was too good to be true?

Eric Bihembo: It was too good to be true. I mean, free money where I could go and get a free education. It was overwhelming. At the same time, I just wanted to check it out.

Kirk: Going from Uganda to Nashville, was there a bit of a culture shock?

Eric Bihembo: We don’t have these big buildings where you can stand and compare yourself and see how small you are.

[‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ from the Tennessee State commencement ceremony]

Kirk: In the end, Bihembo graduated from community college in Nashville and then completed a Tennessee Highway Patrol cadet program.

Where do you see yourself in 10 or 20 years?

Eric Bihembo: My dream job is one day to work with the FBI doing cybersecurity. But I want to start as a police officer to pick up all the experience and be able to apply it in the in the bigger world.

Kirk: Researchers say Bihembo, who graduated in two years, is the exception. Because while more students enrolled in Tennessee’s community colleges, it didn’t mean a higher percentage graduated.

Jennifer Freeman: It boosts enrollments at first, but those people don’t necessarily stay in school.

Jon: Jennifer Freeman is with the nonprofit Jobs for the Future. Turns out, even though most community college students say their goal is to earn a degree, they usually don’t.

Only one in five adults who re-enrolled in Tennessee’s free college program graduated after three years.

To retain students, Freeman suggests improving support systems and tailoring offerings to students career goals. Otherwise …

Jennifer Freeman: … people go back and then they kind of go back to the same college format, structure that didn’t work for them in the first place.

Jon: Columbia’s Davis Jenkins agrees. He says, sure, free helps, but two-year schools will ultimately need to improve their product.

Davis Jenkins: Community colleges. I love them, but they generally don’t treat adults well. They’re going to have to move toward more of a 24-seven advising. They’re going to have to schedule the courses when students need them, not Tuesday through Thursday between 10 and 1, when the professors want to teach.

Jon: Sara Goldrick-Rab, on the other hand, defends these programs, because she says no-cost college broadens access and benefits society. She says the current financial aid system, which requires filling out complicated forms and figuring out formulas to calculate how much college will cost, is an obstacle for too many students.

Sara Goldrick-Rab: Things that knock out a given cost, like tuition, are more promising than things that are predicated on jumping through a bunch of hoops.

Kirk: And advocates say these programs help students like Rebecca Beaucher in Massachusetts. At 45, Beaucher returned to college last fall thanks to the state’s new free college program. Beaucher started college 20 years ago, but quickly dropped out because working full time as an IT analyst and parenting spread her too thin. Going back wasn’t easy, either.

Rebecca Beaucher: I think I was intimidated. You know, it had been so long since I had been in a class environment.

Kirk: She says the free program was the enticement she needed to re-enroll at Northern Essex Community College. She recalls when she heard the news that the program passed in the state’s budget.

Rebecca Beaucher: My heart just dropped and I immediately burst into tears and I sent a text to my husband, like, this is it. Game on. I’m finally getting my degree. I’m just, I’m going for it. I can’t believe this finally happened.

Kirk: This year, Bouchet is taking business classes online and says her goal is to earn her doctorate someday.

Rebecca Beaucher: On my headstone I want it to say, ‘Dr. Rebecca Beaucher.’ I understand that I’m 45, and I may get that when I’m 90. And I am absolutely okay with this.

Jon: So free college is a mixed bag. Some students might only be interested in taking a few classes to brush up their skills. Others might want to get a doctorate someday. But we do know the vast majority are hoping for a four-year degree.

Surveys show more than 80 percent of community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree. Only a small percentage do, though — just about 13 percent, even within six years. That’s according to the U.S. Department of Education. And those rates are even lower for low-income, male, Black and Hispanic students.

Kirk: Yeah. Economists like Josh Goodman at Boston University say there are lots of reasons why low-income students might be better served if they went straight to a four-year college.

Josh Goodman: It’s a combination of things. One is we know the community colleges are less well funded per student than a four-year institution, so they have fewer resources. [Students] are with peers who are academically weaker. And that may have an influence on their success in their own coursework. And though many students plan to start at a community college and then transfer to the four-year sector, many of the students who plan to do that don’t end up succeeding, either because they misunderstand that transfer process or because the alignment between their community college coursework and the requirements of the four-year institutions is not always great.

Kirk: We have a whole episode just about that topic from our first season. It’s called ‘The Transfer Trap,’ so be sure to check it out.

Jon: Okay, so, Kirk, I guess the old saying there’s no such thing as a free lunch — that still holds.

Kirk: Yeah. So here are a few key takeaways from this episode.

One: Do your research. Make sure you’re enrolling in a free program that meets your career and personal goals.

Two: Ask about retention and graduation rates. Because if nobody graduates, then free doesn’t really mean anything.

And three: If your aim is to earn a bachelor’s degree someday, ask whether the credits you earn will even transfer and if they’ll transfer to your major. Because while most community college students say they want to earn a four-year degree, few do so within six years, and the rate is even lower for first-generation, low-income, Black and Latino students like Magno Garcia.

Back at Bunker Hill. Garcia told me the new free community college program for adults there renewed his hope to earn a degree.

Magno Garcia: Third time’s a charm. I actually feel very confident saying that I will graduate.

Kirk: Garcia has found a support network on Bunker Hill’s campus through a program designed for men of color. That’s another good takeaway, Jon: Find a support network on campus.

Garcia is now working as a social worker at a high school while wrapping up his associate degree, and he switched his major from accounting to psychology.

Magno Garcia: It made a huge difference. I was enjoying my classes. The subject matters were more interesting to me than, you know, crunching in numbers.

Kirk: This fall, he plans to transfer to a four-year university and pursue a bachelor’s degree so he can become a teacher or a school counselor.

This is College Uncovered from GBH and The Hechinger Report. I’m Kirk Carapezza …

Jon: … and I’m Jon Marcus. We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email to gbhnewsconnect@wgbh.org. And tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate. And if you’re with a college or university. Tell us what you think the public should know about higher ed.

This episode is produced and written by Kirk Carapezza …

Kirk: … and Jon Marcus, and it was edited by Jeff Keating. Meg Woolhouse is supervising editor. Ellen London is executive producer. Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. We had production assistants from Diane Adame.

Theme song and original music by Left Roman out of MIT, and all of our music is by college bands.

Mei He is our project manager, and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins.

College Uncovered is a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX.

It’s made possible by Lumina Foundation.

Thank you so much for listening.

The post College Uncovered, Season 2, Episode 5 appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

BALTIMORE – Jazz Lewis wound up at the University of Maryland not by luck or privilege but by the strings of a guitar.

Now a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Lewis said he paid for his college degree with a mix of scholarships and money paid from stints with his church band. As one of the first men in his family to attend college, he said higher education was by no means a given; he earned it.

That’s why, Lewis said, he co-sponsored legislation designed to eliminate the use of legacy preferences at Maryland universities.

“I’m a Terp; I would love for my son to go there,” he said of the main campus at College Park. “But I just think, as a matter of public policy, state money shouldn’t be helping fulfill these types of preferences.”

The bill passed just before the end of the legislative session, was signed by Gov. Wes Moore in late April and will become law on July 1.

The idea for the legislation came last summer, after the Supreme Court ruled against the consideration of race in college admissions. Lewis, like many others across the country, wondered why colleges could still consider whether an applicant was the child of alumni or donors, but not the child’s race. While some have lauded his bill, others say it’s not enough unless it comes with other efforts to foster diversity on campus.

Lewis, a 35-year-old Democrat serving his second term in the state legislature, sees it as an easy win for Maryland, one of the most racially diverse states in the country, where the most selective college, Johns Hopkins University, and the state’s flagship, the University of Maryland, already do not consider legacy status in admissions.

Maryland becomes the third state to eliminate the practice, as the question of fairness in admissions undergoes increased scrutiny across the country. Colorado was the first state to ban legacy preference in 2021, and earlier this spring, Virginia became the second.

Legislators in California, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Connecticut are considering similar proposals. On the federal level, Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia (a Democrat) and Todd Young of Indiana (a Republican) have introduced a bill that would prevent colleges from being accredited if they considered legacy or donor connections in admissions.

Julie J. Park, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies equity in college admissions, said that giving preference to applicants who have ties to alumni or donors unfairly benefits students who likely already have advantages over their peers.

“They’re obviously not first-generation college students, they’re not suffering due to lack of opportunity,” Park said, and those with fewer advantages “are usually the students we want to help.”

Even though elite colleges have slowly diversified over the past several decades, Park said, the people who benefit from legacy preferences are still disproportionately white and affluent.

Across the country, racial disparities in access to college are pervasive. Far more white Americans than Black Americans hold college degrees, and the gap is growing. And many taxpayer-funded flagship universities, including in Maryland, have been failing to enroll Black and Latino students in the same proportions as Black and Latino graduates from their state’s high schools.

The Supreme Court’s majority determined that attempts to diversify college campuses with affirmative action policies violated the Constitution’s equal protections clause designed to prevent race-based discrimination. But the court’s dissenting justices argued that ignoring race would hurt, rather than help, students from historically disadvantaged groups and reverse progress on promoting more inclusive campuses.

In the wake of the decision, the Departments of Education and Justice jointly released a list of recommendations for colleges to use to advance opportunities for applicants from historically underrepresented groups. The list included eliminating legacy considerations from admissions, but some institutions have hesitated to adopt this recommendation.

