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Miami Herald
6 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
College Uncovered: Apprentices of the World, Unite!
Is the four-year college degree losing its grip on Americans' dreams? Just as American colleges reach the demographic cliff - a steep decline in the number of 18-year-old prospective freshmen - higher education faces mounting pressure from all sides. President Donald Trump has targeted universities, slashing federal research funding and questioning their tax-exempt status – painting them as overpriced and out-of-touch bastions of liberalism. But skepticism about college isn't just coming from the right. On the campaign trail, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris called out the country's narrow focus on four-year degrees, urging more support for apprenticeships and technical programs. The public seems to agree. A growing number of Americans - nearly a third - now say they have little or no confidence in college. That's up more than 20 percentage points from a decade ago. Employers and states desperate for talent are dropping degree requirements for certain entry-level positions. So in this episode of College Uncovered, co-hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus look at the growing number of alternative pathways to good jobs. They explain that, while apprenticeship and internship are preeminent among these, there arne't enough of them to meet demand. Whether you're a student, parent, or just interested in the future of higher education or the American economy, this final episode of our season explains what comes next. [Jacqueline Rivera] It was a little bit far away, so I couldn't really realistically get there. [Kirk] And there was an even bigger issue faced by many college students. [Jacqueline Rivera] It was way out of my budget. [Kirk] So she tried a nearby community college, but she ended up dropping out. Health care just didn't feel like the right fit. Unemployed, she remembered how much she loved tinkering on her dad's old Ford Explorer. [Jacqueline Rivera] As a kid, I've always wondered how cars work, and just really wanting to learn about the intricacies, how things are put back together. [Kirk] Now, at 25 years old, she's preparing for a career without taking the traditional path through college. She's one of the only women in this new automotive technology apprenticeship program. It's one of countless routes to a good job that don't require a traditional college education. Even some employers are on board, dropping college degree requirements on new job postings. [Jacqueline Rivera] It just makes a lot more sense. I'm still learning the theory and everything while I'm in school, but I'm also able to have time to work in a dealership and learn from the people that have already been there and have already been in that field for many years. [Kirk] This is College Uncovered, from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report. [Kirk] Colleges don't want you to know how they operate. So GBH … [Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you. Today on the podcast: 'Apprentices of the World, Unite!' [Kirk] So, Jon, something you and I talk about a lot is whether the four-year college degree is kind of losing its grip on the American dream. Right now, just as colleges face a dramatic drop in traditional-age 18-year-olds - that's the demographic cliff we've been exploring all season - it seems higher education is getting hit from every single direction. [Jon] Yeah, including from the top. President Donald Trump has targeted universities, questioned their tax-exempt status, and portrayed them as expensive and out of touch. He slashed billions in federal research funding and said Harvard's grants ought to go to trade schools instead. [Kirk] College leaders and the left disagree, and they're fighting this in and out of court. But there is political consensus on one issue surrounding higher ed: that a four-year degree is not the only route to a career. [Kamala Harris] Good evening, Pennsylvania! [Kirk] Here's Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at a campaign stop. [Kamala Harris] For far too long, our nation has encouraged only one path to success: a four-year college degree. Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths such as apprenticeships and technical programs. [Kirk] During the campaign, Harris pledged to double the number of apprenticeships. [Jon] Yeah, Kirk, at a time when American politicians can't agree on much, this is actually one area where there's real bipartisan agreement. Remember, Trump pushed apprenticeships hard in his first term. Now, back in the Oval Office, he used his signature big black Sharpie to sign another of his many executive orders - this time aiming to create a million new apprenticeships and boost workforce training, even as his administration cut funding for them. [Kirk] And it turns out the public likes the idea of having alternatives to colleges. Fewer Americans are choosing college straight out of high school. Perhaps that's because 77 percent of adults say college is unaffordable, and many are questioning what they're getting for their money. Nearly 80 percent of recent graduates say they learned more in their first six months on the job than during their entire four years of college. [Jon] Yeah. Meanwhile, employers across the country, desperate for skilled workers - they're starting to drop degree requirements for some entry-level jobs. [Kirk] There are a lot of new options now, Jon. Trouble is, if you're a student or a parent trying to help your kid figure out what comes after high school, that can make the process even more confusing than it was before. So where does that leave you? This is our final episode in our season all about the demographic cliff. So as we stand on the edge of it, we're looking at alternative pathways. And we're asking what happens if and when the