The Washington Post’s Post

More universities are using grants and admitting students for free! It seems that CSR Grants from super wealthy companies are gaining popularity! They're not just marketing their products and services, since most of the world is not very wealthy, they're marketing themselves as kind, caring, and giving to communities. Wow! Biggest companies in the world: 1: Microsoft (Thanks OpenAI & ChatGPT): Market cap: $3.073 trillion 2: Apple: $2.791 trillion 3: Saudi Aramco: $2.059 trillion 4: NVIDIA (thanks AI & screen usage): $1.977 trillion 5: Amazon: $1.836 trillion https://lnkd.in/eKH8Gdpa

A significant development unfolded in Tennessee as the trustees of the state's only publicly funded historically Black university, Tennessee State University, were removed.  To the Students and Professors at Tennessee State University We see you. While challenging, you stand at the heart of this discussion and also hold possibilities. There are options and avenues available to you — from engaging in constructive dialogue to participating in governance and advocacy to attending another college and finding new employment opportunities. Tennessee State University, or TSU, has 9,218 students for 2022 and 2023. This includes 7,678 undergraduates and 1,540 graduate students; 34.26% of students are male (3,158), and 65.74% of female students (6,060) are female. 918 students exclusively enrolled in distance education programs. TSU student body is diverse, with a majority of students belonging to ethnic backgrounds; 86% are minorities or individuals of color (BIPOC), with the largest groups being Black or African American (70%), White (14%), Hispanic (1%) and Asian (1%).  #Leadership #Diversity #CivicEngagement #Education #Governance #SupportTSU

An emerging trend, Republican MAGA "National Affirmative Action Ban" History: "In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which compelled government contractors to “‘take affirmative action’ to realize the national goal of ‘nondiscrimination. As race-conscious policies, affirmative action admissions seek to address the fact that inequality in society as a whole creates multiple race-related barriers to graduating from high school and attending college for non-white students.  https://lnkd.in/ex96hyFx On 6/29/2023, the SCOTUS ruled that affirmative action college admissions policies are unconstitutional. Colleges could no longer consider an applicant's race as a factor for admissions. Republican state lawmakers have been a driving force behind the retreat from race-conscious scholarships." "Nearly 50 colleges and universities, mostly public institutions, have paused, ended or reconfigured hundreds of race-conscious scholarships worth millions of dollars to comply with the ruling." "Duke University recently discontinued a 45-year-old scholarship that covered tuition, currently about $66,000 a year, and housing costs of some Black undergraduate students." "The University of Iowa has changed the selection criteria for its Advantage Iowa Award, which dispenses more than $9 million a year in financial help to first-year students, opening it up to White students to apply." "Across the four-campus University of Missouri system, officials are changing the eligibility rules for $17.2 million in institutional and donor-funded scholarships earmarked for students from certain racial or ethnic groups." https://lnkd.in/enQbiv-h

With skyrocketing tuition and borrowing for college creating lesser and lesser quality outcomes; it's no wonder America's high school graduates are opting to not go to college. It's also not surprising, with the number of administrators quintupling since the 1980s per professor, that the cost of running a university has become unsustainable. WVA University and Gordon Gee are the most recent and public example of many future to come. Situations where a school must choose from unpopular majors and overly expensive administrators versus going bust. There have been numerous small liberal arts colleges that have closed since COVID, I imagine this scenario will continue to play out at most if not all universities in the coming years. #universities #studentloans #collegecosts https://lnkd.in/e7csGaSn

https://lnkd.in/dAv_EgHQ Full disclosure: I’m a Vanderbilt grad and a proud one at that, but one has to wonder where this trend leaves international students. If we extrapolate to the larger American system of higher education, we’d have to expect plenty of other universities to follow suit in exceeding the six-digit a year threshold, many without the same infrastructure of scholarships and aid for international students. Even government scholarship entities may balk at the lofty sticker price, in particular for universities that don’t deliver on the elite global rankings that are seen to justify the lofty costs. That value proposition is at the core of why, despite having sent students to a host of globally elite universities, I’ve never had a student go to Vanderbilt; I worry that this same value proposition will slowly erode interest in American higher education for international students. I’d love to hear other thoughts on this. #highered #college #university #tuition #internationalhighered #postsecondaryaccess #internationalstudents

"Maryland will consider joining a number of states that guarantee admission to certain first-year students at one of the state’s four-year public colleges and universities. Proposed legislation – Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Malcolm Augustine (D-Prince George’s) — would require institutions to adopt an admission policy and accept Maryland high school students, from a public or private school, who are in the top 10% of their class. The 10 “constituent” higher education institutions that would be required to accept those students are those in the University System of Maryland: University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; University of Maryland Eastern Shore; University of Maryland Global Campus; Bowie State University; Coppin State University; Frostburg State University; Salisbury University; Towson University; University of Baltimore. Two public schools not in the system would also be required to admit those sudents: Morgan State University and St. Mary’s College of Maryland." https://lnkd.in/evCWH_M8

🎓 California is poised to make sweeping changes to its signature higher education access program, the Cal Grant. 💡 In this op-ed in The San Diego Union-Tribune, college presidents Mark David Milliron at National University and Mark Sanchez, Ed.D. at Southwestern College urge California lawmakers to expand the Cal Grant state aid program to better meet the needs of the new majority of learners. 📣 They make the case that California's investments in higher education have powered generations of economic growth, innovation, and upward mobility since the creation of the Master Plan for Higher Education. As Mark and Mark write: "By doubling down on equitable college transfer as a matter of state policy, California can lead the way in building a more equitable higher education system and forging a stronger, more inclusive economy." #HigherEducation #EducationPolicy #California

“Public Colleges Used to Be Free Until ⚫️ People Were Allowed In” by Jermaine Thomas Prior to the 1970s, most state colleges and universities were tuition free. However, after racial segregation in schools was outlawed and the passing of civil rights legislation, many colleges ensured that higher education was cost prohibitive so that ⚫️ people, in particular, would be less likely to attend. As a side note, the racially-biased SAT was created by ⚪️ supremacist and eugenicist, Carl Brigham - a Princeton professor. This was done in an attempt to exclude Black people from colleges, as he created the exam to ensure that Whites would perform better, but I digress. Jamal Rich’s article titled, “Free College was Once the Norm All Over America,” states: “In California, Ronald Reagan (who would later become president of the United States) was elected governor of California in 1966 and proposed that the University of California system should charge tuition to attend college. In his words, this was to ‘get rid of undesirables […] those who are there to carry signs and not to study might think twice to carry picket signs.’ His was a campaign to maintain ⚪️ supremacy by making public colleges and universities cost money. Reagan succeeds and by the 1990s, every ‘formerly public’ school began being paid for by tuition costs, which in turn turned into student debt” (Rich, 2020). So, you can thank purveyors of systemic racism for high college tuition costs today. ⚪️ Supremacy just views the debt that it has caused a subset of ⚪️ people as a necessary casualty of war in the mission against ⚫️ advancement. References: https://lnkd.in/gyjeZpVb https://lnkd.in/gfG2Tzvb.

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