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When Brown University released its landmark 2006 report documenting the institution’s historical involvement in slavery, many of its recommendations were one-time fixes: revising the university’s official history, creating memorials, and the like. Some, however, required longer-term engagement, such as the creation of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), a research hub focusing on the history of slavery and its contemporary impacts.
For Dr. Ruth J. Simmons, the former president of Brown who commissioned the report, these sorts of projects are particularly significant.
Dr. Ruth J. Simmons is former president of Brown University.
“If you want to take this history seriously, one of the most important things to do is to acknowledge it in an ongoing way,” Simmons said at the time. “We ought to say to ourselves, what can we do to incorporate it into what we do as a university?”
CSSJ has succeeded beyond expectations, becoming an international leader in the way that slavery and its legacies are taught and understood. Newly re-named for Simmons, it recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and a $10 million endowment.
“It’s been really gratifying to see the center grow from an idea in a few lines of a report to something that is having an impact in ways that we couldn’t have imagined,” said Dr. Christina H. Paxson, president of Brown.
Part of what has distinguished the center is a refusal to limit its work to the history of slavery in the United States.
“The issue of racial slavery was not just an American affair,” said Dr. Anthony Bogues, Asa Messer professor of humanities and critical theory and director of the CSSJ. “We have never told that story as a global story, as a story that made the world that we live in. We thought it was important in the 21st century to begin to connect those dots.”
One of the Center’s major undertakings to this end has been the Global Curatorial Project, a network of scholars and curators from museums around the world focused on showing the worldwide interconnectedness of the slave trade and its afterlives. The project is working on an exhibition tentatively titled In Slavery’s Wake— Slavery, Freedom, and the Making of Our World that is scheduled to debut at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture in December 2024 before traveling the world.
The center also maintains a strong focus on public engagement — making sure that people in the local community and wider world are getting to interact with its work. CSSJ sponsors arts initiatives that are open to the public, walking tours about the history of slavery at Brown and in Rhode Island, and a civil rights-themed after-school program for students at public high schools in Providence. It also provided research for a forthcoming four-part documentary series about the transatlantic slave trade that will air on PBS.
“For us, the question of racial slavery could not just be an academic affair,” said Bogues. “How could you have a center that would just be confined to a group of scholars talking to a group of scholars? We had to find ways in which we could engage the public.”
The most complete model
The center has served as an example for other universities seeking to reckon with their relationships to slavery. Over the past decade, schools including Harvard, Georgetown, and the University of Pennsylvania have investigated their own entanglements with slavery and had to decide how to respond to the findings.Dr. Anthony Bogues is director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University.
“The work at Brown stands as the gold standard of how you do this. It’s the most complete model at any university of how to actually commit resources to a present-day justice mission,” said Dr. Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and professor at the University of Virginia, and the managing director of Universities Studying Slavery, which has a membership of over 100 schools in six countries.
“You’re seeing schools now going, ‘We’ve done the research, we’ve done the acknowledgment , we’ve done some basic atonement, but how do we institutionalize this and turn it into something that lives beyond the walls of the university?” said von Daacke. “Everyone looks at what Anthony Bogues and CSSJ have been doing.”
As the CSSJ enters its second decade, its work has become more relevant than ever.
“Given the times we’re in now, when there’s something of a backlash against teaching about the history of slavery in America, it couldn’t be more important,” Paxson said.
In addition to after-school and summer programs for teenagers, the Center has worked to create K-12 curricula about slavery. CSSJ is also studying present-day human trafficking, as well as modern legacies of slavery, such as the mass imprisonment of Black men.
“We’ve been grappling with how we think about policing, how we think about incarceration, how we think about systemic racism,” Paxson said. “These are things that the Center is in the middle of and very prepared to address.”
Although the center that now bears her name is having a worldwide impact, Simmons is most pleased that the CSSJ has shown that tackling tough questions is not only possible, but a fundamental part of the mission of higher education.
“When we took this on, it was criticized heavily, because it was thought to be something that one couldn’t touch without creating immense division,” she said. “[The CSSJ] showed that we can confront difficult issues, histories, and questions in an entirely appropriate way. I think I’m proudest of that.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
The difficulty of making a successful transition from school to the workforce remains one of the most persistent problems in higher education. The outcome is bad for students and industries alike: a lack of social mobility and a lack of qualified workers. But California State University, Fullerton’s efforts to tackle this issue got a major boost recently with the announcement of $1.4 million in grants for projects to shape career pathways for students.
The funding comes as part of a California program to tackle issues of equity in higher ed and the workforce. The state awarded $18 million each to six regional collaboratives consisting of at least one K-12 school district, University of California campus, California State University campus, and community college district.
Cal State Fullerton’s share of the money will fund six projects designed to prepare students to work in in-demand areas. One such venture is Project Propel, which is seeking to increase the number of multilingual teachers in the region. A 1998 proposition eliminated most bilingual programs in California schools, and although it was reversed in 2016, there is still a shortage of teachers who speak multiple languages.
Dr. Fernando Rodriguez-Valls, an associate professor of secondary education at California State University, Fullerton
Rodriguez-Valls has high hopes.
“I’m optimistic that we can get growth past 25%” he said.
Other projects seek to expose students to career paths that they might not have considered. Pathways for Careers in Manufacturing and Engineering, a joint effort from Cal State Fullerton’s Extension and International Programs and the College of Engineering and Computer Science, has received $211,000 to spark community college students’, high schoolers’, and eventually, middle schoolers’ interest in the field of biomanufacturing. In biomanufacturing, biological materials and systems are used to make everything from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics and food. It’s a burgeoning industry, expected to grow 7% between 2020 and 2030. But it faces a shortage of workers with the necessary technical qualifications—in part because the field is so new and in part because it is highly interdisciplinary, combining biology, chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing. Educational programs haven’t caught up yet, and students may be unaware of the field or intimidated by it.
Pathways for Careers in Manufacturing and Engineering will offer free hands-on four-week training experiences in on-campus labs with a focus on under-represented populations, including women, racial minorities, and people from low-income backgrounds. According to Dr. Sagil James, associate professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the project, it is likely the only biomanufacturing training program in America specifically targeted at those groups. Participants will work with cutting-edge lab equipment like 3D bio-printers and do projects in which they solve industry-relevant problems, like how to scale a tool from laboratory usage to one million people. The project aims to help 90-100 students yearly, but the total could be increased if there is strong interest. The grant money will fund the project for one year, but it will continue afterwards due to additional funding from industry partners, including the BioCom California Institute.
Other projects receiving grants include one to support students in becoming accountants, one to combat STEM attrition by better preparing high school students to take college computer science courses, and one to improve awareness of career pathways in healthcare.
Dr. Estela Zarate, vice provost at California State University, Fullerton
“It is unique in that it is bringing together K-12, community college, universities and the career centers all aligned under one goal,” she said. “There are some outreach programs between colleges, community colleges, and high school, but this time we’re aligning everything.”
Zarate believes that this will particularly benefit students who are the first in their families to attend college. Nearly one-third of Cal State Fullerton’s students are first-gen.
“Every step of transition, from high school to community college to a baccalaureate-granting institution to a career, require[s] certain types of supports for students whose parents may not have gone to college or who do not have a similar career pathway,” she said. “By building a partnership where students are handed off as a cohort at each transition, we diminish that burden.”
At the same time, the program will help employers build their workforces.
“There are certain industry sectors that are very much forecasting labor shortages,” said Zarate. “We have the human capital to prepare students [for] these roles.”
Ultimately, argued Zarate, if the program succeeds, everyone will benefit.
