Though college enrollment seems to be stabilizing after the pandemic disruptions, predictions for the next 15 years are grim. Colleges will be hurt financially by fewer tuition-paying students, and many will have to merge with other institutions or make significant changes to the way they operate if they want to keep their doors open.

At least 30 colleges closed their only or final campus in the first 10 months of 2023, including 14 nonprofit colleges and 16 for-profit colleges, according to an analysis of federal data by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO. Among nonprofits, this came on the heels of 2022, when 23 of them closed, along with 25 for-profit institutions. Before 2022, the greatest number of nonprofit colleges that closed in a single year was 13. 

Over the past two decades, far more for-profit colleges closed each year than nonprofits. An average of nine nonprofit colleges closed each year, compared to an average of 47 for-profit colleges. 

This time last year, experts predicted we’d see another wave of college closures, mostly institutions that were struggling before the pandemic and were kept afloat by Covid-era funding. Since then, keeping their doors open has become unrealistic for these colleges, many of which are regional private colleges. 

“It’s not corruption, it’s not financial misappropriation of funds, it’s just that they can’t rebound enrollment.”

Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO. 

For many, the situation has been made worse by the enrollment declines during the pandemic. 

“It’s not corruption, it’s not financial misappropriation of funds, it’s just that they can’t rebound enrollment,” said Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO. 

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows that undergraduate enrollment has stabilized and even slightly increased for the first time since the pandemic, but a continuing decline in birth rates means that fewer high school seniors will be graduating after 2025, so these colleges will face even greater enrollment challenges in the years to come.

Hundreds of colleges are expected to see significant enrollment declines in the coming years, according to David Attis, managing director of research at the education consulting company EAB. Among the reasons, he said, are declining birthrates, smaller shares of students choosing college, and college-going students veering toward larger and more selective institutions.

By 2030, 449 colleges are expected to see a 25 percent decline in enrollment and 182 colleges are expected to see a 50 percent decline, according to an EAB analysis of federal enrollment data. By 2035, those numbers are expected to rise to 534 colleges expecting a 25 percent decline and 227 colleges expecting a 50 percent decline; by 2040, a total of 566 colleges are expected to see a 25 percent decline and 247 are expected to see a 50 percent decline, according to  EAB’s analysis. 

These are predictions, of course, and they certainly don’t ensure that all those colleges will close. But with these drops in enrollment expected to continue, colleges need to plan now and make significant changes in order to survive, Attis said.

“Imagine if you lose half your students – that is a threat to your continued existence.”

David Attis, managing director of research at the education consulting company EAB.

“Imagine if you lose half your students – that is a threat to your continued existence,” Attis said. “You’ll have to make some pretty dramatic changes. It’s not just a ‘We’ll cut a few academic programs,’ or ‘We’ll trim our administrative staff a little bit.’ That requires a real reorientation of your whole strategy.”

Many colleges face the decision to merge with another institution or close down entirely, Attis said. And if they wait too long to find a college to merge with, they really won’t have a choice. 

“If you wait until you’re on the verge of closure, you’re not a particularly attractive partner,” Attis said. “But if you’re not on the verge of closure, then you’re not as motivated to find that partner.”

Attis said that he’s been surprised to hear from several leaders of regional colleges – both private and public – that they are in talks about mergers. 

“Whether they’ve pursued them or not, they’ve either made a call or gotten a call,” Attis said. “They’re thinking about it in a way I hadn’t heard in the past.” 

This story about college closures was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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Dear Reader, 

Saying it’s been a wild year in higher education news seems like the understatement of the century. (I think even non-education nerds would agree!) Thank you for sticking with The Hechinger Report as we tried to make sense of it all. 

The first half of the year felt like we were all collectively holding our breath, waiting for the United States Supreme Court to rule on two massive cases, one on student loan forgiveness and another on affirmative action in college admissions. As we waited, I wrote about the poster child of the anti-affirmative action movement, Jon Marcus broke down federal data that shows the gap between Black and white Americans with college degrees is widening, and Meredith Kolodner reported, as she has before, about the fact that many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates. 

The court ultimately ruled against student loan forgiveness and against the consideration of race in college admissions. 

Shortly thereafter, led by Jon Marcus and Fazil Khan, our team began working on The College Welcome Guide, a tool that helps students and families go beyond the rankings and understand what their life might be like on any four-year college campus in America. Jon’s reporting made it  clear that the culture wars are beginning to affect where students go to college, and we wanted to help ensure people had the many types of information they needed to make the best choice, regardless of who they are or what their political orientation is. 

All the while, we continued covering the country’s community colleges. Jill Barshay wrote about how much it costs to produce a community college graduate, and why some community colleges are choosing to drop remedial math. Jon covered the continuing enrollment struggles at these institutions. I reported on a new initiative to target job training for students at rural community colleges, as well as a guide to help community colleges make this kind of training more effective. 

We also examined some of the many routes people choose to take instead of going to college. I reported on what happens when universities get into unregulated partnerships with for-profit tech boot camps, and Meredith and Sarah Butrymowicz reported on risky, short-term career training programs that exist in a “no man’s land of accountability.” Tara García Mathewson exposed the tricky system that formerly incarcerated people have to navigate if they want to get job training and professional licenses once they’re out of prison. 

And though we love to dig deep into subjects and understand exactly how these big issues affect the lives of regular people, we also zoomed out this year. Meredith, working alongside Matthew Haag from The New York Times, discovered that Columbia University and New York University benefit massively from property tax breaks allowed for nonprofits (they saved $327 million last year alone). After their story was published, New York state legislators proposed a bill that would require these two institutions to pay those taxes and  funnel that money to the City University of New York system, the largest urban public university system in the country.

In 2024, we will continue to cover equity and innovation in higher education with nuance, care and a critical eye. Is there a story you think we should cover? Reply to this email to let us know.

For now, we hope you have a warm and restful break. See you in the new year. 

Olivia

P.S. As a nonprofit news outlet, The Hechinger Report relies on readers like you to support our journalism. If you want to ensure our coverage in 2024 is as extensive and deeply reported as possible, please consider donating.

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Everyone and their mother seems to have an opinion on the three college presidents who testified before Congress last week on the topic of antisemitism on campus. Yes, I’m talking about the hearing that resulted in one university president losing her job and investigations into three elite universities.

Did the university leaders speak out strongly enough? Where is the line between free speech and hate speech, and at what point should someone be disciplined?

