Test 2

More:

Depending on how things go -- what the arc of COVID-19 is nationally or in certain regions of the country, whether physical distancing rules are still in place, etc. -- college campuses may remain off-limits to students come September. Whether that's a 5 percent likelihood, or 25 percent or 50 percent, I have no idea (I'm no Tony Fauci, and even he can't say for sure). But it's almost certainly not zero.

In such a scenario, the impact on college campuses would be enormous -- operationally, financially and otherwise.

[...]

Any decisions about the fall are multiple weeks, if not months, away, and many people aren't ready to discuss the topic, at least publicly. But some foresighted campus officials are (often quietly) exploring that possibility, and I'd like to share some early assertions (or at least hypotheses) based on those discussions.

Yesterday we hosted our semi-annual gathering of high school counselors at Penn State - something that we call the Counselor Advisory Group. The purpose of the organization is to maintain a dialogue with our strong partners and collaborators on the secondary school side of the desk.

We had a great conversation that spanned everything from the "personality" of the Class of 2020 to the recent changes in the NACAC CEPP (and I'll have more on that specific topic soon).

Anyway, the conversations that were had on campus yesterday (and at an informal dinner on Sunday evening) had me reflecting on the role of high school counselors in the life of students - and I was reminded of a simple infographic that I saw recently:


Changing the nomenclature that people use is almost always difficult. However, as the graphic lays out, the change makes sense.

Now, if I could just understand why my kids' school district has decided to call students "learners"...

A colleague texted me a link to this clip from a recent CBS News story entitled "The Price You Pay: The Spiraling Cost of College". I'm embedding the segment below, starting at the 1:10 mark (but feel free to watch in its entirety). Check it:



I have to take issue with one key thing in this report; the host picked seemingly random spots on College Avenue to "survey" Penn State students.

Sorry to bother you. Hey, I've got a quick question: raise your hand if you're from Pennsylvania.

Nevermind that this statement is a statement and not a question. More importantly, it is also not scientific.

Tony Dokoupil questions (as best as I can tell from the clip) approximately seven students at a CATA bus stop, and only one is from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Quick math: that's 14 percent of the students "surveyed". Ouch. That really looks bad.

But hey, all institutions of higher education have thing cool thing called a Common Data Set. Penn State's is HERE. At the Common Data Set you can find all sorts of interesting... well... data about the institution. Things like the University Factbook that describes in nuanced detail student residency:

source: Penn State Factbook

Well, would'ya look at that! In-state students outnumber out-of-state students by more than 30 percent! And that's if you include Penn State's online World Campus (which you would expect to have a higher out-of-state population - and does not have a tuition differential based on residency). If you take the World Campus out of the equation, then you find that it's a nearly 40 percent difference.

Even at the University Park campus - the largest and arguably most visible nationally - there is a 15 percent difference in in- versus out-of-state students.

[Note: This is only the undergraduate data, as that is what the segment seems to be focused upon. If you're interested in the whole kit and kaboodle, hit that info here.]

But of course this data doesn't support the picture that Mr. Dokoupil is trying to paint: we universities spend SO much money that we have to intentionally focus our efforts on students that will pay a higher tuition rate (i.e. out-of-state and international students). Granted, the appearance of over-indulgence at LSU with the "lazy river" is an on-the-nose example of that.

So what are colleges doing with all of your extra money? Some of it goes to teaching of course. But most does not.

What "extra" money? The students' tuition dollars? How is that "extra"? And where is your data to support the assertion that it's not going to teaching? How much is some? How much is most? The questions go on and on...

In the interview portion with Dr. Renu Khator, the president and chancellor of the University of Houston, he asks why institutions don't scale some things back to keep the cost of tuition down. Given that question, I find it interesting that he didn't report on or even mention the fact that in July the Penn State Board of Trustees APPROVED A TUITION FREEZE FOR PENNSYLVANIA STUDENTS FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW:

Penn State trustees have approved a 2019-20 budget that would freeze undergraduate tuition rates for Pennsylvania resident students at all campuses for the second straight year, and the third time in the last five years.