James Murphy, the director of postsecondary policy at the advocacy group Education Reform, said he expects legacy admission preferences to disappear through a combination of legislation, like Maryland’s bill, and institutions voluntarily dropping the practice.

“Legislation has become necessary,” he added, “because colleges have not chosen to do the right thing themselves.”

At least 593 colleges across the United States reported that they considered legacy status in admissions during the 2022-2023 academic year, according to the most recently available data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That number has since shrunk due to the statewide ban on legacy preferences in Virginia, and other individual institutions dropping the practice. In Maryland, schools that do consider legacy status include Bowie State University, Capitol Technology University, Goucher College, Hood College, Loyola University of Maryland, Mount St. Mary’s University, Notre Dame of Maryland University, Salisbury University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the United States Naval Academy, Washington College and Women’s Institute of Torah Seminary and College.

Murphy said that passing this kind of legislation matters because “it sends a clear signal that Maryland is a state that doesn’t believe it’s fair to give students an advantage that is passed along family bloodlines.”

Also, he said, just because some college leaders drop the practice doesn’t mean their successors will follow the same course. Creating laws that prohibit the consideration of legacy status in admissions will ensure that these practices become a relic of the past.

And Park, the University of Maryland professor, said that states banning the practice can contribute to the momentum of the movement across the country.

“We can say, ‘Hey, this is something that if institutions are not brave enough on their own to step away from it, then, you know, states will act,’” she said.

Research shows that elite colleges benefit from accepting legacy students. These students often matriculate at higher rates than their peers, boosting completion rates and other success metrics, and their alumni family members are more likely to donate.

Johns Hopkins University ended legacy-conscious admissions in 2013, a move that university president Ronald J. Daniels said helped boost its proportion of low-income and first-generation students. The number of Pell grant recipients increased by about 10 percentage points from 2013 to 2022, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Admissions Office. Meanwhile, the number of legacy students dropped from more than 8 percent in 2013 to fewer than 2 percent over that same period, while the percentage of first-generation college students grew from about 8 percent to 21 percent.

In an interview, Daniels said that creating more parity during the admissions process has enriched the social fabric of the campus during a period he described as “highly polarized” across the country.

“There’s a richness of debate you’re able to have on a set of contemporary political and social issues that is possible with more diverse students,” Daniels said.

The institution did weigh the effect the move would have on alumni support, but Daniels said alumni giving has not significantly declined.

The university’s effort to broaden access also benefited, he said, from a $1.8 billion donation from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2018 that allowed Hopkins to provide more need-based financial assistance to students. And it has changed its recruiting and outreach procedures to identify more students who might not have considered Hopkins as an option.

“We have worked very deliberately to change the applicant pool,” Daniels said. “The truth is, it’s multi-factorial … but I don’t think we would’ve been entirely as successful at changing the percentage of students from Pell-eligible populations had it not been for the coupling of the legacy admissions [ban] and the change in strategy.”

If Hopkins can end legacy-conscious admissions, Lewis said, other Maryland institutions should have no problem following suit.

“If it’s good for the most selective private institution in the state, then all the other private institutions in the state, I think, can come aboard,” Lewis said.

In written testimony about the bill, Matt Power, president of the Maryland Independent College and University Association, wrote that some private institutions in the state do consider “alumni relationships” as part of a comprehensive application process, but that students who do not meet admission standards are never accepted due to legacy or alumni relationships alone. He also wrote that alumni relationships can be powerful tools to recruit and attract prospective students. (The group did not take a position on the legislation.)

During committee hearings, Lewis and the bill’s co-sponsor, state Sen. Benjamin Brooks, a Baltimore County Democrat, also faced questions about the legislation having “unintended consequences” of harming admissions chances for students of color and low-income students at selective institutions that had accepted their parents or relatives.

Brooks, an Army veteran who attended college with help from the G.I. Bill, said that the legislation might have flaws, but with the Supreme Court having “taken the stance they did,” this bill “is one way of bringing some equity back into the process.”

Supporters of fair admissions acknowledge that ending legacy-conscious admissions alone won’t diversify college campuses.

“These legacy admission bans often are simply a way to create the illusion of change, and excusing institutions that end the practice from taking more substantive steps,” a former U.S. Education Secretary, John B. King, said in a keynote address earlier this year. “The reality is, this is performative wokeness when transformative action is what is desperately needed.”

King, now the chancellor of the State University of New York, said that the legacy preference bans must come with other efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity among the student body.

He said colleges should strive to double the number of Pell-eligible students and try harder to recruit students from rural communities. He urged colleges to value student extracurricular activities such as part-time jobs or caring for family members as much as “equestrian trophies or glam charity outings in the more vacation-friendly developing nations.”

Lewis, the state delegate, said he can’t remember meeting with University of Maryland recruiters when he looked into applying to colleges. He now has two degrees from College Park, which he attributes to hard work — but he hopes his bill can make it easier for the next generation of Black and low-income scholars to get their feet in the door.

“I don’t see this bill as a silver bullet,” Lewis said. “I see it as one piece of our broader collection of bills that me and other colleagues are bringing to make sure that we don’t move backwards in Maryland. And hopefully, we can be a leader in the country.”

Correction: This article has been updated to correct an error in federal data. McDaniel College does not consider legacy status in admissions.

This story about banning legacy admissions was produced by The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit local news site, and The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

The post Maryland becomes the third state to completely ban legacy preference in admissions appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Cuando Angel Amankwaah viajó desde Denver a la Universidad Central de Carolina del Norte este verano para recibir orientación para nuevos estudiantes, supo que había tomado la decisión correcta.

Se divirtió aprendiendo los cantos que corean los aficionados en los partidos de fútbol. Pero también vio que “hay estudiantes que se parecen a mí y profesores que se parecen a mí” en la universidad históricamente negra, dijo Amankwaah, de 18 años, quien es negra. “Sabía que estaba en un espacio seguro”.

De repente, esto se ha convertido en una consideración importante para los estudiantes de todos los orígenes y creencias que van a la universidad.

Durante mucho tiempo, los estudiantes han elegido universidades en función de su reputación académica y vida social. Pero con los campus en la mira de las guerras culturales, ahora muchos estudiantes también están haciendo un balance de los ataques a la diversidad, el contenido de los cursos y los discursos, así como de los oradores en ambos extremos del espectro político. Están monitoreando los crímenes de odio, la legislación anti-LGBTQ, las leyes estatales de aborto y si estudiantes como ellos (negros, de zonas rurales, veteranos militares, LGBTQ o de otros orígenes) están representados y apoyados en el campus.

“No hay duda de que lo que está sucediendo a nivel estatal está afectando directamente a estos estudiantes”, dijo Alyse Levine, fundadora y directora ejecutiva de Premium Prep, una firma consultora de admisiones a universidades privadas en Chapel Hill, Carolina del Norte. Cuando ven las universidades de algunos estados ahora, dice, “hay estudiantes que se preguntan: ‘¿Realmente me quieren ahí?’”.

Para algunos estudiantes en ambos lados de la división política, la respuesta es no. En el caótico nuevo mundo de las universidades e institutos universitarios estadounidenses, muchos dicen que no se sienten bienvenidos en ciertas escuelas, mientras que otros están dispuestos a cancelar oradores y denunciar a profesores con cuyas opiniones no están de acuerdo.

Es demasiado pronto para saber en qué medida esta tendencia afectará dónde y si los futuros estudiantes terminarán yendo a la universidad, ya que los datos de inscripción disponibles públicamente se retrasan en tiempo real. Pero hay indicios de que está teniendo un impacto significativo.

Uno de cada cuatro futuros estudiantes ya ha descartado considerar una facultad o universidad debido al clima político en su estado, según una encuesta realizada por la consultora de educación superior Art & Science Group.

Relacionado: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates

Entre los estudiantes que se describen a sí mismos como liberales, la razón más común para descartar institutos universitarios y universidades, según esa encuesta, es porque es en un estado en particular “demasiado republicano” o tiene lo que consideran regulaciones laxas sobre armas, legislación anti-LGBTQ, leyes restrictivas sobre el aborto y falta de preocupación por el racismo. Los estudiantes que se describen a sí mismos como conservadores rechazan estados que creen que son “demasiado demócratas” y que tienen leyes liberales sobre el aborto y los derechos homosexuales.

Con tanta atención centrada en estos temas, The Hechinger Report ha creado una Campus Welcome Guide (Guía de Bienvenida al Campus)—la primera herramienta de su tipo— que muestra las leyes estatales y las políticas institucionales que afectan a los estudiantes universitarios. Desde prohibiciones de iniciativas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión y “teoría crítica de la raza”, hasta si se aceptan los carnets de estudiantes como prueba de residencia a efectos de votación.

También enumera —para cada institución de cuatro años en el país— aspectos como la diversidad racial y de género entre estudiantes y profesores, el número de estudiantes veteranos matriculados, la incidencia de crímenes de odio motivados por la raza en el campus, clasificaciones de la libertad de expresión y si la universidad o instituto universitario atiende a muchos estudiantes de zonas rurales.