Congressmembers, faculty, alumni and donors have all weighed in. But how do the students feel? Based on reports in their student newspapers and statements from different campus groups, they seem to be just as divided as everyone else. 

During the hearing, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally A. Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said they opposed antisemitism and supported the existence of Israel, but when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jews constitute harassment and bullying, they said it depended on the context. Since then, Gay and Magill have issued apologies and Magill has resigned.

Many students see this as a free speech issue, raising the question of whether calling for a genocide is free speech or hate speech.  Others say that such questions are quibbling compared to the hatred and fear created by both antisemitic and anti-Islamic rhetoric. 

Harvard Hillel students wrote that “President Gay’s failure to properly condemn this speech calls into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard’s campus,” adding that they would like to work with the university administration on ways to educate the community on “the history of the Jewish people and the evolution of antisemitism.” At Penn, students and community members rallied in support of the protection of Jewish students. And Jewish MIT students told ABC News that they felt there was institutional support for students who support Palestine but not for Jewish students, and that they felt Jewish and Muslim students had been pitted against each other.

Here are some excerpts of students’ thoughts. 

Harvard University

The editorial board of The Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, published an editorial in which they strongly opposed both antisemitism and calls for President Gay to resign. They wrote that antisemitism has “been treated as a prop in political theater.” 

“Recent rhetoric has portrayed non-Jewish Harvard students — and Harvard more broadly — as deeply antisemitic. We reject this careless characterization. We believe the vast majority of our peers do not harbor hate toward Jewish people.

“This perspective has been obscured as Congress has portrayed Jewish and pro-Palestinian students as diametrically opposed monoliths with uniform sets of beliefs and emotions. In reality, our campus is home to Jewish students who advocate for a free Palestine, Arab students who endorse a Jewish right to self-determination, and many more individuals whose experiences have shaped complex, well-reasoned beliefs.”

“Recent rhetoric has portrayed non-Jewish Harvard students — and Harvard more broadly — as deeply antisemitic. We reject this careless characterization.” 

The Harvard Crimson

The editorial board urged students not to let snippets of the Congressional hearing define what is happening at Harvard. Having witnessed the vitriol of the past few months, the students said, they wanted to set the record straight. 

“Gay’s response about context dependence may seem unsatisfying, but there is — equally unsatisfyingly — no University policy that unequivocally answers Stefanik’s question. These policies do warrant more robust discussion and clarification, but a truthful answer about their ambiguity does not merit such opprobrium.”

Read more about Harvard student perspectives in Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson.

The University of Pennsylvania

The Daily Pennsylvanian’s editorial board opted not to weigh in on Magill’s resignation. Instead, it published an editorial urging students to speak for themselves about their experiences at Penn. 

“As global and local events continue to converge on this campus now and into the future, we should not let voices that are prominent, but distant, speak for us,” the editorial board wrote. “The path forward for Penn must be paved with more, not less, speech. As members of the Penn community, we have a special opportunity, and some may even say responsibility, to speak up about our experiences here.”

The publication has published a series of opinion pieces on Magill’s resignation from a range of viewpoints.

One student writer, Mritika Senthil, wrote that pressure from media attention and donor demands could lead to performative changes, rather than substantive ones. 

“The path forward for Penn must be paved with more, not less, speech. As members of the Penn community, we have a special opportunity, and some may even say responsibility, to speak up about our experiences here.”

The Daily Pennsylvanian

Senthil wrote that there are administrators and faculty making decisions every day that do not involve the president. She questioned how much difference the president’s departure could make without a “comprehensive restructuring of campus standards.”

“Our leadership needs to recognize that their speech can contribute to student discomfort and fear of open dialogue. I’m sure that most of Penn’s community not only accepts but actively seeks the exploration and debate of differing ideas. But when students and faculty cease to maintain mutual respect, the ethics of the academic community are ironically ignored,” Senthil wrote. 

Mia Vesely, an opinion writer for the Daily Pennsylvanian, expressed fear that Magill’s resignation could lead to censorship for faculty and students. 

“I ask you: what is next? If university presidents can be bullied into stepping down for allegations that serve as a contrast for actual policies they’re implementing, where do we go from here? Do we censor free speech and punish students for saying political statements that don’t align with major donors? Do we cast aside the First Amendment and live on a campus that doesn’t allow free expression?” Vesely wrote. 

Read more student perspectives in Penn’s student publication, The Daily Pennsylvanian. 

M.I.T. 

The Tech, M.I.T.’s student newspaper, hasn’t published any news story or opinion piece since the university leaders testified before Congress. But the student body appears to have been divided on these issues before the hearing. 

On Nov. 1, The Tech published an opinion column by Avi Balsam, who detailed the distress he experienced hearing chants of “intifada,” on campus during a demonstration outside M.I.T.’s Hillel. He wrote, “Words gain meaning from the historical context in which they are used. In this case, the historical context is violence and terrorism in the name of resistance. Claims to the contrary are either misinformed or dishonest.”

Balsam, a sophomore who serves as vice president of the student board of M.I.T.’s Hillel, called on Kornbluth to condemn calls for “intifada.” 

On Nov. 30, The Tech published an opinion column by a group of graduate students requesting several things from the university administration, including that it “make clear what students’ legal and institutional rights are in demonstrating on and off campus, and how to seek protection if needed.”

“We ask the MIT administration to support all students whose safety and well-being are adversely impacted by the decades-long violence in Israel and Palestine and who are expressing their views on campus,” the students wrote.

“Above all, we ask that MIT be an institution true to its values as a place where rights to freedom of expression are upheld, and where commitments toward making a better world are driven by the desire for human flourishing—not the interests of donors, the net gain of financial holdings, or US foreign policy agendas.”

This story about antisemitism on campus was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Check out our College Welcome Guide.

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For every two freshmen enrolled in a college in the University of California system, administrators say they would like to enroll one transfer student from a California community college. 

Whether they succeed depends on the campus and the year and the community college enrollment – but that’s the goal all nine undergraduate campuses strive toward, said Gary Clark, the associate vice chancellor for enrollment management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

To reach that goal and also diversify the transfer population, university leaders announced a new program at UCLA designed specifically for students at community colleges that have historically sent few transfers to the University of California. UCLA will give these students’ applications special consideration, and if they don’t get in, they’ll be guaranteed admission to another campus in the UC system, which should boost the overall number of students transferring into the University of California.