The total cost of attendance will still increase about 1 percent due to previously approved housing and dining services increases, but Penn State President Eric Barron called the proposed tuition freeze a key part of his plan to keep Penn State affordable to as many Pennsylvanians as possible.

Sorry. Am I yelling?

Are out-of-state and international students important to the life of an institution? Yes. Do colleges and universities develop strategic recruitment initiatives to target out-of-state and international students? Absolutely. However, that does NOT mean that a land-grant institution like Penn State is only enrolling those higher-paying populations.

I will certainly concede that there are areas in higher education where plenty of criticism is worthy; the rising costs of tuition and the salaries for executives and coaches, to name a couple. But I believe that the part of this segment where he targets Penn State is not one such area that is worthy. Data is fun, perhaps Mr. Dokoupil should have actually included some in his reporting while he was on campus.

You may have heard about THE Ohio State University making a request to trademark the word "THE" (stylized in all-caps like that) for use on merchandise.

Welp, according to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, that's not happening:

The word “the” doesn’t belong to Ohio State University, and it’s sort of Marc Jacobs’ fault, according to a letter a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent Wednesday to a university attorney.

The office rejected an attempt by Ohio’s flagship university to trademark the word, stylized as “THE” in all caps, in ways that signify its association with the school on T-shirts and hats.

The letter cites two reasons. One is that the Marc Jacobs fashion line beat the university to the punch, seeking to trademark “the” on May 6 for its use on handbags, knapsacks and other items. Ohio State didn’t file its application until Aug. 8.

The other reason is that Ohio State’s proposed use of it on clothing “is merely a decorative or ornamental feature of applicant’s clothing.” In other words, the word, as presented, is an add-on and not something that would help people associate it with the university.

The Patent and Trademark Office denied Marc Jacobs’ request to trademark “the” on Aug. 28.

The letter does not constitute the office’s final decision, and Ohio State has six months to respond.

Wow. It's been a minute since I last posted, no? Life sure gets in the way sometimes!

The above video is from last night's commencement ceremonies at Huntingdon Area High School, my alma mater. The commencement speaker is Dylan Lane, a fellow alum from my graduating class of 1995. I wasn't able to be there in-person, but I live-streamed the ceremony, and got to watch his speech in real-time. T'was fantastic! He kicked it all off with a quote from Alice Cooper's "School's Out". What a great moment.

The over-arching theme was rooted in the famous quote largely attributed to Winston Churchill (but likely should be attributed to a 1930s Budweiser beer advert), "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Dylan kept coming back to that theme by saying, "Success is never stable, but neither is failure fatal." - or some minor variant.

Dylan asked the audience - and the graduates in particular - what they envisioned when thinking about success. He asked each student to look around at each other and picture what success will look like for each of their classmates.

Do you think of fame? Fortune? Good health? Longevity? A decent house? A nice truck? Or do you think of maybe somebody who just has a happy family life and gives back to their community?

A very interesting proposition since success is different for each person.

He profiled three of our fellow classmates from '95, and - though he changed names to protect the "innocent" - I knew who he was referencing. He highlighted the different paths that students take after graduation, and how success can look very different for each graduate. It was a speech that really resonated with me, as I have long held the belief that college is not necessarily for everyone.

Dylan featured one of our classmates who didn't go to college after graduating from high school. Rather, he tried his hand at professional motor-cross. When that didn't work out, he took a job in construction. One thing led to another, and he found himself owning his own business. Eventually, he sold that business and made a PILE of money. Moral: he found financial success (through lots of hard work, and some failures along the way), but he did it in a way that was counter to the route that many of our classmates took.

Anyway, if you've got 10 minutes please do check out my pal Dylan. It's a great speech, and I think that he may have found (yet another) talent on which he can capitalize!

Oh, and congrats to all of you high school seniors out there that are graduating!

Over at The Atlantic there is a really interesting article about trade schools versus college. Money:

In the United States, college has been painted as the pathway to success for generations, and it can be, for many. Many people who graduate from college make more money than those who do not. But the rigidity of this narrative could lead parents and students alike to be shortsighted as they plan for their future careers. Yes, many college graduates make more money—but less than half of students finish the degrees they start. This number drops as low as 10 percent for students in poverty. The ever sought-after college-acceptance letter isn’t a guarantee of a stable future if students aren’t given the support they need to complete a degree. If students are exposed to the possibility of vocational training early on, that might help remove some of the stigma, and help students and parents alike see a variety of paths to a successful future.

