Students Choosing Colleges Based On (choose your agenda)

College applications and enrollments were down in Academic Year 2022-23. So, colleges and universities are making an all-out effort to get students to choose their institution for obtaining a general liberal arts four-year bachelor’s degree – going beyond the usual appeal of proximity and low cost. Now it seems many higher ed institutions are into an “amenities arms race,” as Ron Lieber wrote in Town & Country. First came an upgrade in dorms – from two to four in a room with bunk beds and a single dresser, to single student rooms and suites and full apartments on or next to campus, some with pools and gyms and eating plans, and of course garages for student cars.

Amenities for leisure activities available to students have seen an explosive upgrade as well. Many campuses offer students specialty gyms with climbing walls. Aquatic infrastructure includes multiple swimming pools and spa features such as whirlpools, steam rooms and the like. Apparently, the top feature is rivers with boats and flotation devices running through campus. Institutions with these built amenities can now compete with campuses that have appealing natural features, such as the University of California at Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Community College that are built on luscious bluffs with easy access to ocean beaches and good waves for surfing. Another example is Vermont’s Middlebury College, that contains an on-campus ski slope.  Substantial support of student clubs and other competitive sports programs are also cited as crucial sirens for many students.

But according to an April poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation, more students are now basing their college choices on their political beliefs. Polls show students prefer to be with students and faculty who are like-minded, the Gallup report reveals. Conservative students say they fear being punished for expressing contrary views on liberal campuses. Other students are vociferous about not wanting to attend a college that limits access to abortion.

Donald Sweeting of Hillandale offers an “alternative” checklist for college. Among his 12 criteria, he suggests students look for colleges with a robust core curriculum in the basics: composition, literature, foreign languages, US government, economics, mathematics, and natural sciences. He suggests that students pick a school that promotes character, virtue, and the meaning of life, and one that values and encourages debate, thinking, listening respectfully, and discussing great ideas.   

Department of Education’s Proposed Budget Generates Debate 

Department of Education Secretary Michael Cardona met fiery responses when defending his $90 billion FY24 proposed budget at a hearing of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, held on May 16th, titled “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Education.” The historically high budget includes more money for Title I students, early childhood education, and mental health support. But Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) was outraged. In particular, Foxx pointed out that Cardona had been “derelict in responding to the committee’s repeated requests to respond to their concerns the past two years.”  At the top of Republican concerns are the Biden administration’s student loan debt repayment scheme and revisions to Title IX.

“Mr. Secretary, the Department has repeatedly attempted to circumvent the constitutional authority of Congress by legislating the president’s student debt scheme through executive fiat,” Foxx accused Cardona. “Your Department proposed a radical alteration to the Income Driven Repayment program. This backdoor attempt to drive through the president’s free college agenda will cost the American people at least $230 billion over the next decade. Student debt cancellation, as written, is a regressive policy that benefits the top half of earners disproportionately and forces degreeless blue-collar workers to pay for PhDs”.

In addition, Foxx told Cardona face-to-face, ‘your department has radically rewritten Title IX so that “sex” is defined as an ideological construction rather than a biological reality. Under your Department’s regime, self-identification is deemed sufficient for a man to be a legal “woman” and therefore compete in women’s sports. And one could self-identify as a man on one day and a woman the very next day”. Foxx also stated that “aside from dumbing down a whole generation, the radical new history is aimed at subverting our national story,” In her view, history should be presented from the perspective that we “are an imperfect people collectively bound by higher ideals.”

Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about historically low scores of current eighth graders in civics, math, and reading.

Changing International Education Focus – on diversity of administrators?

An older professor of Georgetown University’s graduate school of business stopped to talk to uncensored at the graduating students’ reception on Thursday, May 18. “We need more foreign students,” he said. “Business schools particularly are hit hard by the decrease of Chinese students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23. The decrease last year was due to the pandemic, but now I’m not sure. Mainly I think we are pricing ourselves out of the market.”

On the surface, the numbers don’t look so bad. “The number of foreign students currently studying in the U.S. is above one million – 1.08 million, nearly at pre-pandemic 2021 levels – (1.14 mullion in 2021). But Chinese students now make up only 24 percent of the total instead of 32 percent in 2020. India has increased its percentage from 17 percent to 23 percent. Mexico has dropped off the top ten sending markets list, while Brazil has been elevated to number five. – albeit with only 2.6 percent of the total and a drop of over 6 percent. Nigeria increased its number of international students by almost 22 percent; whereas Vietnam decreased its market share from 2020 by 19.35 percent.

Urgent discussions are being held between international educators on how to bring back falling numbers of foreign students, and get more resources from campus regents and donors to support international education on campus and study abroad for a larger number of students, especially those who are not studying liberal arts. Student diversity and sensitivity training of international educators seems to be a focus of solutions expressed in panel discussions hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education and others in April. “There are faculty members that still don’t know how to engage a female Muslim student with a hijab on. We need to create safe spaces on our campus for those international students,” panelists said. “As a field, international education needs to make room for more diverse voices. Opening and broadening the field is about women, but also for men of color. How are we building the field for the future?”

Meanwhile, new, stricter regulations are being proposed for international students. The Biden administration just reinstituted a former regulation that foreign students had to take face-to-face classes to count for credit (otherwise why come and pay expensive tuition, if they could just get the courses on-line in their homeland?). A movement to grant green cards automatically to tens of thousands of foreign students earning advanced degrees in STEM fields has not been part of the immigration reform conversation in Congress so far this year.