University administrators have not yet selected the community colleges that will participate in the pilot program, but will choose from a list of schools identified as “high need” because they have larger proportions of students from low-income families.  

The new program, which won’t begin until the fall of 2026, was developed by university leaders, the state legislature and the governor, as part of what they say is a general commitment to students coming from California community colleges.

“If it opens up a pathway to the University of California and to graduate from this incredibly distinguished university, it will mean a great deal to all California families, because it will enable young people to come to a university that will propel them in terms of social mobility,” said Katherine S. Newman, the University of California System’s provost. “We have a common commitment to making UC education as affordable as possible, and the community college transfer program is definitely a part of that.”

The pilot program will begin with at least eight majors and will expand to 12 within the first two years, including at least four in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, according to UC system administrators. Students enrolled in the program will be advised about which courses they need to take to be able to transfer into those majors in the UC system, which Newman said will help ensure they’re fully ready to enter the university campuses as juniors and be successful.

Related: How the college transfer process derails students’ plans

Across the nine colleges that make up the University of California system, 27 percent of undergraduates had transferred from a community college, according to an August 2023 report from the University of California’s Office of Institutional Research and Academic Planning.

These transfer students typically began their education at a California community college, and walked onto a UC campus, credit-wise, about halfway to earning their bachelor’s degrees. 

Academically, these students are ready to be significant contributors in the classroom, Clark said. Often, the challenges they face outside the classroom pose greater threats to their education. 

“A large state university, like us, needs to be committed to maintaining access. And in spite of the fact that we’ve gotten quite competitive from an admissions standpoint, we still want to ensure that students have more than one path to UCLA.”

Gary Clark, associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, University of California, Los Angeles

“These are students who may be two years out of high school. These are students who may be 22-plus years out of high school,” Clark said. “They might be parents. They might be veterans. They might be former foster youth.” 

The transfer students are more likely to be from low-income families, or the first in their family to attend college, Clark said. 

To ensure the students thrive in the classroom, the universities need to provide support with whatever their challenges may be. Each UC campus has a transfer student center, though the names vary and, in some cases, they also target returning students and veterans. UCLA’s Transfer Student Center offers students a chance to connect with each other and receive transfer-specific advising on a drop-in basis, Clark said.

UCLA students also have access to the Bruin Resource Center, which has programs that cater to students of several different identities and life experiences, Clark said. The targeted support services include programs for students who are struggling to meet their basic needs, students who are in recovery from substance abuse disorders and undocumented students, among other groups.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: Poor and first-generation transfer students often don’t feel welcome on college campuses

Clark does not expect that students coming from this new transfer program will have vastly different needs than the transfer students the university is already serving. And he doesn’t expect to have to scale up the existing resources, because the total number of transfer students at UCLA is likely to stay the same. The main difference for the transfer student population at UCLA will be which community colleges these students are transferring from. 

Community college students who transfer to UCLA often go on to graduate, data shows. About 75 percent of transfer students earn a bachelor’s degree within 2 years, 90 percent within three years, and 93 percent within four years, according to data from the university’s website.

Still, they won’t all get in – UCLA accepted just 24 percent of transfer applicants in the fall of 2022 – but those who don’t will be guaranteed admission to another University of California campus, which administrators hope will increase the number of transfer students.

“If it opens up a pathway to the University of California and to graduate from this incredibly distinguished university, it will mean a great deal to all California families, because it will enable young people to come to a university that will propel them in terms of social mobility.”

Katherine S. Newman, provost, University of California System

Students turned down by UCLA might, for example, be admitted to the University of California, Riverside, about 80 miles to the east.  UCLA accepts roughly 11 percent of first-year students, while UC Riverside accepts about 65 percent of first-year students and offers a Transfer Admission Guarantee to California community college students who meet certain requirements.

Recent data from the university shows that 58 percent of UC Riverside transfer students graduated in two years, 81 percent graduated within three years and nearly 85 percent graduated within four years.

Veronica Zendejas, director of undergraduate admissions at Riverside, said that the starting at a community college before transferring to a UC campus is the right choice for many students.

When she goes to recruit high schoolers, she reminds them that even if they start at a local community college, they can plan to transfer after earning an associate degree because of the university’s guaranteed admission for community college students who meet requirements.

“A lot of times now, what we’re seeing is a lot of students are purposely going to community college and taking those first two years to really think about what they want to do before transferring to a four-year institution,” Zendejas said.

Clark, from UCLA, said that other students may have life circumstances pop up that prevent them from pursuing a four-year university immediately after high school, and still others may apply but not be academically ready yet. Still, he said, there should be opportunities for those students to get into the University of California later on, when the time is right for them.

“A large state university, like us, I think needs to be committed to maintaining access. And in spite of the fact that we’ve gotten quite competitive from an admissions standpoint, we still want to ensure that students have more than one path to UCLA,” Clark said. “I think it’s kind of the right thing to do for a state university.”

This story about California community colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Check out our College Welcome Guide.

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The Republican Party has spent the past few years struggling through a deep divide, largely caused by fallout from a contested election. The Democratic Party seems to be disjointed, too, though the cause is less clear.

No, I’m not talking about Congress or the national committees in Washington trying to control the future direction our country is headed. I’m talking about college students. 

For many decades, campuses have had clubs for College Democrats and College Republicans, but over the past few years these clubs and the organizations that oversee them have fallen into disarray. The 2021 election for the new leader of the College Republican National Committee was contested, and the group has frayed as a result. Tension and accusations of racism have plagued the top leaders of the College Democrats of America in recent years. And students on both sides said that it was difficult to stay organized and afloat during the pandemic, causing some chapters and state-level organizations to become dormant or die off completely. 

For politically oriented students, such campus organizations can be crucial parts of their college experience, said Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, which is dedicated to furthering civic engagement and informed dialogue. 

“Students who are active in politics in college are likely to remain active in politics. And many of them want careers in politics or politics-adjacent sectors,” Binder said. “So, what’s happening on college campuses is really important for how young leaders are being socialized and shaped.”

At The Hechinger Report, we’ve been reporting on how the culture wars and the growing political divide are beginning to affect where students go to college, which led us to publish The College Welcome Guide.  It collects data on factors like enrollment figures, graduation rates, free speech climate, incidence of hate crimes, services for veterans, LGBTQ+ resource centers from more than 4,000 campuses, as well as showing state laws that affect college students.

It seemed obvious that we should include campus political organizations in our table. I volunteered to get the lists of all College Republican and College Democrat chapters in the country.