“It’s a win-win,” she said, “and a great investment for the state.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected]
When Congress voted in December 2020 to restore Pell Grants for incarcerated Americans after a 26-year ban, advocates hailed the move as an opportunity for 760,000 people in prison to achieve a better life through education. But now, as the July start date approaches, experts are warning that prison-imposed restrictions can prevent this expansion of Pell from reaching its full potential.
Dr. Deborah Appleman, the Hollis L. Caswell professor and chair of educational studies at Carleton College
“In the prisons where I work, they’re limited to no more than 10 books total,” she said. “They’re always having to make these heartbreaking choices about which books they’re going to get [and which] they’re going to give away.”
Faculty are also restricted in the number of materials that they can bring into prisons, as well as what type. Appleman, who often uses video in her teaching, was prevented from bringing discs into a prison because officials said that they could be used to smuggle in drugs.
Incarcerated students often don’t have much chance to use essential educational tools that people on the outside take for granted.
“Computer access is really atrocious,” said Appleman.
Demetrius James, program manager at the Bard Prison Initiative and a former incarcerated student
Once, when a fellow inmate wrote a personal letter on a computer that was supposed to be used only for schoolwork, all students were prevented from using computers for several months.
“People had to handwrite their papers,” said James.
James was ultimately able to get $300 from family members to buy a typewriter in order to do his work. He also encountered challenges with his senior project, a 60–80-page paper on the history of the urban novel. James found that his attempts to get the novels were often restricted because they contained violent or sexual content. One administrator, he said, would not allow material unless it was appropriate for a 12-year-old.
“It was hard for you to concentrate and dig deep in the research that you were most passionate about,” he said.
Additionally, according to James, prison rules forced inmates to choose whether to participate in higher education or to have a job. This made it very hard for inmates without much financial support to choose to go to school.
“I really can’t even speak on the logic behind it,” said James.
Sometimes educational programs can feel like a low priority, derailed by clerical errors and staffing issues. Appleman spoke of a time when an instructor who had been teaching a class for 14 weeks was turned away because of a paperwork mistake, and another time when classes were cancelled because a correctional staff member wasn’t available to check teachers in.
According to Appleman, many of the restrictions that interfere with prison education programs come from a view of the incarcerated as perpetually on the verge of violence.
“If you believe that they’re there to try to become better human beings, to try to get a second shot at life, then some of these restrictions may seem ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t want to be a naïve bleeding heart. I get that there are people who did bad things. But that doesn’t mean that every day should bring new limits and new punishments.”
She believes that, for the expansion of Pell to be as effective as possible, the restrictions should be re-thought.
“We need to use the reasonable person standard,” she said. “Educational materials in and of themselves are not necessarily dangerous. There’s no reason why newspaper articles about a drug bust should be kept from somebody who was writing a paper about it.”
Appleman and James were both optimistic about the prospect for some improvement in the future, in part because of the expansion of the Pell Grant itself.
“I feel like there is a sea change connected to the temperature of the country,” said Appleman. “I think that there is a national wave of humanity and mercy and [a] rethinking [of] the incarcerated and the fact that they are human beings.”
James thinks that the expansion of prison education programs that the Pell Grant is likely to create will help make rules more reasonable.
“It becomes a normal thing, just like a law library,” he said. “I think the more normal it is to have college in prison programs, the less restrictions that they may have on it.”
But, according to Appleman, prison and education may always remain in tension.
“There’s a way in which the mission of education and the mission of the carceral state are always at odds with each other. In fact, they almost contradict each other,” she said. “The project of incarceration is subjugation, and the project of education is to rewrite a narrative so that folks can feel like the intelligent and capable people that they can be. The culture of surveillance and security works against that.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
For most of its 50-year history, the Pell Grant has not covered summer classes, with two brief exceptions: 2009-2011 and 2017 to the present. Summer Pell, officially called year-round Pell, stands on uncertain ground, subject to the shifting priorities of Congress, which ended it originally due to its cost and a lack of evidence of its efficacy. Now, a new study from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University has shown that summer Pell has had meaningful benefits, improving retention, attainment, and even earnings up to nine years after college entry for students who received it.
Vivian Yuen Ting Liu, associate director of the office of research, evaluation, and program support at the City University of New York
Students with summer Pell in the 2009-2011 period were 29% more likely to enroll in classes the following fall, 13% more likely to have earned an associate degree within three years, and 7% more likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree within six, compared with students who did not have access to the grants.
“What we are finding here is pretty large,” said Liu, equivalent to hundreds of additional students staying in school and earning degrees. Increases for students with summer Pell between 2017 and now were even higher, which Liu attributed to the absence of the Great Recession, less confusion about the program, and the fact that the program has lasted longer.
The benefits of summer Pell didn’t stop at the acquisition of a credential—summer funding also affected the earnings of students who were able to take advantage. Students with summer Pell consistently made 6% more per year than students without, equivalent to over $1300 extra, nine years after entering college.
Liu was surprised about how long the influence of summer Pell seems to have lasted.
“A lot of policies, you expect to have an effect within that semester and then maybe in one year, but very rarely do you find consistent positive impact down the road,” she said.
Liu believes that the long-term benefits come because summer Pell incentivizes students to study full-time in order to qualify. (Part-time students can use leftover traditional Pell Grant money to take summer classes, so they don’t qualify for summer Pell.) She compared it to an e-commerce website offering free shipping to those who spend a certain amount of money. Students who enroll full-time are more likely to graduate and can join the workforce more quickly.
The findings are consistent with research showing that continuous enrollment improves persistence and completion. Students studying in the summer may be more likely to remain engaged with their education and can progress to a degree more quickly. They may also avoid summer learning loss. Additionally, summer students tend to take fewer courses but on a more rigorous schedule, which may help both learning and morale.
Summer Pell seems to offer particular help to disadvantaged groups. Liu found that the benefits were largely driven by African American students, who experience particularly strong barriers to completion. Availability of summer Pell increased Black summer enrollment by over three percentage points and led to a 1.3-point increase in their likelihood of finishing a bachelor’s degree within six years. African American students also had increased earnings in their sixth and ninth years from college entry.
Dr. Stephen Katsinas, director of the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama
“If more students are from single-parent families and parents with lower intergenerational wealth transfer, which African Americans sadly have, that means that parents might be less likely to have that last $300 to lend [their child] so he doesn’t have to drop out. Summer Pell is providing a lot of that,” he said.
Another group that benefited especially was non-traditional students older than 25. These learners had higher rates of summer enrollment, a greater likelihood of earning an associate degree within three years, and larger earnings gains. They did not experience gains in bachelor’s degree attainment within six years, however, which might reflect a preference for shorter degrees.
Katsinas noted that these older students are more likely to have small children, and that summer Pell may have helped them defray the associated costs.
“Summer Pell is providing a consistent revenue stream that they can leverage for housing, food, and even childcare,” he said.
Katsinas is concerned, however, that Congress might deprioritize summer Pell in order to spend money on Pell Grants for short-term programs.
“In light of these findings, it would be tragic if Congress chose to fund short-term Pell by defunding summer Pell,” he said. “This is an important study, rigorously conducted, on a vitally important topic. It showed that summer Pell moves students through the system faster, which is what we want.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
When the FAFSA Simplification Act begins to take effect this July, it’s expected to significantly affect the process of applying for financial aid, making the paperwork less complex and altering the formula for eligibility. However, there has been scant information on the specific impacts at a national level. Now, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has begun to fill that void with the release of new data estimating changes in how student and family assets will be calculated and how much students will get.