Indeed.

I have had this very conversation with my kids; you don't have to go to college immediately following high school. You don't have to go to college at all.

(Yes. I'm aware of the ridiculous irony of someone who claims the mantle of "Admissions Dude" saying these things.)

I know this because I shouldn't have gone to college. At least, not immediately following my secondary schooling.

Back in the mid-90s when I was a high school student, it was an expectation that I would be going to college. This expectation was not a pressure that I received from my parents or family members. Rather, this was something more like peer pressure. Nearly all of my circle of friends was planning on higher education of some sort - so naturally I would be doing the same.

The difference between me and the rest: I wasn't yet mature enough to go to college.

I have long maintained that I should have joined a branch of the military or took some time to work and save money for my education. I should not have gone to college.

And yet, I did go to college.
And I learned a lot.
And I really enjoyed myself.

But, I was not a strong student. And - perhaps most regrettably - I did not take advantage of all of the tremendous opportunities that I should have.

My goal for my kids is to pass along the idea that there are many different pathways to success. Sometimes that pathway goes through a college education. Sometimes that pathway goes in a different direction. Neither is right or wrong.

Purdue University is rolling out a new program that blocks streaming services like Netflix in classroom buildings:

Purdue University students planning to use university Wi-Fi to watch videos, play games or listen to music will soon have to find a new way to stay awake during class.

When students return from spring break on March 18, they will find access to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Steam, iTunes and Pandora blocked in all academic spaces on campus. System updates to Apple devices will also be barred.

Purdue tested blocking access to five streaming sites in four lecture halls at the beginning of fall semester 2018. The pilot program has run continuously since then and has been extended to more spaces on campus. The list of streaming sites that are banned has also grown.

Access to streaming sites over Wi-Fi in lecture halls, classrooms and labs across campus will now be restricted from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Residence halls, hallways and other areas where students congregate will not be affected. Access to streaming services via computers with wired internet access also will not be affected. Students will continue to be able to access the streaming sites in lecture halls or anywhere on campus using their cellular data.

[...]

In some lecture halls, professors were finding that it was not possible for students to participate in online class activities because a few people were streaming videos, music or games in class, Sonstein said.

In an analysis conducted in 2016, the IT department determined that just 4 percent of internet traffic over the Wi-Fi network in the university's life science building was from academic sites such as Blackboard, the learning management system. Sonstein said before the streaming site ban was applied, Blackboard was 79th on the list of websites being most used over the lecture hall's Wi-Fi -- now it's in the top 10.

Makes sense to me. Students should be paying attention in class. If they're not, they should pay for the bandwidth themselves.

It seems as though it has been a pretty tumultuous week with regard to issues of race and inclusion in higher education.

The University of Iowa is struggling to help it's students from underrepresented backgrounds feel welcome:

credit: @temyia

The #DoesUIowaLoveMe movement, which began on Instagram and Twitter, urged UI students to share their stories at 8 p.m. Monday. Within two hours of the movement’s inception, dozens of tweets and photos highlighted concerns of discrimination and inequities on campus.

The movement comes after the UI began its #iloveUIOWA social-media campaign in celebration of the institution’s 172nd birthday.

In a statement released Tuesday from the DoesUIowaLoveMe Twitter account, the movement’s organizers said “a small group of students, faculty, and staff came together at the Latino Native American Cultural Center” on Feb. 21 after feeling unsupported at the UI.

“Our intention was to build a coalition with the mission of cultivating and promoting a platform that allows underrepresented students to speak their truth and share their experiences,” the statement said.

Yearbook photos surfaced of Wake Forest's dean of admissions standing in front of a Confederate flag:

credit: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center click to embiggen

Martha Blevins Allman, dean of admissions at Wake Forest University, sent a statement Thursday acknowledging she posed in the picture that was published 37 years ago in the school yearbook.