I assumed it would be an easy task – simply Google the national organizations, find lists of campus chapters, copy them into an Excel spreadsheet and send it to my editor. At most, I thought I’d need to send an email to a press contact.

To my surprise, neither the College Democrats of America nor the College Republican National Committee had a list of chapters on their website. The Democrats have a list of links to state-level organizations, and the Republicans had a “find a chapter” feature, but no way to pull a list of all chapters. All the emails I sent to the Democrats bounced back, and the Republicans didn’t reply. We tried other search methods, too, but in the end, Hechinger editors decided that the information we had would be a nightmare to fact-check and so we couldn’t responsibly include this category in The College Welcome Guide.

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college 

I agreed – but I was determined to find out why we couldn’t accomplish this task.

The split in the College Republican National Committee seems to be the primary reason that the College Republican chapters were so tough to track down. 

Courtney Hope Britt, the chair of the organization, said that there had been some cracks in the organization ideologically before she ran for chair in 2021, but the strife increased after her win was contested. Some state-level organizations and chapters decided to disaffiliate with the College Republican National Committee at this point.

Britt, who graduated from law school at the University of Richmond in her home state of Virginia before she ran for chair, said she had worked hard to win her seat, driving around the country to meet with students for her campaign during the pandemic. She said that not everyone supported her, but that she won the election fairly, despite complaints otherwise. 

“We put a lot of our hope and faith in students because they should be young and idealistic, but in a lot of ways, they’re just refracting what they see in larger politics. It’s not fair to students, because the adults who are role models to them aren’t doing much better.”

Amy Binder, professor of sociology, Johns Hopkins University

“Some of them moved on and said, ‘Okay, this is the reality,’ and some of them took their cues from what they’re seeing nationally in politics, that if you don’t like the result of something you just deny them,” Britt said. “I disagree with that fundamentally.” 

Britt won re-election this summer and will continue to serve as the organization’s chair until 2025. Leading the organization and fundraising to keep it afloat is her full-time job.  At the start of the fall 2023 semester, she said, there were 240 clubs.

She said that running the organization over the past two years has been challenging, though not exclusively because of the election-related drama. 

“I think that everyone in party leadership, at least internally, knows right now that it is difficult to lead the party in its current state,” Britt said. “The Republican Party has a lot of very tense divisions. I mean, just look at the House Republicans over the last month. I think that I need not say much more than that.”

With all the turmoil, law student Will Donahue saw an opportunity to create a new national organization.

Donahue is from California, whose chapter had clashed with the College Republican National Committee before the 2021 election controversy.  He created the College Republicans of America in the spring of 2023 to give some of the chapters that had left the opportunity to recharter with another organization, with a new focus. 

He wants the new organization to emphasize professional and personal development, to prepare students to be successful in both their political careers and their lives. They plan to partner with organizations that teach financial literacy and investing strategies, he said, and to emphasize community service.

“I think it kind of repairs the national image I think people have about Republicans that may or may not necessarily be true,” Donahue said. “But if the youth generation is leading the ground movement to try to make the planet a better place and become global citizens, I think that’s the direction that we need to move in.”

On the left, the trouble among college Democrats has been more difficult to identify. There is no contact information on the College Democrats of America page, which is embedded in the Democratic National Committee website. I found a few email addresses elsewhere online, but all bounced back with error messages.

Related: Getting rid of the ‘gotcha’: College students try to tame political dialogue 

Finally, on Nov. 2, I got in touch with Justin Parker, the newly elected national vice president of the College Democrats of America. 

The organization has what Parker calls a “colorful past.” He hasn’t been involved for long, but he said that lack of transparency among past leadership led to drama, resignations and the disaffiliation of state-level organizations from the national group over the last few years.

Right now, he said,  27 states are affiliated with his group, and he hopes to coax some of the groups that left to rejoin. 

Parker said he and other leaders have plans to revamp the organization to increase communication between chapters and state organizations across the country, so that they can learn from each other’s experiences and all become better.

Among those plans, Parker said, is continuing to work on a freshly revamped independent website that still has no contact information and no chapter list. The rebuilding work is crucial, he said, in order to reach as many young voters as possible before the 2024 election.

Jen Anderson, a sophomore at Montana State University in Bozeman, helped resurrect her campus chapter of the College Democrats and later the statewide Montana College Democrats after she was unhappy with some of the policies enacted by the state legislature. She said the state-level student organization had been dormant since at least 2020. 

“I think that everyone in party leadership, at least internally, knows right now that it is difficult to lead the party in its current state.”

Courtney Hope Britt Chair, College Republican National Committee

She and other leaders recently decided to disaffiliate from the College Democrats of America because they wanted to focus their energy on the issues Montana residents face. She said the group plans to avoid anything related to the presidential election, geopolitical conflict and the culture wars.

In Michigan, sophomore Jacob Welch has had a similar experience. He helped restart the College Democrats chapter at Grand Valley State University during his freshman year, then worked to re-ignite the state-level organization and was elected president. 

In early October, Welch said, the Michigan Federation of College Democrats decided to leave the College Democrats of America, because the Michigan members believe college political groups should focus more on taking action around societal issues they’d like to see changed. Like Anderson in Montana, he said he wanted the group to focus on issues that are priorities for Michigan residents.

On both sides, students said that participating in their campus political club gave them a chance to spend time with like-minded students and make friends. Those stakes seemed to be a bit higher for conservative students, who are more likely to be in the political minority on college campuses.

Related: Hampered by pandemic restrictions, campus organizers are working overtime to make student voting easier

Britt, the chair of the College Republican National Committee, said that, for conservative students, finding a sense of belonging of campus can sometimes feel difficult when few other students share their views and even faculty seem not to respect their opinions.

Britt recalls sitting in an election law class during the Trump presidency and hearing her professor say that the Republican Party was dead. She was confident enough in her views by then to be comfortable speaking up, but she said it was only one example of feeling ostracized for her political orientation.

“I think it’s useful both for those students to have a sense of belongingness, to have a home, but also for the rest of the campus community because they’re bringing ideas and conversations up that otherwise may not be presented without them being there,” Britt said.

Experts agree on the social value of these clubs, and some say that the political value can be great, too.

Binder, the sociology professor, said that she thinks students interested in politics are looking beyond the two mainstream groups.

