Author: Reporter

Most discussions of financial aid focus on helping lower- and middle-income students afford college. Paying for college is often not possible for these families without assistance. How much aid they get and whether that amount is sufficient are critical questions in assessing the extent of college access and equal opportunity. But what about students from higher-income families? The financial aid system may consider them able to pay the full price, but they also often pay less than that. Many colleges offer such students discounts in the form of merit scholarships or institutional grants. Why do colleges discount prices for these…

Listen to the article 4 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive Brief: The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday resumed parts of a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ Iowa education law that had been temporarily paused by a federal district court.  The appeals ruling in two separate but related cases means that the Iowa statute limiting LGBTQ+ materials “applies only to mandatory parts of the educational curriculum.” That means it “does not require schools to prohibit student expression of LGBTQ+ identity nor does it limit the sponsorship or promotion” of Gay-Straight Alliances according…

Build Learning That Sticks At Work It’s Monday morning, and you’re reviewing feedback from last quarter’s leadership cohort. The scores look good. 4.2 out of 5 for content relevance, 4.5 for facilitator effectiveness. But then you see the comment that stops you cold: “Great concepts, but I’m not sure how this applies to my actual team challenges.” Three weeks post-program, and your newly promoted directors are already back in survival mode. The insights from that intensive offsite? Buried under budget reviews and performance conversations. The action plans? Sitting in a folder somewhere. You’ve seen this pattern before. Invest in a…

Ball State University students are gaining hands-on experience and valuable industry connections through a strong year of competition for the Ball State Sales Team. Part of Ball State’s Center for Professional Selling in the Miller College of Business, the Sales Team gives students opportunities to test their skills in national collegiate competitions built around role-play, presentations, speed selling, and other real-world business scenarios. The Center’s broader approach emphasizes experiential learning, industry partnerships, and direct engagement with employers—giving students opportunities to strengthen their communication skills, build confidence, and prepare for internships and careers after graduation. “Every competition gives our students a…

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Not so long ago, Americans were fond of talking about our politics as a modest set of disagreements: “We agree on the ends,” we’d say, “we just argue about the means.” Since the early 2010s, it’s gotten harder to believe.  We’ve suffered through the creep of a dynamic known as “epistemic closure,” where conspiracy theories, falsehoods and wildly distorted views of reality become easier for some Americans to embrace than the demonstrable facts of our present moment.  Recently, a House subcommittee hearing offered a new…

Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s memo said the system will “prioritize [faculty] recruitment in alignment with this memorandum.” Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | raclro/iStock/Getty Images | Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images All majors, minors, certificates and graduate degrees that are “centered on” sexual orientation or gender identity must be phased out and canceled, Texas Tech University system chancellor Brandon Creighton told university presidents in a memo Friday. The decree is an escalation of the course content review policies implemented last year and reflects a trend of academic censorship at Texas public institutions.  The memo requires that gender and sexuality content…

Food insecurity remains a persistent barrier to college completion for many students—particularly those balancing jobs and family responsibilities. A new analysis from the Institute for Higher Education Policy found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, older, working and caregiving students were more likely than their peers to face food insecurity—and less likely to receive institutional emergency aid. The analysis, using newly released 2020–22 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study data from the National Center for Education Statistics, revealed how the pandemic disrupted students’ food security and educational progress. Roughly 19 percent of older students, 15 percent of primarily working students and 21 percent of caregiving…

Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, a young read­er first hear­ing of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four would hard­ly imag­ine it to be a work of sci­ence fic­tion. That would­n’t have been the case in 1949, when the nov­el was first pub­lished, and when the epony­mous year would have sound­ed like the dis­tant future. Even as the actu­al nine­teen-eight­ies came around, it still evoked visions of a tech­no-total­i­tar­i­an dystopia ahead. “So thor­ough­ly has 1984-opho­bia pen­e­trat­ed the con­scious­ness of many who have not read the book and have no notion of what it con­tains, that one won­ders what will hap­pen to us after 31 Decem­ber…

Last year marked a turning point for higher education. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) ushered in a new chapter in higher education, introducing sweeping changes to the federal student aid program and a renewed scrutiny on program outcomes. Among these changes, the law eliminated the Grad PLUS loan program and imposed new federal loan limits for graduate and professional students. Further, the Department of Education reasserted its focus on student loan repayment, sending many borrowers into panic. Among the most consequential shifts permeating these myriad changes is an increased and forceful emphasis on workforce alignment. New initiatives like…

Education models are changing rapidly, reshaping long-held assumptions about how learning is designed, delivered and experienced. Traditional, one-size-fits-all structures are giving way to a more diverse ecosystem that includes microschools, hybrid and digital programs, competency-based learning, experiential education and emerging applications of artificial intelligence. This evolution reflects a broader understanding across the education community: high-quality learning can take many forms. As institutions adapt to these shifts, leaders face a dual responsibility. They must continue to innovate in response to learner and community needs while also demonstrating educational quality, integrity and accountability. In this context, accreditation remains a critical mechanism for…