four-year college degree is no longer the default. We'll also dig into why the U.S. lags behind other advanced countries in offering internships and apprenticeships, and what that means for students, and for colleges. [Jon] And, of course, as always, we'll ask the biggest consumer-facing questions for families right now: Should you or your kid consider something other than the traditional four-year college degree? [Kirk] Okay, Jon, this podcast is all about college. But the truth is, college isn't the only way to a good job anymore. More Americans are turning to apprenticeships and paid internships as a more affordable and direct path into the workforce. But here's the problem: Demand is outstripping supply, and colleges and employers have been pretty slow to catch up. Right now there are more students looking for these opportunities than there are slots to fill. Jon, listen to this: The U.S. Department of Labor says there are about 680,000 registered apprentices nationwide. [Jon] Right, and that sounds like a lot. [Kirk] It does, but that's less than half a percent of the total U. S. workforce. Compare that to more than 19 million Americans who are enrolled in college - though that total is down from its peak in 2010. And even with historically low unemployment, students are still struggling to get work experience and earn a living wage. Nationwide, more than eight million college students say they want internships, but only about three million actually land one. [Brandon Busteed] We've got a big gap between supply and demand here right now. [Kirk] Brandon Busteed has seen that gap up close. He's CEO of the company BrandEd, which focuses on industry experiences for students. [Brandon Busteed] And we do that through Sotheby's Institute of Art, Vogue College of Fashion, Manchester City Sports Business School and the School of The New York Times. [Kirk] Here's one of its ads. [sound of BrandEd ad] My instructor was an editor at Vogue. Like, that was incredible. … Going out into the streets of New York, and you're seeing where the industry takes place for real. … In the heart of the art market and the art world, you just learn hands-on and from experts who really know what they're talking about. [Kirk] And these are internships or apprenticeships? [Brandon Busteed] It's kind of a unique twist to internships and apprenticeships. As you know, those have some pretty specific nuances and definitions. What we've tried to do is take a lot of the value of those models and scale it for students and scale up more consistently around the quality. So all the programs we do are co-designed and co-taught by industry experts who are in their fields, and by educational experts. [Kirk] Before launching his company, Busteed was at Gallup, where he advised college presidents,and he surveyed thousands of students and graduates. He says colleges saw the demographic cliff coming from a mile away, and still didn't do enough to adapt and respond to what students were demanding: more work-based learning. [Brandon Busteed] It's a classic case of what I call higher ed hubris. You ask CFOs of colleges and universities what they think the prospectus is for the sector in the next five or 10 years. Most of them think it's going to be really bad, really ugly, really disastrous, but then you go, 'Oh, well, how do you think your own institution is going to do?' And they're, like, 'Yeah, we're going to be just fine.' [Kirk] But now, the sector is beginning to realize that things are definitely not going to be just fine. Colleges desperate for students keep discounting heavily, but at the same time, sticker prices at the most selective schools keep going up. At Vanderbilt University, total costs are now estimated at nearly $100,000 a year, just as students have more viable alternatives. [Brandon Busteed] Corporate routes where I can get my college degree while I'm working, companies that will train me and pay me to train and a whole host of third parties who are doing intensive short-form training that's leading to pretty darn good jobs, high-paying jobs, jobs that pay family-sustaining wages. [Jon] The demographic cliff - that decline in the number of 18-year-olds - it doesn't only affect colleges. It affects employers, too. In some states, they're begging for workers. Take Maine, for instance. Its population is the oldest in the country. That makes it a sort of a canary in the coal mine. It has lots of retirees and not enough workers, like the whole country is about to experience. So Maine is investing in apprenticeships and internships. Those can get workers into jobs faster and more cheaply than college can, in industries like aquaculture. [Kirk] Aqua what? [Jon] Aquaculture, Kirk. Clearly, you're not from Maine. That's the breeding and harvesting of fish and shellfish. We learned about knot-tying, some boating safety skills, a lot about commercial fishing and how it's managed, how market prices are set, a lot about Maine fishing. [Jon] That's a video promoting the Aquaculture Pioneers Program, just one of several workforce initiatives run by an organization called Educate Maine. Hannah Greene manages workforce partnerships for the nonprofit. [Hannah Greene] We have high school students. We have students that are starting college, or finishing up their college experience. We have participants that have been out of college for many, many years. So it's really a broad range of folks that are interested in marine science, but want that hands-on, real-world work experience in an industry that's really growing. [Jon] Greene says Educate Maine is working across the state to connect students, schools and employers. [Hannah Greene] So we have programs from aquaculture to automotive to health care, banking and finance, IT, a lot of your typical trades, carpentry, construction, HVAC. We really run the gamut. [Jon] And students can earn certifications and credentials from the Maine Department of Labor. They're