SHEEO based its analysis on national and state data from the 2017-18 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, Administrative Collection. What they found was good news for potential aid recipients: estimates of the financial resources of students and families will go down for many. This is a result of changes in the formula for calculating what used to be called Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) but will be called Student Aid Index (SAI) when it is phased in during the 2024-25 academic year. Over 45% of students from the data sample would experience a decrease from EFC to SAI of $1,000-$2,500.
Rachel Burns, senior policy analyst at SHEEO
Lower SAI numbers will lead to a greater number of students being eligible for Pell Grants. SHEEO calculated that almost 43% of the students in their data who were originally ineligible for Pell Grants would now qualify, an increase of over two million students. That’s almost double the percentage increase in Pell recipients that had been estimated by the Office of Federal Student Aid. Nearly 85% of Pell-eligible students would see their award amounts increase by up to $8,800, with the largest segment seeing a $5,000 boost.
These increases in eligibility could lead to even more aid, according to MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network.
“A lot of colleges, in their packaging strategies, direct the most aid to students who are Pell-eligible,” she said. “So if you were not previously Pell-eligible and now you are, that may bring additional forms of aid to help you meet the costs of higher education.”
Keller also thought that the improved Pell access could also increase enrollment at community colleges, which has been damaged by the pandemic.
“If you’re eligible for a full Pell Grant, that will cover, in the majority of the states in the country, your tuition at a local community college,” she said. “You may be able to go to community college, pay your tuition, have your books, etc. all covered by your Pell Grant.”
SHEEO’s analysis also revealed that the EFC measure was lumping together a large number of students in the lower part of the income spectrum. The lowest possible value for an EFC is $0, but SAI will include negative values, down to -$1,500. SHEEO found over 3.7 million students who had $0 EFCs who would have had negative SAIs under the incoming system.
“I was surprised by the number of students who had a $0 EFC that now have a negative SAI,” said Burns. “I think that really points to the fact that EFC was lumping a lot of needy students into one category and there wasn’t enough distinction between students who really needed more financial aid than that.”
This change could be helpful for lower-income students, qualifying them for more state aid under current funding formulae. States may respond by modifying their aid programs if they don’t want to pay more or cannot afford to.MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network
Not all students will benefit from the new formula. Students in certain categories, particularly those in families with two or more members in college, students whose parents have a lot of assets, and students whose families have farms or small businesses may find their aid eligibility decreasing. SHEEO’s analysis found that, for 8.4% of students, SAI would be higher than their EFC. At least 7.8% of students would have a decreased Pell Grant, and 8,060 would lose Pell eligibility entirely.
Some students might also have a higher SAI than EFC, which could hurt their state grant eligibility. States may try to include these students nevertheless, but it may be challenging, according to Burns.
“I think the goal would be to try to grandfather in students who are currently getting the aid so that no one is losing it,” said Burns. “I think it’s likely that states are going to have to have very difficult conversations about what to do.”
SHEEO has developed a tool that states and researchers can use to explore their analysis. Users can see the data broken out by state, dependency, sector, gender, race, and number of family members in college. They can also download more specific data.
But while students and their families might find themselves eligible for more aid, Burns emphasized that the process is still onerous.
“There’s still just as many data elements. There are a lot of hurdles for students to go through. While a lot of it can come directly from the IRS, it is still is a laborious process,” she said. “It’s a simplified formula, but not necessarily a simplified form.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
New York State governor Kathy Hochul has released her budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year, featuring almost $7.5 billion in higher ed spending—a 13% increase from this year’s spending and a 22% increase from the 2022 budget proposed by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.
Dr. Tom Harnisch, vice president of government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association
“The governor has proposed some bold new investments in higher education and a comprehensive approach that will pay dividends for years to come,” he said. “It’s clear that she sees SUNY and CUNY as state assets that will help grow New York’s economy. She gets it.”
Harnisch thought that the funding proposal was especially good in light of national trends.
“In other states, higher education has gotten minimal new investments amid robust state surpluses, with lawmakers instead opting for deep tax cuts that could severely constrain higher education in the years ahead,” he said.
However, the proposal has also drawn criticism from those who say that the funding is insufficient to make up for years of stagnation under Cuomo and from some who work in New York’s public colleges.
“[It] dampens our ability to best support students who are looking to come back to school,” said Kevin Adams, director of community standards and student conduct and higher education officer delegate to the Professional Staff Congress at Medgar Evers College, a CUNY school. “We’ve had a loss of employees across the university and hiring freezes. In order to build back up enrollment, you need to better support the infrastructure.”
Harnisch argues that to fully fix the issue will take time.
“The disinvestment didn’t happen all in one year, and the reinvestment unfortunately won’t be able to be all done in one year,” he said.
Dr. Ann L. Marcus, professor of higher education and director of the Steinhardt Institute of Higher Education Policy at New York University
“It sounds like [Hochul’s] trying to make up for some serious cuts over time,” she said. “It’s not enough to make up for it, but it would be at least a step in the right direction.”
The proposal would also raise tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools, indexed to the Higher Education Price Index or 3%--whichever is less. Some SUNY colleges could also increase tuition 6% more a year for the next five years on in-state students up to a cap of 30%. The changes are projected to raise almost $100 million for SUNY and roughly $30 million for CUNY over the 2024 school year.
Adams was opposed to the tuition increases.
“I think [it] will be a deterrent for a number of students,” he said.
Marcus agreed.
“I think people can’t afford it,” she said. “People are really feeling stretched right now in terms of inflation, the economy, [and] the financial return on higher education.”
But Harnisch argued that those same economic pressures applied to the state may have made the increases necessary.
“New York has been a leader in holding down tuition. However, years of high inflation, increased capital costs, and enrollment declines likely contributed to the decision to propose tuition increases,” he said.
$1.2 billion is proposed for capital funding. This includes $200 million for digital and IT infrastructure as well as $200 million for Stony Brook University and the University of Buffalo to renovate or build new research facilities and laboratories.
“Some of those things are clearly focused on investing in reputational items,” said Marcus. “Which is all to the good, but it doesn’t really speak to the operating needs of colleges.”
Adams felt that the projects that had been chosen for funding were not necessarily the most important ones.
“There’s infrastructure needs that have been neglected over decades,” he said. “This one-time support doesn’t properly address those needs.”
Funding for community colleges will match the fiscal year 2022 level at $689 million despite drops in enrollment. This is a decrease of $8 million, however, from the 2023 outlay, which the governor’s office said was higher due to non-recurring funding for legislative adds.
Dr. Rebecca Natow, an assistant professor of education and leadership policy at Hofstra University, was pleased.
"I am glad to see the governor has not proposed cutting funding to community colleges even though enrollment has declined in that sector. Cutting funding by an amount that would have reflected enrollment declines could have financially devastated some community colleges," she said by email. "Cutting funding might have started a vicious cycle in that the colleges would have had to become more reliant on tuition and fees, and any price increases in those areas would have lowered financial access to community college for many potential students, thereby harming enrollments even further"
Marcus, however, argued that funding should have been increased, a call that was echoed by Daliz Perez-Cabezas, senior advisor to the vice president for the division of continuing education and workforce development at Hostos Community College, a CUNY school.
“More than ever, we need the support to be able to engage students so that they can come back,” she said. “[It] helps brings students back if they know we can give them any kind of additional resources to get them through.”
The proposal also would establish a state matching fund for endowment contributions providing $1 for every $2 of private donations, up to $500 million, which Marcus said would have a minimal effect.
“That’s going to be minor because most of those places don’t raise a lot of money,” she said. “Or they do, but it’s not endowment money.”
