Top Higher Education News for Thursday
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Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

December 12, 2024

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Financial Woes and Finger-Pointing at Tennessee State

Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed

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Tennessee State University is facing challenging times. The historically Black land-grant institution has cut 114 positions this semester, slashed duplicative contracts for software and other services, and frozen all nonessential hiring and spending in an attempt to get its finances back on track.

 

State lawmakers blame former administrators for the institution's financial woes, while former administrators blame chronic state underfunding.

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Before There Was Woke, There Was ‘PCU’

Jack Stripling, College Matters

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In 1994, a little movie about a politically correct college landed in theaters. Not many people saw it at the time. However, during its resurgence on cable television and home video, PCU emerged as a cult classic film, satirizing the identity politics, liberal extremism, and right-wing intolerance that fuel many of today's most heated disputes in higher education.

 

In this interview, PCU's co-writer Zak Penn talks about how the film looks in 2024.

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More Colleges Offering Free Tuition to Middle-Class Families

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post

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A desire at some schools to fulfill promises related to affordability and the dire need at other schools to offset declining enrollment have resulted in a boon for families earning upward of six figures: More schools are offering free tuition to middle-income families.

 

To cover the increase in financial aid, schools are fundraising and using endowment funds. University leaders say they are sending a clear message that their institutions are affordable for a large and important portion of the college-going public.

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In a Test of Adult Know-How, America Comes Up Short

Douglas Belkin, The Wall Street Journal

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When it comes to basic skills such as creating a complex travel itinerary, reading a thermometer, or finding information from a website, American workers are falling behind those in other rich countries.

 

That is according to a global test of adult know-how, which measures job readiness and problem-solving among workers in industrialized countries. The results largely show that the least-educated American workers between the ages of 16 and 65 are less able to make inferences from a section of text, manipulate fractions, or apply spatial reasoning—even as the most-educated are getting smarter.

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‘This Is Our Community’: Inside the Programs Helping College Workers With Home Down Payments

Kate Rix, Higher Ed Dive

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Robin Boston wasn’t expecting her job to help her buy a house when she started working for the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in 2016. But two years after joining the university’s Office of Philanthropy, Boston bought her first home, less than a mile from the campus.

 

The best part? The university made the down payment.

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Top NYC Students Get Automatic SUNY Admission, But Fine Print Excludes Many Black and Latino Kids

Alex Zimmerman, Chalkbeat New York

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High school teacher Steve Lazar Lazar has spent much of his career working at non-selective New York City high schools that predominantly serve low-income students of color. So he was ecstatic to learn about a new policy at SUNY designed to give his students a leg up in an admissions process that often favors families with time and resources.

 

As it turns out, intricate details of the policy may be cause for concern.

HUMAN WORK AND LEARNING

As Workers Seek Guidance on AI Use, Employers Value Skilled Graduates

Laura Ascione, eCampus News

Is Higher Education Bloated and Dated?

Nicholas Ladany, Forbes

Three Things We Learned About AI and Skilling From Experts

Tom Crowfoot, World Economic Forum

If You Report on U.S. Colleges and Universities, Get to Know These 19 Higher Education Databases

Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource

Commentary: Why California Needs to Double-Down on Its Apprenticeship Programs

Paul Nelson De La Cerda, CalMatters

STUDENT SUPPORTS

Madison College Unveils $10 Million Child Care Facility Plans for Goodman South Campus

JT Cestkowski, WKOW

A Recipe for Success Coaching

Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed

COLLEGE ENROLLMENTS

What High School Graduating Classes Might Look Like in 2041

Mallika Seshadri, EdSource

As 2025’s Demographic Cliff Looms, How Far Will College Enrollment Fall?

Michael T. Nietzel, Forbes

Is Calculus an Addiction That College Admissions Officers Can’t Shake?

Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report

Part-Time Students in Community Colleges (Part 2)

Kent Phillippe, DataPoints

AFFORDABILITY

College Cost Still a Major Hurdle for Tennessee Students

Danielle Smith, Public News Service

Three-Fourths of Fresno Students Are Eligible for College Money But Haven’t Claimed It

EdSource

Chart to Go: Higher Education Costs

Carlie Kollath Wells, Alex Fitzpatrick, and Justin Kaufmann, Axios New Orleans

NEW REPORTS AND EVENTS

Measuring Earnings Growth by Field of Study to Inform Higher Education Policy

Urban Institute

Webinar: Diverse Pathways in Higher Education

The Hunt Institute

Preparing Today’s Youth for the Jobs of the Future

Jobs for the Future

Supporting Students To and Through College: What Does the Evidence Say?

Brookings Institution

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Daily Lumina News is edited by Patricia Brennan.

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