recognized nationally. Maine recently hit a record number of apprentices - just over 3,000. Hannah Greene admits that's still small, even in a state with a fairly small population. But at least it's growing. [Hannah Greene] The more work experience and experiential learning programs that we can provide for Mainers, especially younger Mainers, the more we're building the foundation of Maine's future economy. And businesses really thrive with a steady stream of trained workers. [Kirk] Now, Jon, remember what we said earlier: 80 percent of recent grads say they're learning more in the first six months on the job than they did in their entire four-year college experience. [Jon] That's a great advertisement for apprenticeship. [Kirk] It is, Jon, but other countries are far ahead of us here. The U.K. and Australia have eight times more apprenticeships per capita than we do. So we reached out to Vinz Koller. He's a vice president with Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit focused on education and the workforce. Koller grew up in Switzerland, a country known for its apprenticeship system. It's kind of like the global gold standard. Two thirds of young people there go into what's called the dual pathway system, and one third take the academic route. [Vinz Koller] What we notice, you know, when you grow up there, is that, you know, the kids that go the work-based learning pathway have more money, right from the get-go. They are the ones that graduate from the bicycle to a moped and later from a moped to a motorcycle and then from a motorcycle to a car, and we're still, you know, on our bicycle going through university education. And that's an interesting, you know, shift in perception right there, right? So it doesn't have that stigma. [Jon] That stigma, that hands-on training is something less than - that's a big hurdle in the U.S. But remember, Abraham Lincoln didn't go to law school. He apprenticed. But over time, our system shifted toward going to college, rather than learning on the job. [Kirk] Some states have pushed back on that idea. Back in the 1990s, Wisconsin launched youth apprenticeships for high schoolers. And since 2015, others, like North and South Carolina, Indiana, Colorado, Washington and Maryland have all followed suit. While the national system is still fragmented, Kohler says demand from families is high. [Vinz Koller] Do you want to spend $50,000 on your education, perhaps, a year if you're in a private school, or do you want to make $20,000 to $50,000 a year while you're learning? That's a pretty easy answer, I think, for most people. [Kirk] Right now, Kohler says, even though the opportunities are there, it's too hard for students and families to find them, and it's too hard for employers to convert into an apprenticeship model. [Jon] So what needs to change? [Kirk] Well, Kohler says the federal government needs to cut all the red tape and just make it easier to launch apprenticeships. And then states need to expand them beyond the trades like construction and manufacturing to fields like accounting, healthcare and even journalism. [Vinz Koller] We have to broaden it from, you know, the hardhat trades to the white-collar industries. And we have to make it easier for companies to start up apprenticeships. [Kirk] That's exactly what administrators are trying to do at Franklin Cummings Tech in Boston, where they've launched that automotive tech apprenticeship program. Aisha Francis is the president. [Aisha Francis] The foundation of this institution was based in access to apprenticeship. [Kirk] The school was founded thanks to a gift from one of America's original apprentices - Benjamin Franklin. Back then, it was printmaking and candle-making. Today, it's cars, construction and tech. That means you can apprentice to be a software engineer or an eye-care specialist. Francis herself majored in English, and she admits, for a long time, most academics and college leaders didn't want to associate higher education with job training. But now colleges are desperate for students, and they're joining in on the apprenticeship fad. [Aisha Francis] Apprenticeships don't necessarily have anything to do with college, but what we're doing that's different here is embedding the apprenticeship process with the degree-seeking process. So apprenticeship degrees becomes a mechanism by which college becomes more relevant and interesting and exciting. [Kirk] And why is it so important to have the degree with the apprenticeship? [Aisha Francis] Because for the population of students that we serve, most of whom are first-generation college students, many of whom are low income, there is a pride of attainment with a degree. And I don't think we should continue to force youth to make a choice between pursuing technical education or trade education and going to college. And so it behooves us to find innovative ways for people to do both at the same time. [Kirk] And as we approach the demographic cliff, everyone we talked to for this episode agreed. More schools will add apprenticeship degree programs as yet another new way to attract students. Why aren't people banging down these doors? [Aisha Francis] Well, people are banging down our doors. I think the perception might be that people aren't banging down the doors, but they are. [Kirk] Enrollment is up at Franklin Cummings Tech, from about 550 four years ago to more than 1,000 today. [Aisha Francis] And our goal is to be at 1,500. And we hope that the vast majority of those 1,500 students are taking advantage of apprenticeship and work-based learning opportunities. [Kirk] Right now, Franklin Cummings Tech offers 10 apprenticeship degree programs. Francis tells me three have wait lists. One of those is automotive tech. Over two years, students in the program log 2,000 hours in a registered apprenticeship. They're paid to learn, getting real hands-on experience and a clear path to a career. Jacqueline Rivera, who