The photo shows her and members of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity standing on a staircase that has a Confederate flag hanging on it, The Howler yearbook shows.

“That flag was a symbol of pain and racism then just as it is now, and I understand that much differently in 2019 than I did in 1982,” Allman said in her statement.

Students during a forum Thursday “raised concerns” about the yearbook photo, university spokeswoman Katie Neal said in an email.

And UNC Chapel Hill appears to have censored a student's free speech with regard to a parody website that she had created:

A student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alleges that the institution took down her parody website that lampooned officials' handling of race relations and only restored it after a lawyer and civil rights group intervened.

screenshot via InsideHigherEd.com

The website, called UNC Anti-Racist Jeopardy, modeled off the game show, asked questions about the university’s history and ties to racism and police and administrators' interactions with activists. For instance, in the category "violence against students," the game asks what was deployed against students at a dance party in August. Answer: pepper spray.

The accusations of censorship come at a particularly strained time for the University of North Carolina System’s flagship. UNC has been embroiled in a debate on the Silent Sam Confederate monument. And the website -- which officials considered “personal work” and not appropriate for the university’s service -- was shut down despite many other instances where students’ blogs were allowed to remain up. The student, Annie Simpson, said administrators likely flagged her creation because of her campus activism, partially around the Silent Sam statue.

What to do about the monument, which protesters tore down in August, seemingly spurred the exit of Carol L. Folt, former UNC chancellor. Folt announced her resignation simultaneously with the decision to remove the remnants of Silent Sam from the center of campus, a controversial move that many students celebrated but that did not erase the lingering tensions between them and politicians who liked the idea of a Confederate statue on campus.

I don't purport to have the answers. But I will say that, while I'm sure these are painful situations at each institution, the mere idea that people are (hopefully) engaged in (meaningful conversations about race, inclusion, and sensitivity to these issues should be one positive outcome.

Or misunderstood, at the very least. Apparently, most people don't realize that funding for higher education has generally been on the decline in recent years:

A majority of Americans mistakenly believe that government support for public higher education has increased or stayed the same over the past decade, according to survey results released on Monday.

The survey, conducted by American Public Media and The Hechinger Report, found that 27 percent of respondents thought “government funding” for public colleges had risen since 2009, and 32 percent said it had stayed the same. The survey question did not distinguish between local, state, or federal support.

Only 29 percent of respondents correctly answered that government support had dropped. In 2017 state support for public colleges over all was down by $9 billion compared with 2009, when adjusted for inflation.

While many states have increased annual support for several years now, buoyed by strong economies, in most cases the increases have not made up the ground lost to huge cuts in the years immediately after the Great Recession.

It's a tricky act.

Small, private, liberal arts college F&M is looking to shore-up it's finances, while still providing a strong opportunity for need-based financial aid:

Franklin & Marshall has been highlighted for reallocating funds from non-need-based aid to need-based aid. Today, it advertises itself as basing financial aid solely on need, and it is a member of the American Talent Initiative, a group of colleges and universities seeking to expand college access for low- and moderate-income students. It is not, however, need blind in admissions.

In recent years, the college has been spending more and more on financial aid. In the fiscal year ending in June 2011, just before Porterfield’s inauguration, Franklin & Marshall recorded $99.5 million in tuition and fee revenue and spent $28.6 million in student financial aid, its audited financial statements show. In 2018, it took in $132.6 million in tuition and fees against $56.1 million in financial aid.

That means that although its tuition and fee revenue rose by almost $33.2 million on paper over the seven-year period, the college actually collected only $5.6 million more in net tuition and fee revenue in 2018 than it did in 2011.

[College president Barbara K. Altmann] has said that the current budget deficit was partly caused by increased financial aid. But it is not the primary driver of the deficit, she said in a telephone interview Wednesday. The college is not backing away from its commitment to using financial aid to bring in the best and brightest students, no matter their origin, she said.

[...]

A larger endowment would not be a panacea, of course. And Altmann acknowledged that other private colleges with larger endowments, like Oberlin College, have shown signs of financial pressures rocking the sector in recent years.

