Inside Higher Ed

Opinion | Tell Your Enrollment Story Before Someone Else Does If colleges and universities don’t act now to explain their admission decisions, they will be vulnerable to political attacks. https://bit.ly/4yxIQy2

ICYMI | In last week's episode of The Key, Voices of Student Success, Joshua Bay spoke with IHE's senior reporter Sara Weissman to talk about the rise of the nontraditional college student and how colleges and universities can support them. 🎧 Listen to the full episode at the link below or wherever you listen to podcasts. 🔗 https://bit.ly/4fsmqpi

Student Success | New Initiative Targets Transfer Credit Loss Higher education accreditor Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC)’s new consortium aims to create common transfer pathways and shorten time to degree. https://bit.ly/3T6gElX

My latest for Inside Higher Ed: Students who transfer colleges often lose a significant share of the credits they’ve already earned, increasing both the cost of college and the time it takes to complete a degree. To address that longstanding challenge, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) has launched a new initiative designed to make transfer pathways more seamless among participating institutions. The SACSCOC Transfer Credit Consortium is a voluntary, faculty-led partnership that brings colleges and universities together to create common transfer pathways for general education courses. The consortium aims to reduce unnecessary credit loss, improve student mobility and shorten time to degree while allowing institutions to maintain authority over their curricula and academic policies. SACSCOC President Stephen Pruitt said more than 160 institutions have already signed on. Participating institutions will work together to identify shared learning outcomes and establish course equivalencies for general education classes. Faculty representatives will regularly review and refine those pairings to ensure they continue to meet academic standards. “What hit me was we’ve not seen an accreditor actually take the lead on something like this before, or at least not that I know of,” Pruitt said. “If we step into this space and we create an environment where institutions come together and faculty are still leading the charge on this, we could leverage the great work that’s already gone on in our states.” #StudentSuccess #TransferStudents #CollegeTransfer #CollegeCompletion https://lnkd.in/emT6qZzx

How Soon Could Colleges Lose Loan Access Under New Accountability Metric? For most programs, data from the new test on student earnings will be released in 2027 and failing programs could face penalties in 2028. But some have been granted an extension that student advocates say is harmful. https://bit.ly/4b4XZNp

Texas Colleges Directed to Slash State Budget Requests by 3% https://bit.ly/45i4tFa

ICYMI | The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality told multiple grant recipients last week they won’t receive continuing funding for previously awarded projects, cutting off dollars for ongoing efforts to improve America’s health-care system through research and training for new scientists and clinicians. Spokespeople for the Health and Human Services Department, which includes AHRQ, didn’t provide interviews or answer multiple written questions Friday from Inside Higher Ed, including how much funding the agency has denied, beyond giving a statement. As of early Sunday afternoon, AcademyHealth, which represents health services and health policy researchers, said it had gathered information on 73 cut-off grants, which lost more than $102 million in “estimated remaining committed funding,” as the group put it. “Everything Americans hate about health care is what this research focuses on,” said Aaron Carroll, AcademyHealth’s president and chief executive officer. “You think health care costs too much in the United States? Really makes you angry? That’s AHRQ. You think it’s too hard to get in to see a doctor? Wait times are too long? That’s AHRQ.” Read the full article ➡️ https://bit.ly/4fp0zPs

Do You Have to Be Fancy to Get Published in ‘Science’? No, not necessarily. But scientists who work for a prestigious university are three times more likely than their peers who don’t to get published in the top-tier journal, according to a new independent analysis of Science’s manuscript data. https://bit.ly/3T5xkKl

Young Men’s Perceptions of Higher Ed https://bit.ly/4wfurVZ

Inside the ‘Culture of Fear’ at One American-Chinese University Faculty at Wenzhou-Kean have accused their employer of obfuscatory employment agreements, wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation and lack of shared governance. University officials dispute the charges. https://bit.ly/4we6OwM