A new wave of student-led campus protests demanding institutional divestment from Israeli-backed corporations has bled into May. College leaders, out of tremendous concern for their students’ safety and institutions’ operations, have permitted using campus and local law enforcement to clear student encampments and make arrests. As well-intentioned as these efforts seem, they might have an inverse effect. “As a Jewish student, I feel, at this moment in time, much less at risk of violence from being Jewish than just from being a student standing up for free speech,” Emory University Junior Maddi ..read more

Instead of celebrating decision day on May 1, West Virginia’s colleges and universities are facing a state of emergency. The ongoing FAFSA fiasco that has left many students and admissions officers pulling their hair out drove West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to take action on financial aid. The state of emergency he declared Wednesday allows students to qualify for the state’s largest financial aid programs—including the Promise Scholarship and the Higher Education Grant Program—without filling out the FAFSA application. High school FAFSA completion rates are currently down nearly 40% in W ..read more

The Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) has made initial changes to the way Kentucky public universities receive state funding, removing “race-based metrics” from the performance-funding model to be in compliance with a law passed earlier this month. Senate Bill 191, signed by Gov. Andy Beshear on April 18, explicitly bars CPE from considering race in its performance-based funding model. CPE “shall not include any race-based metrics or targets in the formulas” under the new law. It also strikes out references to minority students in the formula, allowing colleges to be evaluated on the nu ..read more

Connecticut will not ban legacy admissions in higher education this year, despite a recent push to do so. Under a bill that advanced out of committee in March, both public and private colleges in Connecticut would have been barred from considering family ties to the school in considering whether to admit a given student. In an amended version of the bill that passed the state Senate on Tuesday, however, the ban was removed and replaced with a requirement that schools who use legacy admissions report data on the practice to lawmakers each year. Read more from CT Insider. The post ..read more

Recent data already point to some slippage. From 2010 to 2021, the state’s population of residents under 20 fell by 4% but higher education saw an even larger enrollment decrease of 6.1%. Part of the explanation is a decline nationally in confidence in higher ed. From 2015 to 2023, according to Gallup results shared during the session by Evan Horowtiz of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, there has been a sharp drop in confidence in higher ed, a trend seen regardless of party affiliation, gender, educational attainment, or age. Read more from the Rhode Island Current. T ..read more

College leaders aired their frustration over the fall of affirmative action last summer, and admissions officers everywhere were predominantly against its erasure. While race-conscious admissions practices were touted to help colleges and universities increase the diversity of their incoming class sizes, their actual contribution was marginal at best, according to a new retrospective analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW). “Much has been written about how the nation’s most selective colleges will struggle to retain diversity now that the Supreme Court ..read more

Employers are souring on Ivy League and Ivy-Plus institutions and have elected the next banner of institutions producing the highest-performing professionals, according to a new breakdown from Forbes. The 20 “new Ivies” educate students with an average 1482 SAT and 33 ACT score and generate graduates who are a better cultural and professional fit at the highest echelons of corporate society, wrote billionaire philanthropist John Arnold in a recent X (formerly Twitter post). Forbes examined over 1,700 colleges with at least 4,000 students and parsed its list down to those with highly selec ..read more

As STEM drives innovation both inside the classroom and in the workplace, universities are building and renovating facilities curated to the student, professor and researcher experience. The goal is to attract and retain students and top-notch research talent in a highly competitive marketplace. Despite contending with tight budgets, many institutions are getting creative in their approach to interjecting campuses with impactful learning spaces. Here are four emerging trends in building design as universities and colleges reimagine STEM spaces. Taking a multidisciplinary approach Combining eng ..read more

Columbia University is at the epicenter of the recent wave of campus protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war. President Joe Biden went far enough to publicly condemn the rise of pro-Palestinian protestors occupying campus. Meanwhile, college presidents across the nation are receiving their own serving of intense backlash, many of which are originating from within their own campus. As presidents ratchet up their measures to snuff out campus protests, utilizing law enforcement and threats of suspension and arrest, faculty are increasingly becoming more disdainful toward their institutional lead ..read more

National College Admissions Day is May 1, and thanks to a program created by Arizona State University, more high school students in Arizona are on the path to a college degree. The Personalized Admissions Project, launched by ASU in 2021, is removing barriers to college by simplifying the process: High school seniors who meet the admission standards get personalized letters telling them they’re accepted before they even apply, and the application fee is waived. Currently, 27 public school districts participate, representing half the high school students in Arizona. Read more from Arizona ..read more