That would seem to raise serious questions about the long-term viability of the high-tuition, high-discount model -- particularly for institutions that award aid primarily based on need, instead of using non-need-based aid to chase students who may have less academic prowess but come from wealthy families and would generate more revenue for the colleges where they enroll. They are particularly explosive questions because they lie at the intersection of wealth, privilege, race and opportunity in higher education.

Not that there is anything going on with questions around race and opportunity in higher ed right now...

The next chapter in the continuing saga of Harvard versus Students For Fair Admissions:

In short, he suggested that admissions officers had expressed an unconscious bias: “It doesn’t make them evil, it makes them human.” (In a recent court filing, Harvard’s lawyers said that the plaintiff had failed to provide any evidence that admissions officers “bore unconscious bias.”)

Mortara contended that Harvard had not explained why black and Hispanic applicants tended to get higher personal ratings than did Asian-American applicants. He also questioned why Harvard had recently revamped its written guidelines to emphasize that admissions officers should not consider an applicant’s race when assigning personal ratings. In one of several references to the infamous equation in George Orwell’s 1984, Mortara said, “It’s 2+2=5. They’re saying, ‘Trust us, believe us.’”

As Mortara wrapped up his remarks, Judge Burroughs rested her chin on her fists. She asked him several specific questions. One was why the plaintiff had presented no witnesses who claimed that they had been unfairly denied admission to Harvard.

There was no requirement to do so, Mortara said: “Statistics alone can prove our case.”

‘Truly Remarkable’

Moments later, William F. Lee, a lawyer for Harvard, also noted the absence of testimony from unsuccessful applicants. “The plaintiff’s failure to produce a single individual who claims to have suffered discrimination,” he said, “is truly remarkable.”

Lee and Seth P. Waxman, another lawyer for Harvard, reiterated their arguments from last fall. They said that diversity is essential to the university’s mission. That admissions officers consider race as one factor among many. That the racial composition of the freshman class varies from year to year. That there are no viable race-neutral alternatives to its admissions process. And that the university’s admissions officers do not discriminate against any applicant.

I studied and wrote about this topic at length during my graduate school career. As someone who works in higher education, and admissions specifically, I have been following these affirmative action cases very closely.

I can't speak for others (disclaimer here), but my belief is that so long as an institution is making admission decisions based on a variety of factors and not focusing on one thing (e.g. an applicant's racial or ethnic background), then there shouldn't be any trouble.

It's when an institution starts looking at making quotas for any type of student group and making one factor the focal point of the application that problems arise.

Your education would be free, up front:

Instead of charging students tuition — which often requires them to take out thousands of dollars in loans — students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary.

The idea, known as an Income Share Agreement, or I.S.A., has been experimented with and talked about for years.

[...]

Whether this model can — or should — be applied to the larger education system remains an open question. It clearly improves the financial incentives for the school and the student. But, if expanded more widely, it could press programs to ignore a traditional liberal arts education, where the earning power is reduced. If a student dreamed of a major in Russian literature, she may struggle to find a school that sees a knowledge of Tolstoy to be particularly marketable.

It also means schools may not be willing to take a chance on a promising but higher-risk student.

I wouldn't completely discount the fundamental ideas presented here. However, the article talks about the Lambda School, which takes a whopping 17 percent of a graduate's salary as payment for their education:

At Lambda, students pay nothing upfront. But they are required to pay 17 percent of their salary to Lambda for two years if they get a job that pays more than $50,000. (Lambda says 83 percent of its students get a job with a median salary of $70,000 within six months of graduating.) If they don’t get a job, or their salary is lower, they pay nothing. Payments are capped at $30,000, so a highly paid student isn’t penalized for success, and if a student loses a job, the payments pause

I would also share the concern that programs in business, engineering, and similar "high demand" careers would be the focus and the humanities and arts would suffer greatly. I can't tell you how many conversations that I have had with parents of prospective students who both figuratively and literally scoff at the idea of their child enrolling in a program like Art History or Communication Arts & Sciences.

York College of Pennsylvania is facing some scrutiny for some creative photo editing:

The new billboard for York College of Pennsylvania features a typical headline for admissions marketing: "Envision the Possibilities at York College." Eight students smile. One is African American, one is Asian American and one woman (with her hair covered) appears to be Muslim.