El sesenta por ciento de los futuros estudiantes de todos los orígenes afrima que las nuevas restricciones estatales al aborto es relevante en al menos en cierta medida en el lugar donde eligen ir a la universidad, según encontró una encuesta separada realizada por Gallup y Lumina Foundation. De ellos, ocho de cada 10 dicen que preferirían ir a un estado con mayor acceso a servicios de salud reproductiva. (Lumina se encuentra entre quienes financian a The Hechinger Report, que produjo esta historia).

“Tenemos muchas mujeres jóvenes que no consideran ciertos estados”, dijo Levine. Una de sus propias clientas desistió de ir a una universidad en St. Louis después de que Missouri prohibiera casi todos los abortos tras la decisión Dobbs de la Corte Suprema, dijo.

Las instituciones de Alabama, Florida, Luisiana y Texas son las que tienen más probabilidades de ser eliminadas de las listas de estudiantes liberales, según la encuesta de Art & Science Group. En general, es más probable que se mantengan alejados del sur y el medio oeste, mientras que los estudiantes conservadores eviten California y Nueva York.

Uno de cada ocho estudiantes de secundaria en Florida dice que no iría a una universidad pública en su propio estado debido a sus políticas educativas, según encontró una encuesta separada realizada por el sitio web de información y clasificación de universidades www.Intelligent.com.

Con 494 leyes anti-LGBTQ propuestas o adoptadas este año —según American Civil Liberties Union— los futuros estudiantes que son LGBTQ+ y que han experimentado un acoso significativo a causa de ello tienen casi el doble de probabilidades de decir que no planean ir a la universidad en absoluto que los estudiantes que experimentaron niveles más bajos de acoso, según una encuesta realizada por GLSEN, anteriormente Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

“Estás atacando a niños que ya son vulnerables”, dijo Javier Gómez, un estudiante LGBTQ en su primer año en Miami Dade College. “Y no se trata sólo de estudiantes queer. Muchos jóvenes están hartos”.

Aún no es evidente si las nuevas leyes están afectando el lugar donde los jóvenes LGBTQ eligen ir a la universidad, dijo Casey Pick, director de leyes y políticas de The Trevor Project, que apoya a los jóvenes LGBTQ en crisis. Existe evidencia que los adultos LGBTQ si se están alejando de los estados que aprueban leyes anti-LGBTQ, dijo Pick. Y “si los empleados adultos toman esto en cuenta cuando deciden dónde quieren vivir, puedes apostar que los estudiantes universitarios están tomando las mismas decisiones”.

Mientras tanto, en una era de rechazo a las políticas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión en muchos estados —y contra la acción afirmativa en todo el país— Amankwaah es una de un número creciente de estudiantes negros que eligen lo que consideran la seguridad relativa de una HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). La inscripción en las HBCU aumentó alrededor del 3 por ciento en 2021, el último año del que se dispone de cifras, mientras que el número de estudiantes en otras universidades y facultades disminuyó.

“El verdadero ataque aquí es el sentimiento de pertenencia”, dijo Jerry Young, quien dirige el programa Freedom to Learn en PEN America, que hace seguimiento a las leyes que restringen los esfuerzos de diversidad y la enseñanza sobre la raza en colegios y universidades. “Lo que realmente hace es izar una bandera para decirle a los estudiantes más marginados: ‘No los queremos aquí'”.

Más del 40 por ciento de los administradores de universidades y facultades dicen que el fallo de la Corte Suprema que restringe el uso de la acción afirmativa en las admisiones afectará la diversidad en sus campus, según una encuesta de Princeton Review cuando comenzaba el año escolar.

Los estudiantes universitarios de todas las razas y tendencias políticas informan que se sienten incómodos en los campus que se han convertido en campos de batalla de temas culturales y políticos. Los de izquierda están furiosos por las nuevas leyes que bloquean programas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión y la enseñanza de ciertas perspectivas sobre la raza. Mientras los de derecha lamentan que los oradores conservadores son abucheados o cancelados, los comentarios impopulares criticados en clase y lo que ven como una adopción de valores diferentes a los que aprendieron en casa.

Un padre de Michigan dijo que apoyaba la decisión de su hijo de saltarse la universidad. Según él, otros padres también están disuadiendo a sus hijos de ir a la universidad, citando “el consumo excesivo de alcohol, la cultura de las relaciones, las enseñanzas seculares, profesores de izquierdista radicales que mezclan antiamericanismo, anticapitalismo, anti libertad de expresión y un énfasis en la diversidad, equidad e inclusión” que, según él, es contrario a un enfoque en el mérito. El padre pidió que no se usara su nombre para que sus comentarios no afectaran a su hija, quien asiste a una universidad pública.

Más de uno de cada 10 estudiantes en universidades de cuatro años ahora dicen que sienten que no pertenecen a su campus, y otros dos de cada 10 no están ni de acuerdo ni muy de acuerdo con que pertenecen, según encontró otra encuesta de Lumina y Gallup. También descubrió que quienes responden de esta manera tienen más probabilidades de experimentar estrés con frecuencia y de abandonar los estudios. Uno de cada cuatro estudiantes hispanos informa que frecuente u ocasionalmente se siente inseguro o sufre falta de respeto, discriminación o acoso.

Los veteranos militares que utilizan los beneficios de la ley G.I. para retomar los estudios dicen que una de sus barreras más importantes es la sensación de que no serán bienvenidos, según una encuesta realizada por el Instituto D’Aniello para Veteranos y Familias Militares de la Universidad de Syracuse. Casi dos tercios dice que los profesores y administradores no entienden los desafíos que enfrentan, y el 70 por ciento dice lo mismo sobre sus compañeros de clase no veteranos.

Las universidades deben ser “espacios seguros y de afirmación”, dijo Pick, del Proyecto Trevor, no lugares de aislamiento y alienación.

Sin embargo, un número significativo de estudiantes dice que no se siente cómodo compartiendo sus puntos de vista en clase, según otra encuesta realizada por College Pulse para el Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth, de tendencia conservadora, en la Universidad Estatal de Dakota del Norte. De ellos, el 72 por ciento dice que teme que sus opiniones sean consideradas inaceptables por sus compañeros de clase y el 45 por ciento por sus profesores. Los estudiantes conservadores tienen menos probabilidades que sus compañeros liberales, de creer que todos los puntos de vista son bienvenidos y están menos dispuestos a compartir los suyos.

“¿Es realmente un entorno intelectualmente diverso?” se pregunta Sean Stevens, director de encuestas y análisis de la Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), que ha lanzado una clasificación de la libertad de expresión en los campus basada en las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre la comodidad al expresar ideas, la tolerancia hacia los oradores y otras medidas.

“Anecdóticamente y por experiencia personal, ciertamente hay un grupo de estudiantes

que están considerando estos factores en términos de dónde ir a la universidad”, dijo Stevens.

El 81 por ciento de los estudiantes liberales y el 53 por ciento de los conservadores dicen que apoyan las denuncias a profesores que hacen comentarios que consideran ofensivos, según la misma encuesta. Esta utilizó comentarios en su muestra como: “No hay evidencia de prejuicios contra los negros en los tiroteos policiales”, “Exigir la vacunación contra el COVID es un asalto a la libertad individual” y “El sexo biológico es un hecho científico”.

Una profesora de la Universidad Texas A&M fue investigada cuando un estudiante la acusó de criticar al vicegobernador del estado durante una conferencia, aunque finalmente fue exonerada. Una profesora de antropología de la Universidad de Chicago que impartió un curso universitario llamado “El problema de la blancura” dijo que se vio inundada de mensajes de odio cuando un estudiante conservador publicó su foto y su dirección de correo electrónico en las redes sociales.

Más de la mitad de los estudiantes de primer año dicen que las universidades tienen derecho a prohibir a oradores radicales, según una encuesta anual realizada por un instituto de la UCLA. La encuesta de College Pulse dice que el sentimiento lo comparte el doble de proporción de estudiantes liberales que de conservadores.

Relacionado: How higher education lost its shine

La aparición de un jurista conservador —quien habló en el Washington College de Maryland el mes pasado— fue interrumpida por estudiantes debido a sus posiciones sobre cuestiones LGBTQ y el aborto. El tema: la libertad de expresión en el campus.

En marzo, un grupo de estudiantes en el campus de Stanford interrumpió un discurso de un juez federal cuyo historial judicial, según dijeron, era anti-LGBTQ. Cuando pidió la intervención de un administrador, un decano asociado de diversidad, equidad e inclusión lo confrontó y le preguntó: “¿Vale la pena el dolor que esto causa y la división que esto causa?”. El decano asociado fue suspendido y luego renunció.

“Hoy es un hecho triste que la mayor amenaza a la libertad de expresión proviene del interior de la academia”, afirmó el American Council of Trustees and Alumni, de tendencia derechista, que está presionando a las universidades para que firmen su Iniciativa de Libertad Universitaria que alienta a enseñar a los estudiantes sobre libertad de expresión durante la orientación para estudiantes de primer año y disciplinar a las personas que interrumpan a los oradores o eventos, entre otras medidas.

“Tengo que imaginar que en las universidades que tienen un mal historial en materia de libertad de expresión o libertad académica, esto afectará su reputación”, dijo Steven Maguire, becario de libertad en el campus de la organización. “Escucho a personas decir cosas como: ‘Me preocupa a qué tipo de instituto universitario o universidad puedo enviar a mis hijos y si serán libres de ser ellos mismos y de expresarse'”.