For example, she said, some students on the left see the College Democrats as being “hopelessly in the center” and ultra-career oriented, sometimes calling them “resume builders.” She thinks leftist students are more likely to gravitate towards gender alliances, multicultural centers or groups that advocate for a specific cause. They might seek out groups like Young Democratic Socialists of America, which is focused on community organizing. On the right, Binder said, some conservative students are being drawn to groups such as Turning Point USA, a group that advocates for conservative politics on campuses, and aims to promote freedom, according to its website.

She thinks there is a tendency to scold students for not “holding up these hallowed institutions” of the political parties.

“We put a lot of our hope and faith in students because they should be young and idealistic, but in a lot of ways, they’re just refracting what they see in larger politics,” Binder said. “I kind of feel like that’s not fair to students, because the adults who are role models to them aren’t doing much better.”

This story about campus politics was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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Choosing a college has always been an excruciating, time-consuming process for prospective students and their families. But it seems to be getting even more difficult.

These days, after prospective students have figured out how to pay, how close to home they want to be, which schools offer majors they’re interested in studying, and whether the sports teams are ones they’d be proud to cheer for, there are about a zillion other things to consider. Among them: Will there be other students like them in race, gender and sexuality or political orientation? Are there laws in the state that might affect their life and education? Will there be guest speakers or outspoken professors who are shouted down on campus or banned from speaking altogether? Are they going to feel comfortable and safe walking to the nearest grocery store for instant ramen and Red Bull during finals week?

Amid the flurry of questions, one thing is clear: The culture wars are starting to affect where students choose to go for college.

Until now, when planning for college, students and families have been left to do a zillion Google searches on their own, especially if they want to learn what factors influence the social climate of any given campus. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy, one-stop-shop way to assess where a student might feel welcome.

This week, The Hechinger Report launched the College Welcome Guide, an interactive tool that allows you to search by state or any college in the nation for factors such as the racial diversity of students and faculty, freedom of speech, whether the college has an LGBTQ+ resource center, local regulations on abortion access and whether the state has enacted any legislation that might affect the way certain topics are taught.

The College Welcome Guide can also tell you the percentage of students who get Pell Grants (federal aid for students from low-income families); graduation rates by race; whether a state offers in-state tuition to undocumented students; state-level policies on tuition benefits for student veterans, and other campus data.  

The idea behind putting these various elements together in one place was to make the increasingly long and daunting process of choosing a college a bit easier and less intimidating. We don’t purport to know what college is best for anyone, but we hope that with so much information in one place, people will be able to compare options and make the best choices. 

I was one of the Hechinger journalists who worked on this guide, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about the herculean lift by our higher education team that brought it to life.  

My colleagues Jon Marcus and Fazil Khan got the idea in June, while many of us were at the Education Writers Association’s national conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

When they came back with the proposal, many of us thought it was admirable but might be impossible. If it could be done, why hadn’t someone already done it?

We started by compiling a list of all the questions we’d like the then-hypothetical tool to be able to answer, and split up the data-scavenging duties among our staff. Most of what we set out to collect, we collected. (Not everything, though! More on that in an upcoming newsletter.) And, like everything we publish, it’s all been rigorously fact-checked.

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

Much of the data on student outcomes and diversity comes from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). For cultural climate and local policy data, we relied on the work of researchers and nonprofits. For example, the Mapping Advancement Project calculates an “equality score” for each state how welcoming or hostile it is to queer and transgender people. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression rates the state of free speech on college campuses with scores from “abysmal” to “exceptional,” based on student surveys. And we got information on state abortion laws from the Center for Reproductive Rights. (You can read more about our methodology here.) 

As the idea started to feel more like a reality, we began to argue over what to call it. We spent what felt like hours on Zoom debating whether it was a tool or an index or a tracker or a guide. It definitely would not be a ranking. We wanted to accurately describe it without being prescriptive or biased. While tedious, the back-and-forth helped us drill down even more specifically toward defining the tool’s purpose. 

We don’t purport to know what college is best for anyone, but we hope that with so much information in one place, people will be able to compare options and make the best choices. 

We had to go back to what was driving this project from the beginning. We wanted to help prospective college students answer the question: Will I feel welcome on that campus? 

The name “The College Welcome Guide” seems so obvious now, but even the word “welcome” was contested. As journalists, we do our best to remain neutral, and we worried that the word “welcome” might turn off prospective students and families who didn’t necessarily want a college that would be welcoming to everyone. 

Ultimately, we decided that every student, regardless of identity or political affiliation, wants to feel welcome on campus. What might make them feel welcome is different, but this tool measures a wide array of issues that might be important to students, regardless of what side of an issue they’re on.

For background, Jon Marcus’s story tells  more about what factors are influencing college applicants today, We hope his story, in combination with our College Welcome Guide, will be helpful to anyone who is thinking about enrolling – or re-enrolling – in college.

This story about choosing colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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For many Americans, a college education is a luxury that feels worlds away. Even if there are multiple income-earners in their home. Even if they have enough cash to cover rent, utility bills and keep food on the table. Even if they don’t qualify for government assistance. Even so, the reality of paying for college can be hard to fathom.

The University of Central Arkansas is testing out a solution it says will largely eliminate financial barrier to a bachelor’s degree for families earning less than $100,000 per year. That could be crucial in a state like Arkansas, which has the 10th highest poverty rate and the third lowest rate of bachelor’s degree attainment in the country.

Given that Arkansas’ median income is $55,432 and 76 percent of households bring in less than $100,000 per year, university president, Houston Davis, believes the program will be able to help many students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to pay for college cover tuition and fees. 

“Instead of a family saying ‘I’ve got a plan for how to pay for that for one year,’ we’ve got a plan for how you can pay for it for four,” Davis said. “We think that is a game changer. That is a change in the conversation around breakfast tables and dinner tables. And we think it’s what Arkansas families need to hear right now.”

The program, called UCA Commitment, will be available to next year’s freshman class. To be eligible, students have to be Arkansas residents whose total family annual income falls below the $100,000 threshold. They also must apply for the merit-based Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship.

Once they have collected federal and state grants, the University of Central Arkansas will cover the rest with scholarships and work study assignments, Davis said. 

“Instead of a family saying ‘I’ve got a plan for how to pay for that for one year,’ we’ve got a plan for how you can pay for it for four. We think that is a game changer. That is a change in the conversation around breakfast tables and dinner tables. And we think it’s what Arkansas families need to hear right now.”