But in the last week, the billboard turned from a source of pride to one of controversy. The original photograph shot for the billboard (above on left, with the billboard on right) featured two white students who were replaced with two students who reflected diversity. The original photo and the doctored one circulated on social media (with arrows noting the changes), and one of the students in the original photo shoot reached the photographer. She reported to a local news station what he said: “He was, like, yeah, they just wanted a more diverse billboard, so we had to get two other students, and we put them in there. When they went to show the person that had to approve the photo, it wasn’t approved, so they had to rush to fix the problem."

Hit the link for the actual photo comparisons.

Yikes. I'll bet the marketing folks at York College are sweating a lot.

I was combing through some admissions-related articles and remembered hearing about this one. All I can say is wow:

According to a summary of her claims in the judge's ruling, the admissions officer asked Katchur about her race, and when she answered that she was white, the admissions officer asked "if plaintiff was sure and suggested that plaintiff obtain an expensive genetic test to see if she could qualify as Native American or American Indian to garner better chances of being accepted to Jefferson." The admissions officer also told Katchur, she said, "that she advised a past Caucasian applicant to obtain a genetic test, that the applicant learned that he was partially African American, and that he was accepted into Jefferson on account of his race." Black applicants have a better chance of admission, Katchur said she was told.

There are many things wrong with the situation - but chief among them is the fact that the admissions officer asked about the race of the prospective student. Then recommended taking a test to see if there were any traces of diversity in her background. Regardless of your opinion of affirmative action and consideration of race in admissions, these actions by the admissions officer are beyond what is appropriate.

Getting caught up on some of my reading and realized that I missed an interesting article at Inside Higher Education last week:

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued not only Harvard, but also the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The outcome of the UNC case could be as important as the one at Harvard. Critics of affirmative action hope to see the issue of college admissions return to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has in multiple cases upheld the right of colleges to consider -- under certain circumstances -- race and ethnicity in admissions. One path to the Supreme Court is for the Harvard case, whatever its outcome, to be appealed.

Another path could depend on the UNC case. While it's impossible to know whether the Supreme Court will take up any issue, differing interpretations of the Constitution in different federal circuits tend to draw the Supreme Court's involvement. And that involvement worries supporters of affirmative action, since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, now retired, was a crucial vote for the right of colleges to consider race.

On Friday, both SFFA and UNC filed briefs in the case, outlining for the first time in detail their takes on the issues at Chapel Hill. Both sides want the court to rule in their favor without a full trial. Some of the issues are similar to those in the Harvard case. In short, SFFA argues that colleges like Harvard and UNC go beyond what the Supreme Court permits in considering race in admissions. UNC, like Harvard, argues that it evaluates all applicants as individuals -- through holistic admissions. UNC freely admits that it considers race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, but that it does so much more modestly than SFFA alleges.

In other ways, UNC is different from Harvard. Chapel Hill is a public institution in a state where the law bars public universities from admitting more than 18 percent of students from out of state. This means that the preference in admissions that is the most dramatic is based on state residency. The admit rate for undergraduate applications is 24 percent, making Carolina competitive but unlike Harvard, where single-digit admit rates have been the norm for years. But the 24 percent figure masks very different admit rates for those from the state (typically 41 to 43 percent) and from elsewhere (typically about 12 or 13 percent).

As a state institution, UNC also could consider approaches (such as plans that admit a set percentage of students from every high school) that haven't been embraced by elite private institutions. In this case, UNC offers evidence that it considered such a plan but that it wouldn't work. North Carolina also has different demographics than the nation. In the Tar Heel state, white people make up 71 percent of the population and black people make up 22 percent. Nationally, the population is more diverse (particularly among those of high school age), with Latino and Asian populations growing at fast rates.

...and UNC is defending itself by arguing that diversity is good for institutions of higher education:

In the end, the UNC brief makes the argument that has been crucial to past Supreme Court rulings on the issue -- that diversity has educational value for all students. "University professors report that diversity promotes discovery and innovation and expands fields of inquiry," the brief says. "A diverse student body also improves students’ capacity to work effectively with others: exposure to diversity breaks down stereotypes, creates common understandings, and encourages empathy."