Algunas universidades ahora están reclutando activamente estudiantes basándose en este tipo de inquietudes. Colorado College creó en septiembre un programa para facilitar el proceso a los estudiantes que desean transferirse de instituciones en estados que han prohibido las iniciativas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión. Hampshire College en Massachusetts ha ofrecido admisión a cualquier estudiante de New College en Florida, sujeto a lo que los críticos han descrito como una toma de posesión conservadora. Hasta ahora, treinta y cinco han aceptado la invitación.

Aunque muchos críticos conservadores de los institutos universitarios y universidades dicen que los profesores están adoctrinando a los estudiantes con opiniones liberales, los estudiantes entrantes de primer año tienden a tener opiniones de izquierda antes de poner un pie en el aula, según esa encuesta de UCLA.

Menos de uno de cada cinco se considera conservador. Tres cuartas partes dicen que el aborto debería ser legal y favorecer leyes de control de armas más estrictas, el 68 por ciento dice que las personas ricas deberían pagar más impuestos de los que pagan ahora y el 86 por ciento que el cambio climático debería ser una prioridad federal y que debería haber un camino claro hacia la ciudadanía para todos los inmigrantes indocumentados.

Los futuros estudiantes dicen que están observando cómo se aprueban nuevas leyes, surgen controversias en los campus y analizan activamente no sólo la calidad de la comida y las especialidades disponibles en las universidades a las que podrían asistir, sino también la política estatal.

“Una vez que decidí que iba a Carolina del Norte Central, busqué si Carolina del Norte era un estado rojo o un estado azul”, dijo Amankwaah. (Carolina del Norte tiene un demócrata como gobernador, pero los republicanos controlan ambas cámaras de la legislatura y tienen una supermayoría a prueba de veto en el Senado estatal).

Las leyes anti-LGBTQ de Florida llevaron a Javier Gómez a dejar su estado natal y mudarse a Nueva York para ir a la escuela de moda. Pero luego regresó y se transfirió a Miami Dade.

“La gente me pregunta: ‘¿Por qué diablos estás de vuelta en Florida?’”, dijo Gómez. “La razón por la que regresé fue porque tenía esa vocación innata de que tenías que quedarte y luchar por los niños queer y trans de aquí. A veces es abrumador. Puede ser muy agotador mentalmente. Pero quería quedarme y continuar la lucha y construir una comunidad contra el odio”.

The post Las guerras culturales en los campus comienzan a afectar el lugar donde los estudiantes eligen ir a la universidad appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid promised to be an easy process for all students, especially those from immigrant families. For the first time, students with undocumented parents were told, they would be able to complete this form online.

We should have known better. Students with undocumented parents are constantly getting error messages from the FAFSA portal and are struggling to create FAFSA IDs for their parents who don’t have Social Security numbers. When they contact the FAFSA helpline, they hear “It’s a glitch. Try at a different time. Try a different browser.”

As I have seen as a college adviser, the online process has only worked for a few of my qualifying students. Others were asked to send their parents’ documents for verification.

Many of these students are still waiting for approval and have been unable to complete their FAFSA forms. Delays in their FAFSA applications could mean delays in receiving financial aid packages and possibly mean getting less financial aid to cover the costs of college. Their FAFSA applications now echo the immigration policies in this country — forever in limbo, mired in legislative and bureaucratic delays.

It wouldn’t surprise me if those students’ documents were among the FAFSA program’s thousands of unread emails, indicative of its widespread failure.

Related: ‘Simpler’ FAFSA complicates college plans for students, families

This isn’t the only roadblock my students face while attempting to pursue a college education. And it just underscores their need for help from someone familiar with the system and the frustration it brings.

Sadly, there aren’t enough college advisers like me for the growing population of immigrant students in New York City. We need to earmark funds to hire more advisers because no matter how much we prepare students in high school to succeed academically at the next level, they also need someone trained in the intersection of immigration and education to get them there.

For nearly a decade, the New York State Youth Leadership Council (YLC) and Teach Dream, the council’s educator team, have pushed city officials for more support for immigrant students in schools.

Finally, in 2021, they launched the Immigrant Liaison pilot program in a collaborative project with CUNY’s Initiative on Immigration and Education. That program led to the creation of positions for school staff members with experience working with and supporting immigrant youth, undocumented students, their families and caregivers.

The pilot began with three New York City public high schools, including the one where I work; in its second year, it added two middle schools. But funds for the program ended last June, leaving many of us doing this work informally.

Two decades ago, I was an undocumented student in high school and was unable to complete the FAFSA because of my status. I did some research to try to find out if I would be eligible for academic scholarships. I made several inquiries to tri-state college admissions counselors.

Like many of my students, I wanted to be the first in my family to earn a college degree, but my research results were discouraging.

I’ll never forget one response: An admissions counselor said I would have to contact the office for “special education accommodation” — as if immigration were a disability.

Federal and state immigration policies have since changed, and options have multiplied for immigrant students. In 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, began to allow eligible immigrants like myself to obtain work permits and Social Security numbers.

In 2016, New York State changed its licensing rules, allowing DACA recipients like me to earn professional certifications in teaching, and I was able to continue my career as a math teacher in the Department of Education. And in 2019, the New York State Senate passed the José Peralta New York State DREAM Act, which gave undocumented students in New York State the ability to qualify for state aid for higher education.

Yet even with all these changes, undocumented immigrants in New York State make up less than 2 percent of the students enrolled in higher education despite the fact that undocumented immigrants comprise roughly 14 percent of the state’s overall population.

How many more could go to college if they had someone in their high school who could properly guide them through the college application process?

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

At schools across the country, at all grade levels, not enough counselors and staff are equipped to navigate the intricacies of the complex and often confusing immigration system.

We need state or city-funded immigrant liaisons at every school. Securing funding will be like working with FAFSA: We will need to be persistent and patient.

It’s worth it. This winter, I walked a student through the steps on how to create her mother’s FAFSA ID. The mother then tried multiple times for a month until she was successful in creating it.

After that, my student completed her FAFSA form in 10 minutes. Now, we are waiting to hear whether she gets financial aid to attend college.

My work as an immigrant liaison is never finished. I only wish more could join me.

Juan Carlos Pérez is a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration & Education and a college adviser at an international high school in New York City.

This story about immigrant students and FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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At a national park in Virginia on Monday, President Joe Biden announced that people can start applying to the American Climate Corps, a program that is expected to connect workers with more than 20,000 green jobs. 

“You’ll get paid to fight climate change, learning how to install those solar panels, fight wildfires, rebuild wetlands, weatherize homes, and so much more that’s going to protect the environment and build a clean energy economy,” Biden said at the Earth Day event. 

The American Climate Corps (ACC) is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to employ men in environmental projects on the country’s public lands — projects like trail building, planting trees and soil erosion control. Nearly 3 million people were put to work in an effort to address both Depression-era unemployment and to shore up national infrastructure.

But it wasn’t very diverse. Although Black and Native American men were allowed to enroll, the work was segregated. And women could not apply. For a brief time, a sister program created by Eleanor Roosevelt — mockingly called the “She-She-She camps” by its detractors — trained 8,500 women in skills like typing and filing.  

The Biden administration is adamant that this iteration of the program will attract a more diverse conservation and climate workforce, promising that the program will “look like America” and expand pathways into the workforce for people from marginalized backgrounds.

On Monday, Biden announced the launch of a long-awaited job board where applicants can look for opportunities. Some positions were created through the American Climate Corps partner agencies like the Forest Service, which announced the Forest Corps — 80 jobs in reforestation and wildfire mitigation — or the USDA’s Working Lands Climate Corps, with 100 positions. At the same time, the Department of Interior and the Department of Energy announced a new project that will place corps members in priority energy communities — places that have historically been the site of coal mining and power plants — for work in community-led projects like environmental remediation. All of these positions have a term limit, although they vary; some listed on the website are seven-months for example, others are over a year long. 

Other jobs listed on the site are compiled from existing conservation corps programs; either state-run programs like the California Conservation Corps or those run by nonprofits like Conservation Legacy. These provide opportunities for young people in local communities to do everything from prescribed burning on public lands to solar panel installations on schools. 

So far, there are 273 listings on the website, ranging from working on trail crews to invasive plant management to wildland firefighting positions. There is also an “ag literacy” position to teach kids about where their food comes from, and a posting for a climate impact coordinator who will help a Minnesota nonprofit develop climate resilience projects. That’s a far cry from the administration’s goal of 20,000 jobs.

But supporters of the program say opportunities to expand ACC are endless — from home weatherization positions to planting tree canopies in urban areas. The question is whether these mostly taxpayer-funded jobs will attract and retain a diverse workforce and benefits women and LGBTQ+ workers, as well as people of color. 

“We know that it is going to take everybody to solve the climate process and we need to field the whole team. That’s exactly the way we’ve thought about building this program,” said Maggie Thomas, special assistant for climate to Biden.

Because the program is working with The Corps Network, a national association of about 140 conservation groups, there is already some data on how modern-day organizations operate, said Mary Ellen Sprenkel, president and CEO of the network. “They collectively engage almost 25,000 young people a year and are very diverse — young people from urban areas to rural areas. There is a diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status and education level.”