Ultimately, the proposal will have to survive the legislative process, as lawmakers bargain with the governor before an April 1st budget deadline. Marcus thought that the package’s chances were strong.
“I don’t think it’s an inflammatory proposal,” she said. “I think it has a good chance of going through like this.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
This year’s Race & Justice Imperative—a series of conversations with Black political leaders put on by the DC-based newspaper The Hill—came at an auspicious moment for Black power. More Black Americans were elected in 2022 than ever before, and the Congressional Black Caucus now boasts 57 members, a record. But the overwhelming consensus from the people who spoke, a mixture of Congresspeople, academics, and advocates, was that representation is not enough. It is crucial, they said, to keep up the momentum, even when an election isn’t right around the corner.
LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund
“There’s no such thing as an off year,” said Brown. “It is going to take us literally being relentless.”
Brown and Albright described the waves of voter suppression bills that they said have been introduced in 49 states and passed in 20 as important threats to counter—Albright described them as a “slow-motion insurrection.” They said that the bills were a response to Black strength at the polls.
DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, agreed. He compared the current political climate to the backlash that occurred in the second half of the 1800s when the newly won right of African Americans to vote was made subject to various unfair limitations in an attempt to suppress the group’s newfound political power. He also agreed that mere representation was not enough.
“It’s good that we’re getting people into positions at higher levels of government,” he said. “But the policies that get created [are] also critical.”
The nature of what these policies could be was discussed by Alicia Garza, principal of the Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. One of the Black Futures Lab’s projects is the Black Census, which she described as the largest survey of Blacks in 158 years. She said that for many of its respondents, it was the first time they had been asked what policies they wanted to see enacted.
According to Garza, the Census’s findings paint a very different picture of Blacks than the one that she says was publicized during the 2022 midterm elections, when Blacks were often portrayed as highly concerned about crime, which led to overly punitive public policy. Garza said that the survey showed that Blacks were actually predominantly concerned about the economy, then white nationalism, then voting rights, and then abortion rights. When the full Census is finished, Garza’s group plans to release a Black Agenda legislative road map that will impact policy. And although she’s happy to see more Black people in political roles, she said that it was important that they serve the actual agendas of Black people.
Another area where policy is being highly contested is education, particularly in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has cracked down on Critical Race Theory, DEI positions at universities, and the College Board’s proposed curriculum for an Advanced Placement African American Studies class. Adriane Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, traced the fights back to Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 campaign for the governorship of Virginia and argued that the damage is deeper than ignorance—it deprives younger people of a chance to develop empathy—empathy that will surely be necessary for the cause of racial justice to advance.
Dr. Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at the New School and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Power and Political Economy discussed economic plans that could help close the racial wealth gap. He emphasized that no one plan was a silver bullet, but that a combination of forward-looking policies, like baby bonds, which would give newborns a nest egg that they could later use to pay for college, purchase a home, or start a business, and backward-looking policies, like reparations, could make a difference.
Ultimately, however, the speakers emphasized that without continued energy and involvement, little progress is likely to be made, even with more Black representatives than ever.
“We do a disservice,” said Shropshire, “by focusing on Election Day as if it’s the only day when democracy happens.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
Title: Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Kansas State University College of Education.
Age: 39
Education: B.S., education, University of Kansas; M.S., education, University of Kansas; and Ed.D., educational leadership, Kansas State University
Career mentors: Dr. Cornel Pewewardy, Portland State University; Holly Mackey, White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities; David Thompson, Kansas State; and Debbie K. Mercer, Kansas State
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty members: “Be patient, but persistent. Prioritize your relationships with the communities with whom you work."
Dr. Alex Red Corn’s family left the Osage reservation in Oklahoma when he was in elementary school, but he always remained connected to his heritage — somewhat.
“I had grown up going to ceremonies, but it was this kind of packaged thing that wasn’t happening consistently,” said Red Corn.
While working as a social studies teacher in Kansas City, Red Corn had a realization.
“My Osage world was not merged with my professional identity,” he said. “I was working in a non-Indian community, not building new relationships with American Indian education professionals, and not really focusing much of my work around those topics.”
The history of Native education in the United States is fraught with dispossession. The federal government made various promises about educating tribespeople, but was more focused on assimilation, an approach nicknamed “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”
“They tried to strip Native people of their culture and their language,” said Red Corn. “They weaponized schools.”
Red Corn began to feel like an uncomfortable part of that lineage.
“I felt like I was continuing that assimilationist trajectory by just sitting in the status quo,” he recalled. “I wanted to figure out how to merge being Osage with my everyday professional work.”
Red Corn pursued a master’s degree focusing on the infrastructure of tribal governments and how they serve their citizens through educational programs. He learned that, contrary to his expectations, over 90% of American Indian children attend state public schools, rather than federal Indian schools. In these programs, they don’t learn about their native language or tribal history.
“You start to realize that assimilation trajectory is kind of still in motion with everybody,” he said.
Red Corn developed a goal: to help Native nations become more involved in the education of their own people.
“You can build the capacity of tribal governments to build partnerships with the local public schools so that they can get [their] language spoken, collaboratively do teacher training, anything that allows the tribe to have influence over the curriculum and the learning that happens every day,” he explained.
It’s a slow process, but he’s having some remarkable success.
At Kansas State University (KSU), where he is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the College of Education, Red Corn has created an indigenous education leadership certificate program, built on standards assembled collaboratively with the local Tribal Education Department. He also built the Osage Nation Educational Leadership Academy, a master’s degree program delivered in the Osage community, open to Osage citizens and employees.
“The Osage Leadership Academy is really a model of what it looks like to make sure that higher education institutions are actually serving to advance the priorities and interests of Native nations,” said Dr. Meredith McCoy, assistant professor of American Studies and History at Carleton College. “[Red Corn] has used the structures that exist within [KSU] for building excellent educational leaders, and he’s used them to amplify and advance Osage priorities when it comes to the well-being of Osage children.”
Red Corn also revived the dormant Kansas Association for Native American Education, now housed in the KSU College of Education, and became chair of a state-level committee called the Kansas Advisory Council for Indigenous Education. He’s someone, according to McCoy, who makes things seem possible.
“Alex is a good person to dream with,” McCoy said. “He’s an innovator and a builder, a connector of people and systems, an organizer within and beyond academic spaces.”
Though he has accomplished much in the past few years, Red Corn knows that there is a long road ahead.
“[Our task is] patiently building relationships to make sure that the work we’re doing is sustainable and that it’s spreading across the state,” he said. “There’s so much to be done.”
Inflation and geopolitical disruptions caused endowment returns to fall by 8% in fiscal year 2022, according to an annual study released last week by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA). The decline comes after a spectacular performance in fiscal year 2021, when endowment returns increased by 30.6% on average.
“The 2022 fiscal year was truly a tale of two markets, with positive economic tailwinds driving equities higher through December 2021, followed by a crushing combination of inflationary pressures and other factors that forced most major investment indices down sharply by the year’s close,” said Jill Popovich, senior managing director and regional general manager at TIAA.
The study is based on data from 678 institutions holding endowment assets with a market value of $807 billion. Although the data represents only about 20% of non-profit colleges and universities, those institutions own about 99% of the endowment wealth in higher education, according to calculations by Dr. Sarah M. Iler, assistant director of institutional research at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Dr. Bruce A. Kimball, professor emeritus of educational studies at the Ohio State University. The average size of the endowments in the survey was $1.2 billion and the median was approximately $203.4 million. Over half of the endowments were less than $250 million.
