Designing Successful Free College Programs

New research from the Brookings Institute highlights better and worse ways to craft a free college program. Here’s how researchers think lawmakers can get it right.

Fifth of U.K. Universities Publicly Embrace ‘Political Neutrality’

Campaigners suggest refusing to take a stance on contentious issues may be the best way to navigate new free speech requirements.

Is College Supposed to Feel This Lonely?

In this week’s Voices of Student Success episode, two students explore how social media, campus life and post-pandemic shifts are reshaping connection—and where institutions are falling behind.

‘PAY OR LEAK’: Hackers Target Big Higher Ed Vendor

The criminal extortion group ShinyHunters breached Instructure last week. The hackers, who have also attacked individual universities, demanded the ed-tech giant pay up or face a data leak.

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Opinion
Loan Caps Will Steer Students Toward Riskier Private Lending

The hope is that graduate loan caps will put pressure on institutions to lower costs. But the caps could cost students much more in the long run.

Opinion
The Future Is Creative

Yet the proposed accountability framework tying programs’ eligibility for federal aid to graduate earning outcomes puts the future of arts education at risk.

Opinion
The Trust Problem in College Pricing Is Real

Here’s how we fix it.

Opinion
Bard’s Crisis Reveals How Presidents Can Escape Oversight

Long tenure plus fundraising power plus board alignment equals an authority structure that few in higher education know how to interrupt.

Columns

Opinion
What Financial Survival in Higher Ed Looks Like

In a new operating environment defined by political interference, funding uncertainty and cost pressure, solutions are less about silver bullets and more about discipline and speed.

Opinion
4 Questions Addressed in ‘After the Spike’

An argument for population decline to be included on the academic worry list.

Opinion
Why You, Why Now, for Whom?

Applying advertising science to small college advertising.

Opinion
Transfer Without the Surprises

Part 1: What Michigan students are telling us about transfer.

Career Advice

Opinion
The Self-Declared Pseudosabbatical

By treating breaks in the academic calendar more intentionally, faculty can carve out informal periods of time away between once-every-seven-years sabbaticals.

Opinion
Put Your Teaching Evaluations in a Jar

You can just ignore them, or you can take some positive steps to ensure that they will push you forward in your teaching, writes Constanza Bartholomae.

Opinion
Beyond Coddling and Canceling

We can, and should, empathize with students’ trauma. But we shouldn’t validate desires to shield them from discomforting course content.

Opinion
A Model for Keeping Students inSTEM

Building an inclusive future STEM workforce requires innovative approaches to mentoring and supporting undergraduates.

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Apprenticeships: Learning at Work

Apprenticeships predate the modern university by centuries. But as concerns about both college costs and value mount, many higher ed institutions are looking to apprenticeships—all of which involve earning while learning—as affordable, efficient pathways for learners seeking reliable, well-paying careers in everything from nursing to cybersecurity. In the process, they’re reimagining the interplay between higher ed and the workforce and developing fresh ways to deliver experience and credentials of value. Inside Higher Ed’s multipart series, produced with support from Ascendium, explores the people, places and programs shaping the new era of apprenticeships.