According to the organization’s data from 2023, the most recent year available, 44 percent of their members were women and 3 percent were gender non-conforming or gender expansive.

Fifty-nine percent identified as White, while 14 percent were Black, 23 percent were Latino, 4 percent were American Indian, 3 percent were Asian and 2 percent were Pacific Islander. 

Sprenkel sees those numbers as progress. “What has evolved out of the original CCC has naturally become much more diverse in terms of member opportunities. And so building on that for the ACC, I think it will naturally happen,” said Sprenkel. 

In addition, any of the jobs created through federal agencies in collaboration with the ACC must adhere to the administration’s Justice 40 initiative, which means 40 percent of the benefits must go to marginalized communities, in this case either through job creation, or through the projects being funded through monies like the Inflation Reduction Act. 

One aspect of parity will be how well these jobs pay. Many of the positions listed on the ACC site are funded through AmeriCorps, which pays modest living stipends that have been criticized as “poverty wages.” AmeriCorps “was designed for middle class White people who could get support from their parents to have this opportunity,” Sprenkel said. But the Biden administration wants to ensure that all young people can serve, she continued, not just those who can afford to take lower-paying positions.

Sprenkel said the administration is aiming for positions to pay a living wage — with some wiggle room that allows for lower wages as long as housing and other benefits are provided. “[They’ve] said we would like for programs to strive to pay their members $15 an hour, but if that is the result of a package where you’re providing housing and transportation, that’s OK.”

One way the administration has aimed to increase pay transparency is to list an hourly wage equivalent for the jobs posted on the ACC website, said Thomas. This number could factor in stipends for transportation, living expenses and educational awards. Many jobs currently listed go above the $15 minimum — though some require more than entry-level experience. 

There are also efforts in the works to increase the low stipends of current AmeriCorps members. “The president has called on Congress to raise the minimum living allowance for all of our crew members to at least $15 an hour as a starting point,” said Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell, senior advisor for AmeriCorps. In the interim, she said, many corps positions have been able to offer packages equivalent to $15 an hour through public and private partnerships with states and outside organizations.

Madeleine Sirois, a research analyst with the left-leaning think tank Urban Institute, has been researching workforce development pathways in the clean energy transition. She said offering paid opportunities to enter a new career is a good starting point. “So many people want to upskill, they want to get new credentials, and maybe change career paths. But then they can’t leave their current job that maybe only pays 10 bucks an hour,” she said. 

But other benefits are important, too, if the program is going to be equitable in its rollout, said Sirois. “It’s been mentioned on the portal that there are health care, child care, transportation and housing available, but it does say only some opportunities will offer that,” she said. “So it leaves me with the question of: Who has access to that and who doesn’t?” 

Among the initial 273 listings posted on the ACC site, The 19th found only four that listed child care as a benefit, though Shaheen-McConnell said that eventually more of the positions will offer it. 

Sirois said another important aspect of the ACC will be whether it will lead to actual jobs in clean energy and climate work after corps service ends. She was heartened by Monday’s announcement that the ACC had partnered with the North America’s Building Trades Alliance TradeFutures program, which will provide every ACC member access to a free pre-apprenticeship trades readiness program. Trades jobs make up the foundation of the clean energy transition, but have historically gone to men. Just 4 percent of women are trades workers in the United States. 

“These are all really important, especially for getting women and people of color into these jobs, and apprenticeships that will lead into quality careers that are unionized in many cases. So I think that’s fantastic,” said Sirois. However, while the administration has also touted that ACC positions will offer workforce certifications and skill-based training, Sirois said those are only offered for some corps members. Getting clarity on how many of these jobs will lead to improved employment opportunities will be key. 

It’s going to take time to see how the program plays out, she said, and learn if it will be successful in placing women and people of color in trades jobs, despite historic discrimination.

“When we talk about moving people into jobs, it’s making sure we’re very specific about what kinds of jobs in terms of the quality,” she said. “It’s about opportunities for advancement, having meaningful work, a workplace free from discrimination and harassment, and feeling that you have a voice on the job.” Sirois hopes the administration will collect data on corps members that tracks completion rates and job placements after service, and that the data can be disaggregated by gender and race.

Thomas said American Climate Corps jobs should be considered the earliest stage of the workforce development pipeline — leading to better paying jobs down the line. “This is an opportunity for young people to take action right now in communities across the country, on climate projects that we know have a tangible impact today.”

This story was originally published by The 19^th and reprinted with permission.

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It was when the shuttle bus stopped coming that Luka Fernandes began to worry.

Fernandes was a student at Newbury College near Boston whose enrollment had declined in the previous two decades from more than 5,300 to about 600.

“Things started closing down,” Fernandes remembered. “There was definitely a sense of things going wrong. The food went downhill. It felt like they didn’t really care anymore.”

The private, nonprofit school had been placed on probation by its accreditors because of its shaky finances. Then the shuttle bus connecting the suburban campus with the nearest station on the public transportation system started running late or not showing up at all. “That was one of the things that made us feel like they were giving up.”

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox. 

After students went home for their winter holiday, an email came: Newbury would shut down at the end of the next semester.

“It was, ‘Unfortunately we have to close after all these many years, and blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Fernandes, who was a junior. “I was very angry.”

The loans that students had taken out to pay the college weren’t forgiven, “which was infuriating. I had already put so much money into my education, and my family didn’t have that money. How am I going to apply this to my future if it doesn’t exist?”

This and other questions are on the minds of more and more students this spring as the pace of college closings dramatically speeds up.

About one university or college per week so far this year, on average, has announced that it will close or merge. That’s up from a little more than two a month last year, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO.

So many colleges are folding that some students who moved from one to another have now found that their new school will also close, often with little or no warning. Some of the students at Newbury, when it closed in 2019, had moved there from nearby Mount Ida College, for example, which shut down the year before.

Most students at colleges that close give up on their educations altogether. Fewer than half transfer to other institutions, a SHEEO study found. Of those, fewer than half stay long enough to get degrees. Many lose credits when they move from one school to another and have to spend longer in college, often taking out more loans to pay for it.

Related: After its college closes, a rural community fights to keep a path to education open

The rest join the growing number of Americans — now more than 40 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — who spent time and money to go to college but never finished. And that’s happening at a time when efforts to increase the proportion of the population with degrees are already facing headwinds.

“I was asking my dad, ‘Can I not go back?’ ” said Fernandes, who eventually decided to continue at another college and now works as a patient coordinator at a hospital.

“I’m glad I did. But it honestly scares me for the future of education. I’m not sure where education’s going to go if all of these colleges keep closing. It’s just another roadblock, especially with people who are struggling with tuition in the first place.”

Colleges are almost certain to keep closing. As many as one in 10 four-year colleges and universities are in financial peril, the consulting firm EY Parthenon estimates.

“It’s simply supply and demand,” said Gary Stocker, a former chief of staff at Westminster College in Missouri and the founder of College Viability, which evaluates institutions’ financial stability. The closings follow an enrollment decline of 14 percent in the decade through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the Education Department. Another decline of up to 15 percent is projected to begin in 2025.

“The only thing that’s going to fix this is enough closings or consolidations at which supply and demand reach equilibrium,” Stocker said.

That’s likely little comfort to students who attend or have attended closing schools.

Already this year, and within a span of a few days, Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, Fontbonne University in St. Louis and Eastern Gateway Community College in Ohio all announced that they would close — Birmingham-Southern in May, Fontbonne next year and Eastern Gateway by June, unless it gets a financial bailout.

The private, for-profit University of Antelope Valley in California was ordered by the state in late February to shut down because of financial shortfalls. Lincoln Christian University in Illinois and Magdalen College in New Hampshire will close in May, Johnson University of Florida in June and Hodges University in Florida by August. The College of Saint Rose in New York, Cabrini University in Pennsylvania, Oak Point University in Illinois, Goddard College in Vermont and the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University will all be shuttered by the end of this semester.

Notre Dame College in Ohio will also close its doors at the end of this semester, stranding for a second time students who transferred there from Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia, which shut down just days before classes were scheduled to begin the year before.

Related: Getting a college degree was their dream. Then their school suddenly closed

Seven out of 10 students at colleges that have closed got little or no warning. Of those, a smaller proportion were likely to continue their educations than students at colleges that gave more notice and ended operations in an “orderly” way, the SHEEO study found.

Tatiana Hicks was at her laptop preparing for her final exams in the nursing program she attended at for-profit Stratford University in Virginia when her group chat with fellow students started to blow up. “The only thing that was going through my mind was studying for finals, but my phone would not stop ringing,” said Hicks, who was going to school while working 12-hour shifts three days a week as a nurse assistant in a hospital to pay for it.

An email from the university president had just gone out saying Stratford had lost its accreditation and was closing, effective immediately. Students had a month to get their transcripts, it said. But within a day, the university’s phones and email were shut down, said Hicks, now 27, who lives in Gainesville, Virginia.

“I started panicking. I cried. I cried for hours that day. This just happened out of nowhere,” said Hicks, who lost all of the 94 credits she had earned and owed $30,000 in student loans, though they would later be forgiven after more than a year of red tape.

