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Most clicked story of the week:
President Donald Trump issued two sweeping directives Thursday — one that will require colleges to supply data on the race and gender of their applicants, admitted students and enrolled cohort, and another mandating that the president’s political appointees review federal discretionary grants. Together, the two orders set up the administration to exert more control over both college admissions and research funding.
Number of the week:
39
That’s the number of four-year and community colleges participating in Alabama’s new direct admissions initiative launching this fall. Under the program, interested high school seniors in the state must upload their transcripts to an online portal by Sept. 23 to receive college acceptances in early October — no application fees or essays required.
Program and budget cuts hit colleges:
- The University of Utah’s trustee board recently approved plans to discontinue 81 academic programs in response to a new state law pushing public colleges to cut funding for certain offerings so they can redirect the money to high-demand fields. Each of the programs slated to end has graduated at most one student over the past eight years.
- Stanford University recently laid off 363 staffers in response to shifting federal policies, including a larger endowment tax for the wealthiest colleges. The private research university made the cuts as part of a broader effort to trim $140 million from its budget for the 2025-26 academic year.
- The University of Nebraska-Lincoln plans to reduce its budget by $27.5 million to remedy an ongoing structural deficit. The cuts could include either eliminating or merging academic programs.
New research insights into higher ed:
- Lower-income students get less of a boost to their earnings from attending college than they once did, with their earnings potential cut in half since 1960, according to a recent working paper. The researchers attributed this decline largely to lower-income students becoming less likely to attend research universities and study high-return fields than their higher-income peers.
- Families reported spending an average of nearly $31,000 on college for the 2024-25 academic year, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels, according to an annual poll from Sallie Mae and Ipsos. Family contributions covered nearly half the cost of college, while loans along with scholarships and grants accounted for a full half.
- A majority of parents, 59%, would prefer for their child to go directly to college after graduating from high school, according to a new Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey. Forty percent said they’d like their child to attend a four-year university, 19% wanted them to go to a two-year or community college, and 16% said they hope they enroll in a job training or certificate program.