Until the Supreme Court takes up these cases and makes some definitive decisions, Students for Fair Admissions will continue to file suits against colleges and universities.

[photo: screengrab from Time.com]

Yikes:

The University of South Florida at St. Petersburg admitted nearly 700 applicants in recent days, but human error is being blamed for more than 400 of those admissions offers having been sent out incorrectly. They have since been revoked.

The university issued this statement: “We were dismayed to learn about the acceptance emails that were mistakenly sent Saturday due to human error. All of us work in higher education because we care about students, and we understand the confusion and distress a mistake like this can cause. As soon as we found out about the situation, we immediately reviewed our process for communicating with prospective students and have changed our procedures to prevent this from happening again. In addition, our staff is calling each of the affected students to apologize and discuss their application status. They hope to contact all of the students by the end of this week.”

In my work, one of my responsibilities is the oversight of the release of admission decisions. At Penn State, the Undergraduate Admissions Office processes thousands of admission decisions - particularly this time of the year. We have measures in place to ensure that decisions are checked and re-checked so that erroneous admission decisions don't ever get out. But there is always a non-zero-percent-chance that mistakes in decision-making can get through our quality assurance processes. It's not uncommon for me and my colleagues to lose a few hours of sleep questioning whether or not we have dotted all of the proverbial Is and crossed of the proverbial Ts. But, from my perspective it could be much, much worse. My worst fears at Penn State would add an additional zero to USF's 400 mistaken admission decisions.

I feel for the folks at USF @ St. Petersburg, I really do. For what it's worth, they are taking the right tack. Owning the error and apologizing for it is the right thing to do - even if it will be painful for a while.

An interesting take-down of online learning:

The report said its review of the evidence demonstrated that:

• Online education is the fastest-growing segment of higher education and its growth is overrepresented in the for-profit sector;
• Faculty and academic leaders, employers and the general public are skeptical about the quality and value of online education, which they view as inferior to face-to-face education;
• Students in online education, particularly underprepared and disadvantaged students, underperform and on average experience poor outcomes;
• Online education has failed to improve affordability, frequently costs more than in-person alternatives and does not produce a positive return on investment;
• Regular and substantive student-instructor interactivity is a key determinant of quality in online education, leading to improved student satisfaction, learning and outcomes.

The stakes are high, its co-authors conclude.

“There is a real risk that both cost-cutting efforts and well-intentioned moves to expand access to higher education could lead to greater numbers of disadvantaged students being relegated to cheap and ineffective online instruction, with detrimental results, both in terms of outcomes and student loan defaults,” they wrote.

But not everyone agrees with the report's findings:

However, several experts who read the report said it relied mostly on old data and was overly broad in its conclusions.

The paper indiscriminately trashes online education, said Fiona Hollands, associate director and senior researcher at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

“It's almost all old data, old news and not very even-handed,” she said via email, adding that the report “reads as advocacy more than research and conveniently skips out on some of the more recent and positive stories for students in online learning.”

But...

Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the report by Protopsaltis and Baum painted online education with too broad a brush. For example, its comparisons between online programs and on-campus ones failed to acknowledge the low graduation rates and default rates of many traditional programs that enroll similarly high percentages of low-income, older students.

...and this is where I land as well.

If you're going to make assertions about the successes or failures of online programs, then you should really make comparisons to "traditional", resident instruction programs. For the most part, the report in question doesn't do that. I would agree with Schroeder that it is essentially incomplete.

The other glaring item in the report is that the phrase "for-profit" appears in the report 66 times, while the phrase "not-for-profit" appears only once. After a cursory read of the findings, the focus of the 'take-down' appears to be on the for-profit institutions. Perhaps a more detailed analysis of the not-for-profit institutions that offer fully on-line degree programs would be warranted.