“Everyone kept asking me, ‘When are you going to go back?’ And I didn’t want to go back,” she said. “I thought, this just proved I shouldn’t have gone to college in the first place.”

Hicks did eventually enroll in a new program, beginning again from scratch on her way to a degree in respiratory therapy.

More common is the experience of Misha Zhuykov, who ended his formal education when Burlington College in Vermont shut down during his junior year there. The college had embarked on an ill-fated expansion, buying an abandoned Catholic orphanage so spooky Zhuykov helped make an award-winning movie in it for his film studies program. (The president at the time of the controversial expansion project was Jane O’Meara Sanders, wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

“There was always this ramshackle feeling” at Burlington, he said. Adjunct instructors were gradually replacing full-time faculty. “We kind of all suspected something might happen. I thought, ‘Just hold out for another two years and I’m out of here.’ ”

Instead, Zhuykov and the last 100 or so other undergraduates were given less than two weeks’ notice that the college would be closing. A private security company came to lock up the buildings. He said he found that not all of his credits would be accepted if he transferred.

Students who transfer lose an average of 43 percent of the credits they’ve already earned and paid for, the Government Accountability Office found in the most recent comprehensive study of this problem.

Like many of his classmates, Zhuykov never took his formal education any further. He now works as a graphic designer in New Hampshire. “A lot of folks just kind of dropped off. They were banking on that degree. I have a friend who’s working at a gas station.”

Related: A campaign to prod high school students into college tries a new tack: Making it simple

Even those who graduated from colleges that later closed run into uncomfortable questions when they look for jobs. Roy Mercon went to Burlington after serving in the Army. He managed to graduate before the college stopped operating. But when he’s applied for jobs, he gets skeptical reactions. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re from that school. I tried to look it up,’ ” he said.

“You kind of trusted the people teaching you that they know what they’re doing. This makes you feel a little cynical and sets the tone for the rest of your life,” said Mercon, who is 35 and working on the help desk of a citywide internet service provider in Burlington. He now has a 12-year-old daughter of his own. If she decides to go to college, he said, he will investigate to make sure the one she picks won’t close. “That’s an insane thing to have to think about.”

Laila Ali, who was in the last group of students to graduate from Newbury College, has run into similar paperwork problems. When she started a new job in December, she said, her employer tried to verify her education, but couldn’t. “I didn’t really know what route to take. Who do I contact?” She ultimately showed them the physical degree that she was handed when she walked at graduation, which the employer accepted. But it triggered unwelcome memories.

“I remember graduation and my last semester being gloomy,” said Ali, now 27 and living in Atlanta. She said she saw a few signs that the college was in trouble, but it had also recently renovated a gym, with new equipment, and added sports teams. So the closing came as a surprise. “They could have given us a warning.”

How much difference a warning can make was evident at Presentation College in South Dakota, which — before announcing that it would close — contracted with the nonprofit College Possible to help its 384 remaining students continue their educations. After the announcement, the college stayed open for a final full semester and kept paying its athletics coaches to connect its many student-athletes with new teams.

At first, when administrators gathered everyone in the fieldhouse to announce the closing, “the students were so struck with disbelief that about half of them just got up and left,” said Catherine Marciano, College Possible’s vice president for partnerships. “Other students were crying very publicly or expressing anger toward the administration.” And when the college held a “teach-out fair” in the same gym with institutions that had agreed to accept its students and their credits, none showed up, despite a deluge of social media promotion.

“It took a little while for us to gain momentum,” Marciano said. Faculty and staff were looking for new jobs, while “students at that point were still in that state of grief where they were paralyzed.”

But given time, she said, “we saw those emotions shift to, ‘Okay, I have to figure out my next steps. I want to keep playing sports or keep pursuing my nursing degree.’ ”

In the end, 90 percent of those last students either graduated in the final semester before the college closed its doors for good or transferred to another institution, Marciano said — a far higher proportion than at closed colleges elsewhere.

Related: Aging states to college graduates: We’ll pay you to stay

Cassy Loa was one of those. A junior at Presentation when it closed, she played on its softball team and managed to transfer to Dickinson State University. But even with the help provided to her, she said, the path from the day the closing was announced was bumpy.

“All these thoughts were going through my mind. What was I going to do? Will my credits transfer? Can I still play softball? Where will my friends go? I had one more year until I graduated, and now I had to go and find a school for one more year.”

Living through that process, she said, “felt like being a senior in high school again.” In the end, because Presentation had a teach-out agreement with North Dakota’s Dickinson State, most of her credits transferred.

That kind of an experience is an exception to the rule, however. “Students don’t always do well when colleges close. In fact, they typically don’t do well,” said Paula Langteau, the last president of Presentation. “Some colleges literally padlock the door, and that’s their announcement.”

This is not deliberately malicious, Langteau said. Struggling schools “think they can somehow stay open. Or maybe they’re afraid of looking like they failed.”

She now works as a consultant to help other colleges through the process — a sign of how frequently it’s happening.

“We’re starting to get through to colleges and to boards that there needs to be more pre-planning, and it’s hard,” Langteau said. “It’s hard to admit when it’s time for an institution to close or to merge.’ ”

Mergers are also picking up, though they almost always end with the struggling partner fading away. Woodbury University is being merged into the University of Redlands, and St. Augustine College in Chicago into Lewis University. The Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences was absorbed by Saint Joseph’s University in January. Salus University will become part of Drexel University in June and stop running as a separate institution next year. Bluffton University in Ohio will be integrated into the University of Findlay, also next year.

This seems an easier route for students, who presumably can finish at the successor college. But it isn’t always. Students who attended Mills College received a $1.25 million settlement in a lawsuit charging that they were promised they could finish their degrees after the college was absorbed by Northeastern University. The lawsuit alleged that Northeastern phased out programs it didn’t already offer, in which 408 of the Mills students had enrolled. The universities deny having misled the students.

These shutdowns also affect taxpayers, who have to absorb the cost of the federally subsidized student loans that are forgiven in some instances. Students attending ITT Tech had $1.1 billion in debt forgiven when it shut down, for instance.

New U.S. Department of Education rules take effect in July that will require institutions to report if they are entering bankruptcy or facing expensive legal judgments, and to set aside reserves to cover the cost of student loans if they go under.

It’s also growing more important that consumers understand the financial status of colleges they consider, said Stocker, of College Viability.

“If a restaurant has health complaints, we don’t want to go there,” said Stocker. “If a car manufacturer is having trouble, why would we want to buy that car? Same thing for colleges.”

This story about college closings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Sara Hutchinson. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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Student-parents disproportionately give up before they reach the finish line. Fewer than 4 in 10 graduate with a degree within six years, compared with more than 6 in 10 other students.

Search to learn more about childcare availability at colleges and universities nationwide. Enter an institution name to see if child care is available and how many students are over the age of 24.

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What makes a first-generation college student? Well, that depends on who’s doing the defining.

Yes, there’s the federal definition: a student is first-generation if neither parent has a bachelor’s degree.  

Sounds simple enough. But it doesn’t account for those who had a highly educated parent who wasn’t involved in their lives, or those whose parent got a college degree in another country, with an academic system unlike ours, or those who have one degree-holding parent, but are being raised in a single-parent household.

Researchers argue that many students like these are still meaningfully less advantaged compared to students who have two parents with degrees. Despite the narrow federal definition, many believe these are students who need to be identified and given added resources and support both to get through the college application process and to thrive once they get on campus.

New research from Common App shows that expanding the definition of first-generation expands enrollment data, and thus can tell a different story about who is ready for college.

According to 2022 data from Common App, about 450,000 applicants that year met the federal definition, meaning that neither parent had a bachelor’s degree, including about 300,000 students whose parents had never attended any college. But if the definition is expanded to include applicants who had one parent with a bachelor’s degree, the population increases to more than 700,000. And, according to the report, changing that definition changes other things, too, such as college readiness, socioeconomic status and the number of colleges students apply to.

Brian Heseung Kim, director of data science, research and analytics at Common App, said there isn’t one right way to define first-generation students; the question should be, “What kind of disadvantage are we trying to measure?”

After the Supreme Court ruled against the consideration of race in college admissions last summer, Kim said he was interested in looking at many different aspects of diversity in college applicants, including first-generation status. He said this analysis might help colleges that want to understand the diversity of their applicants; how certain home contexts and hardships might affect how competitive students appear in the application process; and how to support students from all different backgrounds.

“It would be great if everyone could kind of align on one definition for first-generation, it’d be so wonderful if we had that clarity,” Kim said.  “But the reality is that different contexts kind of require different identification methods.”

Related: Sick parents? Caring for siblings? Colleges experiment with asking applicants how home life affects them

The Common App’s analysis shows that, depending on the definition, the percentage of students identified as being part of an underrepresented minority group can range from 45 percent (for those who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree) to 58 percent (for students whose parents did not attend any college). And the percentage of those students from low-income families varies from 48 percent (for students who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree) to 66 percent (for students whose parents did not attend any college).

Sarah E. Whitley, vice president of the Center for First-generation Student Success, said most colleges define first-generation students as those whose parents do not have bachelor’s degrees or those whose parents did not earn bachelor’s degrees in the United States. She said the center doesn’t use one universal definition, and instead works with colleges to identify the definition that makes the most sense for them.