Although endowments of all size categories dropped, large endowments performed notably better than small ones. Endowments with over $1 billion in assets had an average return of -4.5%, while those with under $25 million lost 11.5%. NACUBO and TIAA attributed the disparity to differences in allocation strategies. Schools with smaller endowments are more likely to put money into public equities and public fixed income investments, which struggled in fiscal year 2022, whereas larger endowments were likelier to have been invested in private markets, which did better.
“The shift from public equities toward private equity and venture capital reflects the willingness and ability of larger institutions to reach for higher return targets,” said Popovich. “Smaller endowments may not be able to pursue such an approach due to greater fee sensitivity, lower risk tolerance, and different liquidity requirements, among other factors.”
The differing performances are consequential, according to Dr. Sondra Barringer, an assistant professor of education policy and leadership at the Simmons School of Education & Human Development at Southern Methodist University.
“I was struck by the starkness of the inequality in terms of the disproportionate hit that the smaller endowments took,” she said. “It’s harder for them to weather these declines because they have fewer assets to start with. I worry that this will increase their precarity.”
Dr. Bruce A. Kimball, professor emeritus of educational studies at the Ohio State University
“They essentially reinforce each other,” said Kimball.
One factor is that schools with large endowments are less likely to leave their students with high levels of debt.
“The wealthiest schools do not encumber their students with debt because of their large resources,” said Kimball. “But if you don’t go to a wealthy school and when you’re from the working or middle classes, then you begin to get saddled with more and more debt.”
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) had a difficult fiscal year 2022, posting an 8.74% decline in the market value of their endowments, slightly worse than the average of all schools, according to calculations by Iler. This was reflective of their medium and small-sized endowments, she said. However, Howard, the richest HBCU, bucked the trend and gained around 7% in market value, reflecting the advantages that wealthier schools possess.
Despite the losses, colleges and universities reported an increase in spending in fiscal year 2022, to $25.85 billion. The largest percentage, 46%, went to student financial aid, with academic programs and research following at 15.6%. However, annual effective spending rates were down by over half a percent, which NACUBO and TIAA attributed to spending policies based on moving averages of endowment value over multiple years that are designed to provide the stability.
Experts thought that it was doubtful that the increased outlay would quiet controversy over the idea that wealthy colleges should spend more to enroll more students.
“The conversation is unlikely to go away because large endowments do tend to perform better than the market,” said Barringer. “There will be increased calls to either increase spending or explain why they’re not. It will be interesting to see how universities respond.”
For many schools, an increase in gifts helped balance some of the losses due to the market. Gifting was up an average of 22% across all endowment sizes, which Popovich speculated could be due to the end-of-year gifting season occurring before the adverse market conditions began. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents said that some gifts were tied to DEI initiatives. 64% of these were institutions with endowments of $250 million or less. More than 86% of schools that responded to a question about their investment policies included a commitment to ESG principles, an increase from 80% in 2021.
Although the overall returns were surely disappointing for institutions, Kimball thought that the performance of the market so far in fiscal year 2023 was encouraging.
“It may not be a great year, it may not even be a good year, but it’s a much better year than the last fiscal year,” he said. “I suspect it’s going to be at least a positive number next year.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
As the COVID-19 pandemic dawned in Spring 2020, the federal government granted institutions of higher education a series of waivers and flexibilities that allowed them to continue functioning under radically different conditions. Schools were allowed to pay work-study wages for students whose employment was interrupted by COVID, for example, and didn’t have to count incomplete classes due to COVID in financial aid calculations. Domestic students were freed from financial aid verification requirements, and some international students were allowed to skip the visa interview process.
Now, with the Biden administration’s announcement that the national and public health emergencies declared in response to COVID will end May 11th, all of those accommodations are coming to an end, and institutions will have to make an adjustment.
Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst, National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
This adjustment may be an administratively complex process.
“The end of the national emergency doesn’t result in any kind of sudden drop-off,” said Desjean. “It sort of starts a clock. It’s not just as simple as, ‘Hey, everybody, on May 11th, you can’t do any of these things.'"
Individual flexibilities and waivers have their own expiration times. Some accommodations may end at the closure of terms or semesters or payment periods. Others may continue for a full academic year after the emergencies end. And deadlines will vary from school to school because they are based on the academic calendars of individual institutions.
“I think the trickiest piece will be just keeping track of all those dates,” said Desjean.
However, Desjean believes that most schools will be able to handle the transition.
“I don’t think that a lot of these waivers expiring is going to be dramatic because schools have some lead time,” she said. “They may have a whole extra semester, even a whole extra year to be able to prepare for the expiration of these waivers.”
Sarah Spreitzer, assistant vice president and chief of staff of government relations at the American Council on Education
“I don’t think that any of this will come as a surprise or be difficult for institutions to comply with,” she said.
Part of this is because many of the flexibilities and waivers became less necessary as the pandemic’s impact lessened.
“I don’t know how common it is right now for a student to have their employment interrupted by a COVID-19 event,” said Desjean.
However, there is a chance that some pandemic changes might be made permanent.
“We’ll definitely be working with our institutions to understand if there were things that worked well under the flexibilities and if there are things that we are going to advocate for continuing with the administration and with Congress,” said Spreitzer.
One possibility might be the loosening of rules that allowed some international students who came from visa waiver countries to skip the interview process.
“I think that some of the flexibilities really helped the Department of State address the visa backlog,” said Spreitzer. “It would be great if they could somehow continue.”
Another prospect could be changes to rules that require double-checking some students’ FAFSA information, which can require significant time and effort by students.
“[The Department of Education] has been willing, over the past few years, to acknowledge what a burden it is for students to complete their verification process and what a barrier it can be for them,” said Desjean. “I could see the department looking at those flexibilities more carefully and possibly keeping those in the future.”
It is possible that the end of the pandemic emergencies will effect higher ed in ways beyond the end of the affordances granted by the Department of Education. Changes in who is responsible for paying for COVID tests and treatments could affect campuses, for example. According to Spreitzer, additional specifics should be available from the government soon.
“I think the administration will likely be putting together guidance or announcements of when things are ending as they get closer to May 11th,” she said.
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
The Biden administration’s recent moves towards relief for student borrowers—the debt forgiveness program currently awaiting a hearing at the Supreme Court and changes to income-driven repayment programs—have sparked controversy and criticism. One of the most persistent critiques has that colleges will respond by raising tuition since they know that students have been encouraged by the changes to borrow. This idea is the so-called Bennett hypothesis, named after former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, who suggested it in a 1987 New York Times editorial entitled “Our Greedy Colleges.”
It's a logical idea. After all, since the 1991-92 academic year, federal student aid has increased 295%, during which time institutions of higher education roughly doubled their inflation-adjusted tuition and fees, according to data from the College Board. And it’s easy to imagine that if students have easy access to government money, colleges would want to use it to improve their programs or pad their bottom lines.
Dr. Jenna A. Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
Robinson believes that the effects of the Biden administration’s moves could be significant.
“Universities could really raise tuition quite a bit, knowing that the cost is not going to fall on the students they’re trying to attract,” she said. “It probably would have as large of an effect as the fact that subsidized federal student loans exist in the first place.”
Robinson is far from alone in her concern. A group of 23 Republican governors invoked the Bennett hypothesis in a letter to President Biden opposing loan forgiveness, and Dr. Lawrence Summers, the former secretary of the treasury and president of Harvard University, mentioned it in a in a tweet last year.
But research suggests that outside of for-profit institutions, evidence for the Bennett Hypothesis is scant.