An interesting article at Inside Higher Ed today about state spending on higher education. Money:

States spent 3.7 percent more supporting higher education in fiscal year 2018-19 than in the previous year. The small rise continued a five-year trend of upward support that this year totals about $91.5 billion. In the previous fiscal year, support for higher education grew just 1.6 percent, according to the Grapevine survey, an annual early survey of state indicators. And while five states reported funding decreases between FY18 and FY19, that represents a small fraction of the 18 states that reported declines the previous year.

Here in Pennsylvania, we spent 1,756,295,000 in 2018, up from 1,713,363,000 in 2017 - and 1,644,692,000 in 2014. That represents a 2.5% increase in the past year, and a 6.5% increase over the last four years. Not all states are headed in that direction:

In the five states that provided less funding -- Ohio, Alaska, Minnesota, Kentucky and South Carolina -- the drop ranged from 0.1 percent in Ohio and Alaska to 1.4 percent in Minnesota. In Kentucky, it dropped by 2.4 percent. South Carolina reported the largest one-year drop of all states at 3.7 percent.

At least we are headed in the right direction in Pennsylvania...

An interesting article at Inside Higher Ed today about state spending on higher education. Money:

States spent 3.7 percent more supporting higher education in fiscal year 2018-19 than in the previous year. The small rise continued a five-year trend of upward support that this year totals about $91.5 billion.

In the previous fiscal year, support for higher education grew just 1.6 percent, according to the Grapevine survey, an annual early survey of state indicators.

And while five states reported funding decreases between FY18 and FY19, that represents a small fraction of the 18 states that reported declines the previous year.

Here in Pennsylvania, we spent 1,756,295,000 in 2018, up from 1,713,363,000 in 2017 - and 1,644,692,000 in 2014. That represents a 2.5% increase in the past year, and a 6.5% increase over the last four years.

Not all states are headed in that direction:

In the five states that provided less funding -- Ohio, Alaska, Minnesota, Kentucky and South Carolina -- the drop ranged from 0.1 percent in Ohio and Alaska to 1.4 percent in Minnesota. In Kentucky, it dropped by 2.4 percent. South Carolina reported the largest one-year drop of all states at 3.7 percent.

At least we are headed in the right direction in Pennsylvania...

Old Main, on Penn State's University Park campus

According to a recent article at Bloomberg, we are seeing fewer students taking advantage of higher education in the United States:

New foreign student enrollment in the U.S. dropped by 6.6 percent in the 2017-18 academic year, double the previous year’s rate of decline, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). While the total number of international students in the U.S. grew slightly, the drop in new enrollees is the biggest since 9/11, said Rachel Banks, public policy director at NAFSA: Association of International Educators. The decline seems to be continuing this year, she said.

The report attributed the drop to multiple factors, including visa delays and denials, the “social and political” environment and the cost of attending a U.S. school. The administration’s hard-right immigration policies, such as banning people from Muslim-majority countries and separating children from their parents at the border, make prospective students and their parents feel “that we’re not a welcoming country,” Banks said.

The number of F-1 visas, the kind issued to foreign students going to school full-time in the U.S., dropped from about 644,000 in fiscal 2015 to about 394,000 in fiscal 2017, according to data from the U.S. State Department. Vanessa Andrade, associate director of international partnerships and program development at California State University, Northridge, said safety is always the biggest concern.

I'm not trying to get too political on you, but there is certainly a correlation between the Trump administration's rhetoric and the downward trend in international enrollments at colleges and university in the United States. I'm guessing that many people don't realize that other countries are major consumers of higher education in our country:

The more than 1 million foreign students in the U.S. contributed $39 billion and supported more than 455,000 jobs during the 2017-18 academic year, according to an analysis by NAFSA. The largest spending benefits went to California, New York, Massachusetts, Texas and Pennsylvania. NAFSA said education is one of the country’s biggest services exports.

“Education—particularly higher education—is a major American export,” University of California, Santa Barbara economics professor Dick Startz wrote in a Brookings Institution blog post in 2017. “When we provide a service that leads to foreigners sending money into the U.S., that’s an export with exactly the same economic effects as when we sell soybeans or coal abroad.”

So this is going to quickly become an economic issue as much as it is a diplomatic one.

And, like with domestic recruitment, institutions of higher education will be recruiting from a dwindling pool of international students.