Whitley said the purpose of identifying students as first-generation is to understand whether they have people in their family who can support them with college-going knowledge, but that’s often harder to determine than asking simply “Are you the first in your family to attend college?”

Whitley discourages college from using this language because students may not categorize themselves as first-generation if they had an aunt or uncle or older sibling who attended college. She said it’s better to ask specific questions about parental education, as Common App does, but it can still be difficult to capture everyone. For example, asking about the education of biological parents might not capture students who had a highly educated birth parent but were raised by a stepparent, she said, or students who were raised in a family with two moms or two dads.

The Common App research found that there could be more than 100 definitions, considering the different combinations of parents and caregivers, whether they attended college or graduated, what degree they and many more factors. The analysis considered eight definitions:

• Neither parent earned a bachelor’s degree (the federal definition)
• No bachelor’s degrees among living parents (to focus on those who can provide support to the student)
• No bachelor’s degrees among caregivers (considers others in the household beyond biological parents, such as a stepparent)
• No domestic bachelor’s degree among caregivers (because degrees from other countries may be less relevant in helping students in the U.S. higher education system)
• No bachelor’s degrees earned by caregivers before the student was born (excludes those who earned degrees more recently and may not yet have “accrued some of the more socioeconomic benefits of a college degree,” according to the report)
• No associate degrees, either parent
• No college attendance, either parent
• One parent earned a bachelor’s degree

Yolanda Watson-Spiva, president of the advocacy group Complete College America, said it’s also important to think about the social capital that students have if both their parents went to college, such as access to college alumni and professional networks. She said there are big differences in resources between students who have one parent who earned a bachelor’s degree and students whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all went to college.

It makes more sense to think of first-generation status as a spectrum, she said, rather than a yes or no question.  Using only the federal definition of first-generation is too narrow and constrictive, she said.

Watson-Spiva’s mother earned a bachelor’s degree and her father went to community college, but one of her grandmothers only had an eighth grade education. She doesn’t identify as a first- generation student, but said she could imagine how someone in a similar situation might, even though they don’t meet the federal definition.

“Many of those folks still struggle,” she said. “There are still big variations between that person and a person who’s had like four generations of family members that are legacies, that went to college.”

This story about first-generation students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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As they struggle to fill seats, universities on average dole out more than half of the revenue they collect from tuition in the form of discounts and financial aid.

If a private company discounted its products by more than half, it would be out of business. It’s an incredibly self-destructive model, but no one seems willing to be the first to stop doing it.

This financial arms war among colleges is draining so much revenue that many are losing money even as they increase their tuition. That’s because almost no one pays the advertised price; nearly all students, including those whose families can afford to pay, now get discounts and institutional financial aid. Not only is this pushing colleges into insolvency; it discourages many students and families — particularly low-income ones — from considering a college, since they see only the advertised cost and don’t realize they’d almost certainly pay a much, much lower one.

These many machinations are beginning to slow down the annual increases in the cost of college. Some institutions are even lowering their prices. In this episode of College Uncovered, The Hechinger Report and GBH will show you how to take advantage of the college pricing chaos.

Listen to the whole series

Scroll to the end of this transcript to find out more about these topics, with links to additional helpful information — including a tool to help you search for calculators that will tell you the likely net price you will pay at any college, based on your income.

Jon: So we’re here at Vinyl Index, which is a very hip record store. They sell new and used vinyl, in the very hip boom market section of Somerville outside of Boston.

Kirk: And you’re looking for some ’80s albums? Maybe Chicago?

Jon: And we are not looking for some ’80s albums, but we’re looking for some rare albums, and we’re going to see what kind of a discount we can get.

Kirk: You’re going to haggle.

Jon: We’re going. To haggle.

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: I am Aaron Wetjen-Barry, aka Aaron-eous. I work here at Vinyl Index, ordering new and used music.

Kirk: Aaron-eous. Can you explain the nickname?

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: So, I started in college, actually, but I’m a visual artist, and I’m kind of from the hip hop scene where we all have our, like, hip hop names.

Jon: So tell me what the most expensive album is that you have here?

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: So, we sell a lot of, say, Grateful Dead box sets here. So, you know, like, something like this. This record just has, like, eight records in there. So it’s, like, four hours of music.

Kirk: How much does that go for?

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: This one goes for $200 even.

Jon: So can we get this for 56 percent off?

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: Unfortunately, the mark up is not that good, so it wouldn’t be able to do that.

Jon: Yeah, so what would happen if you sold everything here in this shop for 56 percent off?

Aaron Wetjen-Barry: We’d probably be out of business in a week.

Jon: That makes pretty logical sense if you do the math. I mean, a business can’t give back more than half of what it makes and stay in business.

Kirk: But that’s exactly what colleges and universities are doing in a complicated and largely unknown pricing strategy that makes seemingly no logical sense at all. Or does it?

This is College Uncovered from GBH News and The Hechinger Report podcast, pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work.

I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH.

Jon: And I’m Jon Marcus with The Hechinger Report.

Kirk: We’re calling this episode “Half Off Full Price.”

Jon: We’ve been talking on this podcast about how families can negotiate their way into a discount on the cost of college, but how much money colleges are actually giving away might come as a surprise.

Colleges give back, in the form of tuition discounts and financial aid, 56 percent of the revenue they take in. And that’s the average. Some are giving overall discounts of 60 or even 70 percent.

The colleges don’t call them discounts. They call them scholarships. And that’s how families see them when they get offered their financial aid. But those are just fancy ways to reduce the price, the same way retailers do when they’re trying to attract more customers.

Kirk: This discounting practice started back in the ’90s, the last time colleges faced a really big enrollment decline. Today, both public and private colleges do it.

Will Doyle: Many people thought a lot of private colleges were going to go out of business at that time.

Kirk: Will Doyle is a professor of higher education at Vanderbilt University.

Will Doyle: What the private colleges did, though, was they figured out that the worst thing in the world is an empty seat. If they could figure out what somebody was willing to pay for a seat and charge them that, then they might as well fill every seat and get what they could for it.

Kirk: So Doyle says that’s exactly what they did.

Will Doyle: They looked at what people in different categories were willing to pay and figured out what they could charge them. And by doing that, they ended up being able to fill those empty seats. And they survived what was supposed to be an incredibly difficult time, actually pretty well.

Kirk: Notice that he isn’t saying that the money goes to the people who couldn’t pay the full freight, just that they might be on the fence about picking a school. So colleges have steadily shifted some of their financial aid to people who might not actually need it, just to get them to enroll.

Will Doyle: Colleges actually will charge a little less for the highest-income students, the ones who are closest to the ability to do full pay, because just a small discount, a small honorific discount where you’ve told the student they’ve gotten the scholarship, can tip the decision for that student to attend. Many of the highest-income students with not necessarily great test scores actually do receive some amount of financial aid.

Jon: Right, just like the way the person sitting next to you on an airplane might have paid a completely different price for the flight. From the college’s point of view, it sort of makes sense. You need to have at least some people who can pay at least some of the tuition.

Brett Schraeder: But if you don’t give them anything, they may never show up. And so then you don’t have any revenue from that student to help with your mission, to help serve other students, to pay your faculty.

Jon: That’s Brett Schraeder, managing director for financial aid at the consulting firm EAB, which advises colleges about this kind of thing.

But as the years have gone by, this approach has sort of trapped many colleges and universities in a cutthroat competition for students to whom they have to give more and more discounts and financial aid. And continuing to advertise a very high list or sticker price that almost no one pays is discouraging some students from even applying to colleges that might be a really good fit for them.

Kirk: Okay, so what does all of this mean to you if you’re a student or a parent? Well, you could be missing out. One survey found that a majority of families don’t know that colleges discount their price. Another, by the student loan company Sallie Mae, finds that nearly 80 percent of people eliminate a college from consideration because they see the list price, and they think it’s too high.

Brian Rosenberg saw this firsthand from the inside.

Brian Rosenberg: I am president emeritus of Macalester College and author of a recent book, Whatever It Is, I’m against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education.

Jon: Rosenberg says the whole pricing mechanism is complicated and baffling to a consumer.

Brian Rosenberg: And so students, particularly first-generation students, students who aren’t particularly sophisticated, will simply look at the fact that a college’s posted price for tuition, room and board of $70,000 and say, ‘Well, I’m not even going to think about that.’

Jon: That’s right — even though almost no one actually pays that price. I ran the federal data, which, as you know, Kirk, is something I like to do in my free time. And there are 428 colleges and universities at which not a single incoming freshman pays the full price.

Kirk: So that leads to another little secret you might not have noticed. Yes, it’s true that the price of tuition and fees has been going up at three times the rate of inflation, but those price increases have suddenly leveled off.

In 2022, average tuition actually went down, when adjusted for inflation.

Let’s be clear. Paying for college is still scary and expensive. But the point of all this is that it doesn’t cost as much as people sometimes think. And the price? It’s pretty much stopped going up.

Jon: I mean, as you said, college is still really expensive. Tuition, room, board, books and other costs comes to nearly $60,000 a year at private nonprofit colleges and nearly 30 grand at public ones. But colleges are giving back more and more of their money to fill seats. Which means they’re running into money crunches of their own.