we met at the beginning of this episode, is one of those students. She works 32 hours a week at a Subaru dealership - perhaps working on your car, dear podcast listener. And then she spends another 10 hours in class, earning her associate degree. [Jacqueline Rivera] You get to learn the theory, but you also are hands-on. We have a lot of labs and we get that time to go over the theory and kind of put ourselves to work. And then with this apprenticeship, it will kind of be kind of like a real-world experience. And, you know, I'll be at a dealership doing this stuff and applying myself. [Kirk] And that means she'll graduate with no debt and the skills, she hopes, to get a good job. [Jon] Okay, so with this whole debate about the value of college, what should students and families actually do? Should you or your kid go the traditional two- or four-year college route or start looking into apprenticeships and other alternative paths? [Kirk] It's a great question, and one that we get all the time. I asked Vinz Kohler from Jobs for the Future what we should tell people, and he told me, don't lock into just any one track, and then see what fits your needs and your interests. So if you're in high school, talk to your teachers and guidance counselors, and ask if any apprenticeship degree programs already exist in your area. [Vinz Kohler] This is not available everywhere yet, but it's the kind of movie that's coming to a theater near you. I think that is almost certain and in almost all parts of the country [Kirk] Until then, keep your options open. Ask questions and talk to your family. [Vinz Kohler] We saw in North Carolina, for example, and in South Carolina, how, you know, they started offering this, first time around, 10 parents show up, next time around 100 parents show up because they hear, 'Oh, wow, this is cool. You know, I might have my kid earn some money as opposed to just being a cost center in my household.' [Kirk] Okay, now, college's staunchest defenders point out there are still millions of jobs in this country that require four-year degrees, and higher ed leaders like Raj Vinnakota with the Institute for Citizens and Scholars says yes, we need to get young people ready for a career, but going to college also prepares students to contribute to society. [Raj Vinnakota] How do we engage and prepare our students to be able to effectively engage in self-government? And how do we, as institutions of higher education, engage in our democracy? And frankly, we've kind of moved away from that and we need to bring that back in balance. [Kirk] So, Jon, what do you make of that argument, and what are you going to be watching as this debate over the value of college continues? [Kirk] Well, there's a couple of important statistics to keep in mind. There's still 58 million jobs in the United States that do require a college degree. So it's not exactly black and white. Also, as you mentioned earlier, there is a lot more demand for apprenticeships than there is a supply of them. So it's going to be really hard to scale up these programs fast enough for everyone to get apprenticeships. [Kirk] So do you think that the best way to get this combination of the demographic cliff and growing demand for alternatives to colleges will finally force colleges to kind of lean into job training and focus on skills and career outcomes? [Jon] Well, yeah, the operative word there is 'finally.' I think colleges are finally understanding their role in preparing their graduates for jobs, something that they haven't historically thought about, or they've dismissed. And so, yeah. I think you'll see more explicitly career-focused education in colleges. And I think you'll see them trying to kind of catch up with and compete back against these new alternatives, like apprenticeships and internships. [Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I'm Kirk Carapezza from GBH … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report. This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza … [Kirk] … and Jon Marcus. This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jenifer McKim. Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman. Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman, out of MIT. Mei He is our project manager, and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins. [Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It's produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. Thanks so much for listening. More information about the topics covered in this episode: Use a federal government website to find an apprenticeship. Read more about how some employers are dropping degree requirements for jobs. Read about how demand for outstrips the supply of apprenticeships … … and internships. Read Jobs for the Future's plan to modernize America's apprenticeship system. The post College Uncovered: Apprentices of the World, Unite! appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Miami Herald
23-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
College Uncovered: Cyber School