Houston Davis, president of the University of Central Arkansas

Many states offer pathways to tuition-free community college, but such programs at the baccalaureate level are much less common, and typically provided at elite, deep-pocketed private universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Duke. For instance, Colgate University launched a similar program in 2021, which offered free tuition for students from families making less than $80,000, and replaced federal student loans with institution grants for students from families making less than $175,000.

The University of Central Arkansas is a far less selective institution, accepting 90 percent of all applicants. More than 40 percent of the student body qualifies for federal Pell Grants, meaning they come from a low-income family. As a regional university, many students come directly from the surrounding area, which includes counties with poverty rates above 20 percent.

The hope is that this program will remove the financial barrier for students who need it the most including those who may not see college as an option, said Khadish Franklin, managing director and team lead for the research advisory services division at education consulting firm EAB.

“You really need that for schools across the country, but in a state like Arkansas, and in a region like Central Arkansas, it is absolutely transformative for students,” Franklin said. EAB worked with the university to help develop the program.

Arkansas has the 10th highest poverty rate and the third lowest rate of bachelor’s degree attainment in the country.

For the 2023-2024 school year, tuition and fees for Arkansas residents costs $10,118, according to the University of Central Arkansas website. The scholarship won’t cover other costs such as textbooks, housing, food and transportation, which can add up to thousands as well.

Still, as long as they keep their GPA above a 2.5 and log at least 10 hours of community service per semester, students will be able to keep the scholarship for four consecutive years.

Davis said the university estimates that between 40 to 45 percent of freshmen will be eligible, or about 750 students in the fall of 2024.

The program is years in the making. About five years ago, leaders at the University of Central Arkansas considered the threats facing their school: The region faced a looming demographic cliff of college-aged residents and administrators were uncertain about what kind of state and federal funding they could count on in the coming years.

They began to ask themselves, “What were we going to do to be proactive?” Davis said. 

To answer the questions, leaders pored through the budget to make sure that every dollar was going toward meeting the needs of students.

Part of that process was determining whether they were doing the best they could with student financial aid packages, Davis said. They worried about “over-awarding” some students, while other students who needed the money more weren’t getting it. They began drafting budgets to see whether they could make something like the UCA Commitment program work. After moving around some scholarship money and raising more money, administrators think they can swing it. 

The new program doesn’t come at great risk to the college, either. Just because students won’t have to pay tuition, doesn’t mean the college isn’t getting paid. The money coming in for each student will be the same, it will just come from scholarships and work study assignments instead of college loans and credit cards.

Davis said the university expects to see a small increase in enrollment, but expects the most significant impact will to be on the number of students who return year after year.  

“The real power of UCA Commitment is going to be for those students who are in academic good standing, they’re making progress toward a degree, but money is the reason they stop out,” Davis said.

This story about the free bachelor’s degree was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Northeastern Ohio, it was the National Guardsmen and women who stepped up to save the day. They were deployed to emergency food distribution sites, ran massive vaccine clinics, and even filled in at county jails when there were staffing shortages

These are people who have jobs outside the military, but who report to training one weekend per month and two weeks per year, even in the most uneventful of times. When there is a crisis or disaster, these are the people who drop everything else to serve their communities.

These are people who David Merriman, the director of Cuyahoga County’s Department of Health and Human Services, respects immensely. So when the opportunity arose for the county to help them earn college degrees by offering personalized college coaching, he was eager to support it.

Members of the Ohio National Guard already have access to full college scholarships, but many still don’t graduate. Only about 19 percent of  the state’s National Guard members (about 3,000 of 16,000 total members) have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 22 percent of all National Guard members and about 37 percent of the total U.S. adult population, according to the most recent data from the military and U.S. Census Bureau.

Getting through college as an adult can be a near insurmountable challenge, even without National Guard responsibilities. Often, adult students have jobs and family caretaking responsibilities. They frequently face financial challenges that result in housing, transportation or food insecurity. School is squeezed into whatever space is left in their lives. 

“There’s no cookie cutter intervention here. If there was, we’d be doing it.”

David Merriman, the director of health and human services in Cuyahoga County

Now, Ohio National Guard members who live in or attend college in Cuyahoga County can receive up to four years of free college coaching designed to help them juggle all these competing priorities and graduate.

The program, which began this September, is a countywide pilot run in partnership with education nonprofit InsideTrack to see if giving National Guard members personalized support can help them take advantage of the existing college scholarship.

“Every one of them is going to have a different experience,” Merriman said. “There’s no cookie cutter intervention here. If there was, we’d be doing it.”

The coaching targets student’s individual needs. Some might need help figuring out how to navigate the bureaucracy of higher education or balance all their responsibilities outside the classroom. Others might want someone to bounce career ideas off of and help planning for postgraduation life. And the students can reach their coaches in whatever ways work best for them, whether it’s Zoom, phone calls or texts.

“Getting your degree is hard. Completing is hard, right? And that’s for any normal person,” said Jessica Hector, associate vice president of partner success at InsideTrack, which provides the coaches. “Many times, if a student’s not successful in school, it’s not academics, it’s because of all the other things that kind of come into play that pull you away from your long-term goal.”

Roughly 9,600 Ohio National Guard members, or 60 percent, have only earned a high school diploma or GED. Some of them did attend college but did not graduate.

InsideTrack will initially have the capacity to serve roughly 500 students in the program, Hector said, but might increase that number if there is greater interest. And if the program is successful, Merriman and Hector said they hope the coaching can be offered to National Guard members across the state. 

Right now, funding for the program hinges on whether students continue their classes and earn certificates or degrees.

Only about 19 percent of  the state’s National Guard members (about 3,000 of 16,000 total members) have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 22 percent of all National Guard members and about 37 percent of the total U.S. adult population.

They’re using a “pay for success” model, meaning that InsideTrack is paid for its coaching services by the social impact investment firm Maycomb Capital. If students stay enrolled and graduate, Cuyahoga County pays InsideTrack, which in turn reimburses Maycomb. The hope is that linking payment to outcomes will drive success.

Public-private partnerships can be complicated, Merriman said, and are only worth it if they are developing services that meet residents’ needs. He thinks this program will do just that. 

Merriman, who also serves on the county’s workforce development board, said that members can gain valuable work experiences from their National Guard deployment. Those experiences, when combined with a college degree, can make them attractive candidates for in-demand jobs. The National Guard members who staffed the outdoor food distribution centers during Covid had to have sharp logistics skills and learned how to use machinery to load and unload the donated food. The members who ran the vaccine clinics now have months worth of valuable work experience in medical settings. 