“It’s very difficult to find a Bennett hypothesis story in the public and not-for-profit sectors,” said Dr. Michael Kofoed, an associate professor of economics at the United States Military Academy in West Point. “I would say [it’s] muted at best. There could be some small places where it could happen, but, overall, the literature shows it’s just not as big as people make it out to be.”
The reason, according to Kofoed, is that colleges may not be as greedy as William J. Bennett had thought.
“Colleges and universities are not profit-maximizing firms,” he said. “They have other objective functions, and so they don’t behave like a for-profit firm would.”
Institutions of higher education are moving toward no-loan programs, Kofoed argued, in which higher-income students paying full sticker prices subsidize lower or middle-income students. Increasing the sticker price might make this system more challenging.
“I would be skeptical of thinking that they would instantly throw out that model of student cross-subsidization and decide to just raise tuition to capture the student loans and place a higher debt on the students that they are currently committed to reducing,” he said.
Research has found that even when students are able to borrow large amounts, it doesn’t lead to increases in tuition.
Dr. Robert Kelchen, professor and head of the department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, did a study of graduate students, who have been able to borrow up to the full cost of attendance since the mid-2000s.
“I was going into my research expecting to find that [the Bennett hypothesis] is true,” he said. “And I was surprised. If it’s happening, it should be happening in law schools and business schools. [But,] I did not find a big increase in tuition”
Kelchen thought that perhaps schools didn’t want to be perceived as greedy, or that no school wanted to move first. Another factor was that students who can borrow more often still prefer to borrow as little possible.
There are several alternative explanations for why college costs have risen so much, according to Kelchen and Kofoed. Over the past several decades, demand has increased faster than the number of available seats. In the case of public universities, state funding declined in the Great Recession and hasn’t recovered. Schools are also dependent on large workforces that can’t be automated and have only gotten more expensive. And students have come to need and expect more non-academic services over the past few decades, particularly for mental health.
Kelchen is doubtful that the Biden administration’s changes will have much of a Bennett effect. He points out that increases in tuition have slowed in recent years.
“A lot of colleges are concerned that if they raise prices, they won’t get students,” he said. “[With] affordability as a concern, I think we’ve gotten to a point where the majority of colleges out there will struggle to increase tuition in any meaningful way.”
But Kelchen thinks that, despite what studies have shown, the Bennett hypothesis will remain prominent.
“Most people are not reading the research,” he said. “And researchers aren’t great at communicating it.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
The college affordability crisis has students working and borrowing all that they can in order to manage the cost of school. But a new report from the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) shows that the high school class of 2022 left an estimated $3.58 billion on the table last year in the form of unclaimed Pell Grant funds—around 14% of annual Pell expenditures.
That unclaimed money leads directly to fewer students attending and completing college.
Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives at the NCAN
The report’s methodology was simple. The NCAN started with the number of high school graduates who did not fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which was roughly 1.65 million. Assuming that non-FAFSA completers would be eligible for Pell Grants at the same rate as people who did fill out the application, the NCAN found that about 767,000 students would have qualified for funding but did not complete the form. The non-profit then multiplied this number by the average Pell Grant award of $4,686 to get the nearly $3.6 billion total.
There are plenty of reasons why students who might be eligible for Pell Grants might not complete the FAFSA. For one thing, it’s complex..
Dr. Michael Kofoed, an associate professor of economics at the United States Military Academy in West Point
However, it’s difficult to tell whether a student might be Pell-eligible without investing the time and energy that the FAFSA requires. Another problem is that many people who are eligible for aid may mistakenly think that they are not.
“It’s very difficult for lower-middle income [earners], to judge whether or not they will be Pell-eligible,” said Kofoed.
Students may also be debt averse, not realizing that the Pell Grant doesn’t need to be repaid. And some may be reluctant to share financial data with the government.
The $3.6 billion left behind represents a strong increase from 2017, when $2.3 billion went unclaimed, according to an analysis by NerdWallet, a personal finance company. The report attributes this change primarily to increases in the value of Pell Grant awards under the Biden administration. This year’s $3.58 billion represents a decrease, however, from the class of 2021’s $3.75 billion unclaimed. DeBaun said that this was because of decreased disruption from the pandemic.
“The class of 2022 was much more likely to be attending school in person where they were better connected to support, to school counselors, to financial aid nights, and FAFSA completion events,” he said.
The report also included state-level data, finding that the areas with the highest FAFSA completion rates were Washington D.C. (74%), Tennessee (71%), and Louisiana (69%). Tennessee’s position, said Kofoed, was likely a result of its Tennessee Promise program, which offers free community college but requires filling out the FAFSA. Louisiana is the first state to adopt a universal FAFSA completion policy, which makes filling out the FAFSA a requirement for high school graduation. Other states with similar policies, including Illinois, Alabama, and Texas, are among the top ten in terms of FAFSA completion.
States with the lowest completion rates included Alaska (35%), Utah (38%), and Arizona (47%). According to Kofoed, some of the reason is cultural.
“The intermountain region is always super-low because there is this strong bias against taking on loans,” he said. “A lot of it is the teachings of the Mormon church. So, some students will say, ‘The FAFSA is what I have to do to get a student loan, and I don’t want a student loan, and I think my parents make too much for a Pell Grant, so I’m just not going to complete [it] at all.”
NCAN also offered recommendations for how states could encourage FAFSA completion. The number one proposal was that more states should institute universal FAFSA completion policies, as Louisiana has done, along with support to help students with the form. Additionally, NCAN called on states to do a better job of sharing FAFSA data with districts, high schools, and communities so that outreach to students can be better targeted. It also promoted FAFSA completion challenges, friendly competitions among districts or schools to win prizes based on FAFSA completion rates or growth. Finally, it suggested the continued use of COVID-19 relief funding for college and career readiness programming.
Though the amount of money left on the table is massive, the report finds reasons for hope in the short-term. According to DeBaun, the high school class of 2023’s FAFSA completions are up about 6% year over year. Starting with the 2024-25 school year, the FUTURE Act will allow FAFSA filers to have their income data imported directly from the IRS, and the FAFSA Simplification Act will reduce the number of questions on the application significantly.
However, DeBaun cautioned that improved FAFSA completion alone is a not a cure for the deeper problem of low post-secondary attainment.
“I think we’ll see an [increase] in FAFSA completion as friction in the process is reduced, but we shouldn’t expect that to be some kind of silver bullet,” he said. “After completing the FAFSA, students still need support in finding success on college campuses that keeps them enrolled and gets them all the way to a career and credential.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
The University of Arkansas system is in talks with the University of Phoenix, one of the largest for-profit colleges in the U.S., about an acquisition, according to the Arkansas Times. The deal, which the Times estimated at $500 to $700 million dollars, would be the most recent example of a higher ed trend: unions between non-profit universities and for-profit, predominantly online schools.
For-profit education has had a difficult decade, due to increasing restrictions initiated by the Obama administration. 10 years ago, the University of Phoenix was burgeoning, with 470,000 students, mostly working learners, who took classes online or in-person at one of over 200 satellite campuses and learning centers. However, in 2019, the university agreed to a $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over accusations that the school had falsely advertised partnerships with large companies to students. Now, its enrollment is under 80,000, and it plans to shutter all of its outposts except one, in Phoenix, in 2025.
But for-profit schools have been getting snapped up by more traditional institutions looking to expand their online footprints. In 2017, Purdue University bought the for-profit Kaplan University, with its over 27,000 e-learners, to create Purdue University Global. In 2020, the University of Arizona bought Ashford University, a school with 35,000 online students. The University of Arkansas system had previously created an online school called eVerity, which it merged into a small for-profit, Grantham University, which it purchased in 2021.