So how do students and their parents take advantage of this practice? We asked one of the top experts who helps low income and first-generation students do it.

Scott Del Rossi: My name is Scott Del Rossi and I am the vice president of college and career at College Possible. College Possible is a national nonprofit, that provides college access and college success coaching to about 25,000 students across the country.

Jon: So how can a family find out how much of a discount they might get from a particular college? I mean, short of actually applying.

Scott Del Rossi: If you navigate to their financial aid page. Oftentimes they’ll have a tuition calculator that you can enter in your family’s income, yearly income. And that will let you know how much college will typically cost for a family at that income.

Jon: That’s true. The colleges are actually required by law to provide these net price calculators. They’re supposed to tell you what you’ll actually pay after discounts and financial aid based on your family income. And for the most part, they’ll give you the right general idea.

But a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that some of the links didn’t work, or the prices were out of date, or they didn’t say what year they were from. So don’t assume they’re right on the money — so to speak.

Scott: Absolutely. Ironically, I was looking for one for the other day, and it was very much buried on the website. You kind of had to know it existed in order just to find the calculator.

Kirk: So now you know, and just knowing about these discounts can be a big help in getting the best deal, especially with many colleges so desperate for enrollment. Here’s Scott Del Rossi again.

Scott Del Rossi: We always recommend to students and families that they apply to more than one college.

Jon: You mean, so they can pit one against the other?

Scott Del Rossi: You can always present that as, you know, ‘Hey, these are the things that I really hope that you consider, and reevaluate the financial aid award. And these are the types of awards I’m getting from other colleges and universities.’

Kirk: This growing discount rate is a major reason why a lot of them are closing or likely to close, which we’re also going to be talking about this season.

Don’t just take it from us. We asked Brian Rosenberg, the former president of Macalester, who had to deal with this problem, whether a 56 percent average discount rate at private colleges is too much.

Brian Rosenberg: It’s unsustainable.

Jon: So why don’t colleges stop?

Brian Rosenberg: They have no choice. I mean, the obvious question that a lot of people ask is, ‘Well, if your discount rate is 50 percent, why don’t you just cut your sticker price in half?’ And some colleges are doing that.

Jon: You’re talking about a tuition reset.

Brian Rosenberg: A tuition reset.

Jon: A tuition reset is the higher education’s sort of typically wonky way of describing lowering the price. And as Brian Rosenberg says, some colleges are trying that now, charging everyone the average that people were paying anyway without playing the game of showing one price and charging another one.

Kirk: Especially in places where they’re running out of students, like in the Northeast and the Midwest. That’s where an enrollment cliff is on its way, as the number of 18-year-olds declines.

Susan Stuebner: My name is Sue Stuebner, and I’m the president of Colby Sawyer College, which is in New London, New Hampshire.

Jon: Last year, Colby Sawyer lowered its advertised price by more than 60 percent, down from about $46,000 to $17,000 a year, not including room and board. Not a single student was paying the full price anyway.

Susan Stuebner: As institutions’ tuition prices go up, you’re losing the chance to have a conversation with more and more families. And so the pool you’re actually drawing from gets smaller and smaller. And we looked around the marketplace and our listed or sticker-price tuition was among the highest in New Hampshire as well as even in in New England. So when I mentioned that statistic earlier about not being in conversation with so many families, you know, that combined with the enrollment cliff had us very nervous.

Kirk: Stuebner says that Colby Sawyer has gotten a bump in applications, and a lot more of the students it accepted have already put down their deposits. And other colleges are watching whether this model works.

Susan Stuebner: We’re getting a lot of interest. You know, a lot of folks have reached out and just asked about the process. So I think, if nothing else, a lot of schools are considering it.

Kirk: But American consumer behavior is a little strange. For one thing, if something costs more, we seem to think it must be better. Like cars. Or whiskey. Will Doyle says it’s called the Chivas Regal Effect.

Will Doyle: It’s called the Chivas Regal Effect because Chivas Regal is this kind of mediocre whiskey. And they came up with a brilliant strategy, which was actually to increase their price. And by increasing the price, they moved it from the bottom shelf to the middle shelf. And people look at whiskeys and they think, ‘Oh, the middle shelf must be an okay whiskey.’ And they bought that one.

Lots of colleges find the same thing that when they reduce the sticker price. When they reduce the stated price, the perceived quality of the institution goes down. So if an institution maintains a very high stated price, they’re kind of saying, ‘Oh, we’re a high-quality place. Then they can quietly discount for the set of students that they’re seeking to enroll.

Kirk: So you’re there in Tennessee, a major producer of whiskey, and the sticker price at Vanderbilt is now approaching $100,000 a year. Is that the Chivas Regal Effect?

Will Doyle: I’m going to decline to comment on my own institution.

Kirk: Okay. Fair enough. So the other thing that colleges have done is disguise the discounts as scholarships that parents love to see. It gives the parents bragging rights. And at a lot of colleges, almost everybody gets them. But we love to get awards. And so when colleges lower the price, Susan Stuebner says parents want to know where their kids’ scholarships went.

Susan Stuebner: The group that had the most difficult time understanding what we were trying to do were our current students. We provided them with a comparison of what they were currently receiving from the college that year and what they would receive the next year. When you looked at the actual amount they paid to attend Colby Sawyer, it was the same. But for some families and for some students, you know, their initial reaction was, you’re taking this scholarship away from me.

Jon: Brett Schrader’s consulting firm does a survey of high school seniors every year to find out what would attract them to a college.

Brett Schraeder: We ask them, ‘Hey, if you had three different awards, if you had a $40,000 prize and a $20,000 scholarship, if you had a $30,000 prize and a $10,000 scholarship, or you had just a $20,000 prize — so basically same net cost for each one — which one would you pick?’ Always. They pick the ones with the scholarships.

Jon: The bottom line is that colleges and universities have created a system that makes it ridiculously hard for people to figure out what they’ll actually pay, even though it might be less than they expect.

Susan Stuebner: In today’s era, higher education is being scrutinized for how much it costs, and at the same time, what it actually costs to families is much less for most of us than what we list. So it’s very confusing.

Jon: It’s pretty quiet here on a Thursday morning on a campus. I thought it was Friday that students didn’t go to class.

Kirk: We went to the campus of Lasell University, which, like Colby Sawyer, also cut its price this year by about a third, from nearly $60,000 to just under $40,000. Lasell is one of those schools we mentioned earlier where not a single student had been paying the advertised sticker price. That raises the question, do students who are already attending save any money when a college cuts its list price?

Jon: We caught up with a business management major on her way to or her off campus job.

Rose Andrey Pluviose: My name is Rose Andrey Pluviose. I’m a senior here at LaSalle, and I’m from Boston, Massachusetts.

Jon: Did you come out ahead when they lowered the price? Did you end up paying less to go here?

Rose Andrey Pluviose: I would say about $1,500 less.

Jon: Other students came out even.

Parker Tallman: I’m Parker Tallman. I am 21 years old. I’m from New Jersey. So for me, it didn’t really make an impact. Tuition went down, which means your scholarships go down, too. So even though we’re paying less out of pocket, the scholarships go down as well. I don’t know what the dollar figure is, what I’m paying right now anymore. And I just heard that it’s possibly going up again.

Jon: Lots of students told us the same thing — that the pricing system at colleges doesn’t make much sense when tuition gets lowered by $20,000, but their own price stays the same or falls by maybe $1,500.

Parker Tallman: It shouldn’t be that difficult. If you’re going to have a set price, have a set price.

Jon: But in your case, basically you came out even.

Parker Tallman: I came out even. Yeah, basically I came out even, luckily.

Jon: Scott Del Rossi also warns that tuition resets are a little bit of a gimmick when you do the math, and that people shouldn’t get too excited about them.

Scott Del Rossi: If the sticker price is still being lowered, but the financial aid package is getting lowered, we certainly do want to get students’ and families’ hopes up.

Kirk: So the moral of this crazy story is to not assume that the price you see is what you’ll pay for college. You will likely pay a lot less.

Jon: We’ll let Brian Rosenberg have the last word here. The former president of Macalester says colleges are clinging to this impenetrable pricing strategy in a desperate bid for survival.

Brian Rosenberg: These colleges need students. And unless they keep marking down the price more and more, students simply are not going to come. There are many, many colleges where not a single student pays the full price. It is like a business that is struggling to stay alive.

Jon: And yet we keep doing it.

Brian Rosenberg: And yet we keep doing it.

Kirk: This is College Uncovered. I’m Kirk Carapezza from GBH.

Jon: And I’m Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report. Be sure to keep listening to future episodes to hear more about what colleges and universities don’t teach you.

Kirk: We would love to hear from you. Send us an email to gbhnewsconnect@wgbh.org and tell us what you want to know about how colleges really operate. And if you’re with a college or university. Tell us what you think the public should know about higher ed.

Jon: This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza …

Kirk: … and Jon Marcus, and it’s edited by Jeff Keating. Meg Woolhouse is our supervising editor and Ellen London is the executive producer.

Gary Mott and David Goodman are our mix engineers. We had production assistance from Diane Adame.

All of our music is by college bands. Theme song and original music by Left Roman out of MIT.

Mei He is our project manager and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins.

College Uncovered is a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. It’s made possible by Lumina Foundation.

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