In addition to helping the National Guard members manage their personal, work, service and school responsibilities, Merriman said he thinks it will be valuable for the members to have the support of someone to help them brainstorm how to use those skills in possible careers. 

“These are prime candidates to fill in demand jobs that, frankly, are essential to our community’s economic stability,” Merriman said. “We have to do something that connects these guardsmen to the jobs that really can lead out of these deployment experiences.” 

This story about the Ohio National Guard was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Ask a person on the first day of college what their college goals are, then 10 years later ask what those goals were – and you may not get the same answer.

Many community college students enroll with big hopes, planning to earn an associate degree or transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s. Yet when former students are asked about their aspirations in hindsight, only 38 percent of them said they’d been seeking a degree when they started, a new study from the Strada Education Foundation found. 

“Both things can be true,” said Thomas Brock, the director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, who was an advisor to the Strada survey. (The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

“You can have a large majority of students entering community college feeling very committed to earning a degree and feeling that that is their primary reason for being there,” he said. “And an older group of former students who look back and say, ‘Well, you know, I had a variety of goals, and maybe earning a degree is one of them, but not my only goal, or perhaps the most important goal.’ ” 

The Strada survey sought to understand how former students feel about the value of community college by asking them questions about their goals, whether they feel they achieved the goals, and whether it was worth the cost. 

Strada surveyed 1,139 people who attended a community college within the last 10 years; about one-third of them had earned an associate degree. (Across the country, about 36 percent of community college students graduate with that degree within four years, according to 2018 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.) 

The survey found that among the 38 percent of people who reported that, at the outset, they’d hoped to earn an associate degree, about 58 percent said they had achieved that goal. But among the 60 percent of respondents who said their enrollment had been motivated by specific career or personal aspirations, rather than simply a degree itself, only 49 percent said they felt those motivations had been fulfilled. 

Former students who said that they entered community college with personal or non-career- related goals reported slightly higher levels of fulfillment, the survey found.

“We’ve got to get tighter at community colleges at making sure we truly understand where every student is coming from,” said Juan Salgado, chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago. “That’s a complex endeavor, because our students are so diverse in terms of purpose, pathway, starting point, ultimate destination, and how they want to use us.”

About 29 percent of all undergraduates go to community colleges, according to spring 2023 enrollment figures from the National Student Clearinghouse. Generally, community college students are older than students who attend four-year colleges, and they often juggle work and family caregiving responsibilities in addition to their academic work. Many community college students also experience financial challenges and face food, housing and transportation insecurity. 

David Clayton, a co-author of the report and senior vice president of research at Strada Education Foundation, said the survey results shine a light on the importance of community colleges and their potential for preparing individuals who want to better themselves and serve their communities. 

“I think of community colleges as community-building colleges,” Clayton said. “They are really the stable, local human capital of communities.” 

Brock said the Strada survey underscores the need to ensure that community college offerings can lead students to careers where they can earn enough money to support their families. He said community colleges are still structured like cafeterias, where there are plenty of options but little information about what each option could lead to or what pathway might lead to the most financially secure future. 

“I think of community colleges as community-building colleges. They are really the stable, local human capital of communities.” 

David Clayton, senior vice president of research, Strada Education Foundation

For example, Brock said that programs in early childhood education may attract students but often lead to jobs with low earning potential. The problem is rooted in a lack of societal value and respect for early childhood educators and caregivers, Brock said. It isn’t necessarily the fault of the community colleges. But students still need to understand what they are getting themselves into when they enroll in those types of programs.

Helping students better understand the choices they are making while enrolled could help increase the value of community college, he said.

The survey found that whether students thought their community college education was worth the cost varied depending on how much they were making after graduation, whether they were the first in their family to attend college and their race or ethnicity. 

The median annual salary for survey respondents was $48,000. About 55 percent of respondents who were earning less than $34,000 per year said their education was worth the cost, compared to 51 percent of people earning between $34,001 and $48,000; 73 percent of those earning between $48,001 and $75,000, and 76 percent of those earning over $75,000. 

About 54 percent of those survey respondents who were the first in their family to attend college said it was worth the cost, compared to 74 percent of the other students. 

And the student perspectives varied on racial lines, too. About 62 percent of white students said their community college education was worth the cost, compared to 60 percent of Black students and 51 percent of Latino students. 

Latinos were also the least likely to say they felt they’d achieved their goals (55 percent compared to 61 percent of Black students and 64 percent of white students). 

Salgado, who oversees a consortium of seven community colleges in Chicago, said that these figures underscore the need to support students outside the classroom. Latino students especially need to be engaged in “critical, caring relationships” with the institution in the form of advising, coaching and mentoring, he said. And they need to have other resources, such as mental health services, available. 

These vulnerable students need community colleges to take a layered approach to student support, Salgado said, which can build a safety net that students are less likely to fall through, and may be more likely to come out of feeling like their education was worth it.

This story about college goals was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Alexa Maqueo Toledo was a junior in high school in Tennessee when she enrolled in Spanish 4, the first course she’d take that offered students the chance to earn both high school and college credit at the same time. 

She remembers hearing that the college credit was free, and it seemed like a great opportunity to knock some college credits out of the way early. Though that was the case for most of her classmates, Maqueo Toledo quickly learned it was not the case for her. She was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at age two with her mother. They came on a visa and stayed in the U.S. even after it expired. In Tennessee, undocumented students are not eligible for in-state tuition or state financial aid, which she would need for dual-credit classes.

“My teacher kind of pulled me aside and was like, ‘Hey, you need to go to your guidance counselor, there’s a little bit of complications with signing you up for this class,’” said Maqueo Toledo, who is now a college access fellow at the Education Trust in Tennessee. 

Everything she’d heard about the dual-credit class was technically true, it just didn’t apply to her.  A state grant made the college credits free for most students, but U.S. citizenship was required. Without the grant, if she wanted to earn the college credits for the course she was already taking, she’d have to pay the community college’s out-of-state tuition rate. 

An estimated 20 percent of community college students are actually high schoolers getting both high school and college credit for the courses they are taking. Students who take dual enrollment classes in high school are more likely to finish college.

Today, that rate is $726 per credit, compared to $176 per credit for students who qualify for in-state tuition (though, thanks to the state grant, in-state high school students pay nothing for dual enrollment credits). Maqueo Toledo had been working at fast food restaurants ever since being approved for a work permit, but she was also paying half the bills at home. She couldn’t afford to pay for the college credits that her peers were getting for free because, she said, “I have more important things to pay for.”