However, some suggested that non-profit universities buying for-profits were risking reputational damage due to the aggressive marketing and low-value credentials sometimes associated with the sector. Other criticized the structures of the deals, which allowed the now-non-profit online schools to be managed, at least partially, by the for-profit companies that owned them. This, say critics, means that the for-profit companies are encouraged to increase enrollment through aggressive techniques that might mislead students. The Biden administration has suggested that the Department of Education is unlikely to permit similar arrangements.
The potential Arkansas-Phoenix deal would keep the university system insulated from any remaining profit motive. The purchase would be made not by the University of Arkansas itself but by an affiliated non-profit set up for that purpose. The University of Phoenix would lose its for-profit status.
“The UA system itself would not be acquiring the University of Phoenix, and no public or university funds would be involved in this potential transaction,” said Nate Hinkel, director of communications at the University of Arkansas system in a prepared statement. “The completed structure would also not include any remaining private ownership of the non-profit entity or the University of Phoenix.”
Although talks are ongoing, a deal is not yet imminent, Hinkel confirmed to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
"Since our founding, University of Phoenix has been focused on adult learners who are historically overlooked and underrepresented in higher ed. Delivering on that mission, we’ve experienced marked success over the last six years, both in how we serve our students, and their individual success, and we’d like to see that success continue," said Andrea Smiley, Vice President of Public Relations at University of Phoenix. "Entities are always evolving; they have to because the marketplace changes and the environment that you’re in changes. It’s not unexpected that we are exploring opportunities, and we are ready and eager for whatever our next phase will be.”
Although the COVID-19 pandemic intensified racial divides in America, it did have one tempering effect. As students moved off campus and learned from home, the battles that had raged over building names statues, and memorials of figures associated with slavery, segregation, and eugenics cooled. Now, with campus life having returned to some version of normal, debates over landscape fairness are back.
The statue of John Witherspoon at Princeton
For nearly 300 graduate students, undergrads, faculty, and staff, Witherspoon’s statue had to come down. They signed a petition last spring arguing that the monument should be replaced a plaque explaining both the positive and negative aspects of Witherspoon’s legacy.
“It’s something that’s bothered me ever since I’ve been at Princeton,” said Sam Bisno, a junior and history major who signed the petition. “[The statue] obviously represents the ideals that we’re supposed to carry on as students and as citizens. So, the fact that there’s no mention whatsoever of the fact that this man’s ideals were deeply racist bothers me.”
But some students and alumni defend Witherspoon and the statue. They argue that Witherspoon’s contributions to Princeton and to America outweigh his ownership of slaves. And they say that his perspective on slavery was more complex than the statue’s opponents allow. Witherspoon tutored free Blacks while at Princeton. And some of his writings decry slavery—or at least enslaving new people. The statue’s supporters emphasize that Witherspoon believed that immediate abolition with no preparation for free society would bring the enslaved to ruin and that he thought that abolition was unnecessary because slavery would die out in a matter of years. And while many would agree to adding a plaque discussing Witherspoon’s relationship with slavery to the monument, they feel strongly that the statue must continue to stand.
“Witherspoon was a great man who deserves to be honored,” said Stuart Taylor Jr., a Princeton alum from the class of 1970 and the director of Princetonians for Free Speech, a pro-statue group. “[He has] a very mixed and not altogether bad record on slavery and a very noble and admirable record in every other way.”
The petitioners disagree and believe that adding a plaque to the statue about Witherspoon’s relationship to slavery is insufficient because the statue itself, bronze and towering, holds up Witherspoon as a subject for reverence.
“The tacit honorific message of the statue will tend to overwhelm any critical reminders of Witherspoon’s failings, so long as these reminders are kept at a reasonable size,” the petition says.
Taylor believes that taking Witherspoon down both ignores historical context and could lead to a slippery slope.
“His relationship to slavery was far more benign than a substantial majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,” Taylor Jr. said. “If Witherspoon is to be lowered, James Madison, I think, would be next. George Washington would certainly be on the list.”
And Taylor thinks that using today’s moral reasoning to judge people who lived centuries ago is absurd.
“If you’re not going to honor anybody who ever did anything that doesn’t pass today’s standards of social justice, then you’re not going to be honoring many people anywhere, ever,” he said.
Bisno, however, is unpersuaded.
“We’re not talking about Witherspoon in the late 18th century,” he said. “We’re talking about Witherspoon in 2023, and in 2023, I don’t want to have as my model someone who owned other human beings.”
So far, the debate has remained mostly contained to Princeton, through editorials in the student newspaper and posts on the Princetonians for Free Speech website. The one bit of national attention came in an editorial from conservative commentator George Will (a member of Princeton’s class of 1968), criticizing the “wokeness, in all its moral vanity” of the statue’s opponents.
Princeton’s Committee on Naming, a group of faculty, students, staff, administrators, and alumni that was formed in the wake of an earlier controversy about the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, is currently considering the petition and holding listening sessions, and will eventually make a recommendation to the board of trustees. There have been no protests or demonstrations around the statue, and none are planned.
Dr. Ainsley Carry
“In the 2015-2020 period, it was largely based in protest,” Carry said. “Students and activists would take to the president’s office, would protest around the statue, might wrap a rope around the statue and attempt to pull it down.”
Now, after a national awakening around issues like Confederate monuments and offensive team names, universities are more responsive and have systems set up to deal with questions like these.
“This moderate debate that you’re seeing now is evidence of this country maturing in this conversation,” said Carry. “It’s a much more deliberative, thoughtful response to the question.”
Bisno is happy with how Princeton has handled things so far.
“I think it’s good to have an institutional pathway for change like this,” he said.
But Bisno said that things could become more heated depending on the trustees’ decision.
“If the university comes back and says, ‘Actually, we’re comfortable with Witherspoon’s legacy and we’re not going to do anything about the statue,’ then you might see protests, of which I will be a part,” he said.
Contested monuments and building names are a contentious, complex issue that universities are likely to have need to address, although perhaps not at the same rate as prior to the pandemic.
“We’re in the drip-drip mode, rather than the mad rush we saw between 2015 and 2020,” said Carry. “I think every semester, there’ll be a university or two that’s struggling with this.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
Title: Director of Student Affairs, Montgomery College
Age: 41
Education: B.A., communications, Hood College; MBA, Hood College; and D.O.L., organizational leadership, Hood College
Career mentors: Dr. Olivia White, Hood College, and Margaret Latimer, Montgomery College
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty members: “One thing that has been incredibly valuable to me has been deep trust in myself. Trusting my intuition, whether it was what I thought was my capacity, [or] what I knew my dreams were. It’s believing what you know deep down about what you’re capable of and making the commitment to pursue it with fervor.”
Dr. Ja’Bette Lozupone had always been a star at school. She skipped two grades and enrolled in Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, when she was 16. But Lozupone wasn’t ready for the responsibility of being a college student.
“I had a one-point-something GPA,” she said.
But everything changed when Lozupone became pregnant during winter break of her freshman year.
“I got very serious about my studies basically overnight,” she said. “It was like, I have to get my education. I couldn’t frame it this way, [but] I wanted to avoid intergenerational poverty. I had big dreams for myself.”
But Lozupone couldn’t continue at Hood because there was no family housing. She decided to further her studies at Montgomery College, her local community college. So began a period in which Lozupone attended school full-time, worked full-time, and parented on her own.
Lozupone studied with her daughter on her bed alongside her textbooks and papers. She worked at a furniture store and an accounting firm, and as a baker, art school model, and restaurant hostess. She also experienced homelessness for a short period.