Last month, Hechinger’s Jill Barshay reported that an estimated 20 percent of community college students are actually high schoolers who are getting both high school and college credit for the courses they are taking. Research has shown that the students who take dual enrollment classes in high school are more likely to enroll in college and graduate than their peers of similar backgrounds. For the students who can get the credit easily and for little money, it seems like a great set-up. 

But it excludes thousands of undocumented students. They can face a variety of barriers, like the cost-prohibitive dual-enrollment credits in Tennessee, depending on the state they live in. 

Related: STUDENT VOICE: DACA recipients like this DREAMer ask for full participation in American life

According to research by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonprofit group of university and college leaders that supports immigrant, refugee and international students, state policies vary drastically. Among them:

• Three states bar undocumented students from attending some or all public institutions of higher education. 
• Six states block undocumented students from accessing in-state tuition.

Five states provide in-state tuition only to recipients of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.  

• Four states provide undocumented students with in-state tuition at some, but not all, colleges.
• 24 states (and the District of Columbia) allow undocumented students to access in-state tuition, and 18 of those states also allow undocumented students to access state financial aid.
• Eight states have no known policies related to undocumented students and higher education funding. 

“Undocumented students are shut out of these opportunities, and it’s really alarming,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, executive director of The Education Trust in Tennessee. “The fact is, these are students whose families are paying taxes. And these are public institutions that they should benefit from attending.”

Exorbitant out-of-state tuition is one of several barriers undocumented students can encounter when they’re trying to access dual credit courses. Some states require students to have attended a local high school for a certain number of years, making undocumented students who have come to the U. S. recently ineligible. In California, for example, students can only access in-state tuition if they have completed at least three years of school in California (it can be either high school, a combination of middle and high school, community college or adult school).

“There are many jobs in healthcare, in business, teaching, where we’re seeing massive shortages, and we need highly educated, highly skilled people to fill those jobs. And we’re creating these artificial barriers that are preventing those students from accessing those jobs and helping fill those roles.”

Sonny Metoki, higher education analyst, The Education Trust in Tennessee

Maqueo Toledo is one of about 19,000 undocumented immigrants in Tennessee between the ages of 16 and 24, according to an analysis of 2015 to 2019 U.S. Census data by the Migration Policy Institute. The Institute estimates that there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including about 352,000 between 13 and 17 years old and 1.4 million between the ages of 18 and 24. About 16 percent of undocumented people above the age of 25 in Tennessee have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 18 percent of undocumented people nationally and 37 percent of the general population. 

Sonny Metoki, higher education analyst from the Education Trust in Tennessee, said that dual enrollment courses create a pathway toward college. Without access to it, he said, “it really does discourage a lot of students from pursuing education after high school.”

And if they do end up in college, often by combining a patchwork quilt of private scholarships, they are starting out even further behind many of their U.S. citizen peers.

Related: Undocumented students turn to each other for support post graduation

Undocumented students can even struggle to access dual-credit courses in states that don’t have an explicit residency requirement for in-state tuition, said Miriam Feldblum, executive director and co-founder of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. There may be a requirement to have attended a school in the state for a certain number of years, as in California. About 2.7 million undocumented people, or 25 percent of all those in the U.S., live in California.

Others may be able to take dual-credit classes, only to find out that the post-high school portion of a trade program they were studying has a work-authorization requirement, or that they are ineligible for licensure in that field because of their immigration status. 

Only five states allow undocumented students to obtain a license to any profession as long as they meet all the other requirements, according to the Higher Education Immigration Portal run by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. But most states limit the professions that undocumented people can get licenses for; limit licensure to people with work authorization permits; block undocumented people from most professions that require licensure, or have no state policy on the professional licensure of undocumented people. 

“Undocumented students are shut out of these opportunities, and it’s really alarming. These are students whose families are paying taxes. And these are public institutions that they should benefit from attending.” 

Gini Pupo-Walker, executive director, The Education Trust in Tennessee

Undocumented students with access to hands-on career and technical education programs in high school need to know if they will be legally allowed to practice the profession they are training for. Feldblum said that these programs are typically designed so that students can move seamlessly from the high school portion of the training to a post-secondary portion, but the post-secondary portion can have work-authorization requirements that exclude undocumented students. So, they may be unable to get to the point of applying for a license because they can’t complete the training. 

“There are many jobs and sectors in healthcare, in business, teaching, where we’re seeing massive shortages, and we just need highly educated, highly skilled people to fill those jobs,” Metoki said. “And we’re creating these artificial barriers that are preventing those students from accessing those jobs and helping fill those roles. I think we’re hurting ourselves to a certain extent.”

The workforce policy and financial-aid access issues are among many challenges that undocumented students face, said Felecia Russell, director of the Higher Ed Immigration Portal at the Presidents’ Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration and founder of the online storytelling platform Embracing Undocumented. But she said these students face challenges within their institutions, too. Her doctoral research focused on the experiences of Black undocumented college students, who make up about 14 percent of all undocumented students, compared to 27 percent who are Asian American or Pacific Islander and about 48 percent who are Hispanic.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: We need dream resource centers on college campuses

Making sure undocumented students have the support they need to get to and through college is what Maqueo Toledo wants to spend her career doing.

She was lucky to have a guidance counselor she trusted to disclose her immigration status to, who could help her navigate the tricky system. In her first year after graduation, she took that role for other undocumented students, as a college and career access coach at a high school in Knox County.

“I see peers of mine and friends who started school with me and didn’t have the chance to finish or didn’t finish in my class because they had to take time off to save money, or life happens, because they don’t have the support of our citizen peers,” Maqueo Toledo said. “I want to be working at a university helping first-generation immigrant students, whether they’re undocumented themselves or they come from undocumented families, finish higher education.”

Maqueo Toledo took two classes in high school that she could have earned college credit for, classes that many of her peers did get credit for and didn’t have to retake in college. 

Advocates say that this problem could be greatly reduced if undocumented students were allowed to pay the in-state tuition price for the dual credit classes. Even if they weren’t eligible for the Tennessee state grant that makes these credits free for U.S. citizens, they would be paying the much more accessible price of $176 per credit, instead of $726 per credit. It would shrink what Metoki called a “tremendous block” for students to get the college credits. 

This story about dual enrollment courses was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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