“Honestly, a lot of it was a blur,” said Lozupone. “I was just in survival mode. I was just in the grind of, try to take as many classes as you possibly can, try and get the best grades that you can, get to work, pay your bills, and make sure that your kid is cared for, loved, and safe.”
Lozupone’s journey was eased by several professors who allowed her to bring her daughter to class and nurse her in the back of the room. She was eventually able to return to Hood, but she kept her status as a mother secret, when possible.
“I never really wanted anyone to know I was struggling because I was embarrassed. But anytime there was an event with free food, I was stuffing my face and trying to take food home,” she said. “I wish people would’ve asked more questions.”
Lozupone eventually graduated from Hood with a bachelor’s degree in communications. She followed that with an MBA and a doctorate in organizational leadership. She now works at Montgomery College as director of student affairs, where, among other things, she tries to ensure that the 15% to 20% of the student body that are parents have access to more resources than she did.
As founding director of the ASCEND Parent Initiative Task Force at Montgomery, Lozupone led efforts to identify student parents and understand their needs. A student parent alliance dedicated to advocacy and peer mentoring developed. The college recently added 58 additional baby-changing stations to bathrooms across its campuses and is increasing parking spaces for pregnant women and parents, as well as highchairs in cafeterias. Montgomery is also making resources for student parents easier to find. The school’s website has a landing page for student parents, and maps that show where aids for parents, like lactation rooms, are on campus. Training is planned for faculty to help them be more empathetic and compassionate towards the parenting students in their classes. Recently, a donor was so impressed by ASCEND’s work that she decided to make an estate gift of $1 million specifically for student parents.
Although Lozupone works full-time at Montgomery, her impact is more widespread. She also gives back to Hood, volunteering recently to support a program offering leadership development to 50 residents of Frederick.
“There is really no reason for her to come back and provide all the support and give all the time, but she is about service,” said Dr. Nisha Manikoth, director of the doctoral program in organizational leadership at Hood. “She volunteered to [share her story], which is bravery. That gave the participants a sense for how much can be achieved because she showed them what she went through.”
Although Lozupone’s path has been more than challenging, it has given her the motivation and the insight to help students in similar positions.
“We know student parents aren’t having a singular experience, aren’t a monolith,” said Lozupone. “But in terms of connecting with that student body, the passion is there because I have an intimate understanding of what that journey is like.”
Over the past decade, campus mental health has bloomed into a crisis, with rates of depression and anxiety symptoms more than doubling. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the problem, with over 60% of college students meeting the criteria for at least one mental health issue in the 2020-21 school year. Now, a new report from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) and UWill, an online counseling platform for colleges and universities, has shown that mental health is continuing to decline.
The report is based on survey responses from student affairs leaders at over 100 institutions, representing more than 150,000 students. The results were unambiguous: 72% of respondents believed that student, faculty, and staff mental health had gotten worse over the past year. 43% said that their greatest challenge was the increased severity of the mental health issues that they were facing.Dr. John Dunkle, senior director of learning and knowledge at the JED Foundation
Although students may have returned to campuses, the pandemic is still having an effect, according to Dr. John Dunkle, senior director of learning and knowledge at the JED Foundation, a non-profit focusing on young adult mental health.
“We’ve been traumatized as a nation,” he said. “I think we’re trying to figure out how we reach a new normal.”
Students may be struggling with reconnecting after being isolated, with having lost loved ones, and with the financial impacts of the pandemic. The most common leading stressors in the NASPA survey were personal or family life issues and financial or debt issues, both identified by 76% of respondents. 44% said that COVID concerns were most prominent, and an equal percentage said that the biggest stressor was students meeting their own basic needs.
On the plus side, stigmas surrounding mental health seem to be decreasing. 93% of respondents thought that students have become more comfortable talking about mental health. Just 4% said that stigma was a significant challenge.
“By and large, students are really talking about it more than the so-called adults on campuses,” said Dunkle. “That has resulted in them being more likely to want, and in some cases, demand more resources.”
It seems as though high-level administrators are aware. 87% of survey respondents said that their college president believes that mental health is a leading priority, and 77% said that their campus increased its financial commitment to mental health this past year.
However, this awareness may not be enough. More than half of those surveyed believe that there’s significant room for improvement in responding to student mental health needs on their campuses, and 84% said funding should increase next year.
“It’s an old saying,” said Dunkle. “Where there’s a will, is there the wallet? Especially as enrollment is dipping, [schools] have to make some very tough choices about what they can and can’t provide.”
The well-being of university mental health workers is a concern as well. According to the survey, 67% said that burnout is worse this year, and an equal percentage said that their workload has gotten worse. 61% said that their salary concerns have worsened.
Dr. Ryan Patel, chair of the mental health section of the American College Health Association and adjunct clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
“The staffing needs to increase,” he said. “The funding needs to increase.”
According to Patel, pressure on counseling centers can be relieved with an approach that involves all aspects of the institution.
“Every part of the university has a role in positively impacting the mental health of young people,” he said.
Wellness centers, for example, can provide health education and peer-led coaching. Dr. Sasha Zhou, an assistant professor at Wayne State University and principal investigator of the Healthy Minds Network, saw a role for professors.
“We’ve found that the vast majority of faculty really want to help, but they just don’t know how,” she said. “Even giving them a script to talk to students would be really helpful. There’s also a growing body of work showing that mental health could be integrated into the academic curriculum. Some schools have offered classes on well-being which foster [a] form of self-processing.”
Dunkle believes that college administrations can create programming to help students develop life skills and connect with each other. They can create crisis intervention policies to help students who are in distress. They can also expand their ability to offer therapy with telehealth, a modality which exploded during the pandemic.
Laura Horne, chief program officer at Active Minds, a non-profit focusing on student mental health advocacy, emphasized that, though funding new initiatives is important, it’s equally necessary to fund research and evaluation.
“We need to experiment with different things, but we also need to measure the results,” she said. “The telehealth example is a great one: are these services working in the way we expected them to? Is telehealth reducing disparity for students in how they access care?”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
Hamline University
The controversy began in October, when Dr. Erika López Prater, an adjunct art professor, showed students a depiction of the prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims believe that such depictions are forbidden to view. After a student complained, López Prater was told that she would not be teaching a course in the spring semester. Hamline’s president, Dr. Fayneese S. Miller, signed a statement saying that care for the beliefs of the Muslim students in the class should have “superseded academic freedom,” and another administrator wrote to students that López Prater’s actions were Islamophobic. After López Prater sued the school, officials retracted the claim of bias and said that “care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two co-exist.”
The AAUP had previously issued a statement arguing that Hamline should reinstate López Prater, calling the situation “disturbing.” It quoted from a 2007 AAUP report on freedom in the classroom, stating that “ideas that are germane to a subject under discussion in a classroom cannot be censored because a student with particular religious or political beliefs might be offended. Instruction cannot proceed in the atmosphere of fear that would be produced were a teacher to become subject to administrative sanction based upon the idiosyncratic reaction of one or more students. This would create a classroom environment inimical to the free and vigorous exchange of ideas necessary for teaching and learning in higher education.”
The committee of inquiry will be composed of Dr. Henry Reichman, former chair of the AAUP’s standing committee A on academic freedom and tenure and professor emeritus of history at California State University, and Dr. Jessica Sponsler, visiting professor of art history at York College of Pennsylvania. They plan to visit the Hamline campus on February 3rd and 4th and hope to speak to Hamline administrators and trustees, as well as to López Prater and other faculty. The AAUP did not say when a report might be made public.
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
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