Here's a milestone you might not have heard about: It's projected that this year, for the first time, more college students will take all of their courses online than will take all of their courses in person. Online higher education has come a long way from its predecessor, the correspondence school. The universal shift to remote learning during the pandemic only accelerated that momentum. It has also allowed more comprehensive research into whether online teaching works as well as the in-person kind. But even as more students go online to learn, there are many caveats about this fast-growing innovation. We talk to the experts about who should take online courses, where they should take them and in what subjects. We also lay out questions to ask of online providers, such as what kinds of real-world supports - office hours, tutors - are available. Finally we solve a mystery that frustrates countless consumers: why most online courses cost as much as, or more than, the brick-and-mortar kind. After all, technology has lowered prices in almost every industry. Come with us as we expose the reason higher education can somehow find a way to charge more for a product that by all rights should cost less. TRANSCRIPT [Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I'm Kirk Carapezza … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus. [sound of online courses] Welcome to the new B.A. from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences here at ASU. This course is called 'Elements of Culture.' … We've got a fun topic today. We're going to talk about making time for science every day. … Now, some psychologists research what's called narrative identity. … [Jon] You're listening to the fastest-growing kind of college courses: the kind being taught online. Those are examples from Arizona State University and Western Governors University. It's predicted that this year, for the first time, more college students will take all of their classes online than will take all of their classes in person. That's a huge milestone in higher education with a really simple reason: flexibility. You can take online courses any time and any place. You don't have to move to a campus or even commute to one. And that's important to the growing number of people who are working and raising families while they're in school. But don't log on yet. There are a lot of things to think about before you decide to go to college online. [Sabria Williams] At first everything was wonderful. [Jon] That's Sabria Williams. She lives in North Philadelphia and works helping people who are older or have intellectual disabilities. Williams went online to get a bachelor's degree. [Sabria Williams] It was hard work, but when you're dedicated and you want to get something done, you're going to do what you have to do to complete your classes. [Jon] Like a lot of online students, her goal was to move up. Doing it online seemed perfect for her. She's 38 with five kids in her blended family. [Sabria Williams] I'm a mother. A wife. So I have, you know, very little time to go to school in the field now. You know, I'm not a young spring chicken anymore. I just needed to be able to do this online on my own speed and during my own personal time. [Jon] Williams spent two years taking online courses from a for-profit university and racked up $32,000 in debt. Then she got an unwelcome surprise from her loan company. [Sabria Williams] And they're, like, 'Oh, well, it was your responsibility to find out if they were properly accredited or not.' I'm, like, well that can't be because they're going to tell me that they are, you know, and they're going to try to provide whatever they can to make it seem as though they're, you know, accredited. [Jon] That's right, the school was not accredited during part of the time she went there. Williams dropped out. It took her seven years to get her loans forgiven after the government found the university misled her and other students. Now she's given up on college. [Sabria Williams] I just got kind of discouraged. I'm just, like, I'm going to drop it [Jon] Now, a lot of online higher ed is not only convenient, it's perfectly legitimate. But, as this case shows, you need to be careful. So if online higher education is also an option for you, we'll tell you how to avoid experiences like that and how to make sure you get the most out of it. This is College Uncovered from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I'm Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report … [Kirk] And I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH. Colleges don't want you to know how they operate. So GBH … [Jon] … in collaboration with the Hechinger Report, is here to show you. Today on the podcast: 'Cyber School.' [Kirk] We've been talking this season about the demographic cliff. That's a decline in the number of traditional-age college students. So universities are trying to attract new customers by teaching them online. Now, online higher education goes back much further than you think. It has its roots in correspondence schools that would mail out textbooks and tests for students to work on and mail back. Here's a TV ad from 1993. [sound of television commercial] Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do. So call this free number to find out how easy it is to train at home for a better career. And now at home in your spare time, you can get your diploma or your degree. … [Kirk] Things really took off with the advent of the internet. [sound of television commercial] What if you could get your college degree from a leading accredited university, from home, at the office or while traveling. At the University of Phoenix online, you attend class when and where you want, via the internet. … [Kirk] It was for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix that first dominated online higher education. And many of them had poor success rates, which gave it all a bad rap. But a few prestigious colleges and universities eventually also went online. Online higher education really blew up when MIT announced an ambitious goal: It would provide MIT courses for free online to anyone in the world who wanted to take them. [Dimitris Bertsimas] This was a monumental story. This was the beginning of the internet. And MIT decided, and I'm very proud of that, that all of these educational offerings will be open and free to the people. [Kirk] That's Dimitris Bertsimas. He's vice provost for open learning at MIT where he's been on the faculty for 40 years. By the 2010s, MIT and others had developed something called the MOOC. That stands for massive open online course. MOOCs were a way to teach thousands of students at a time, and they were supposed to revolutionize and democratize higher education. They were offered by edX and Coursera and many others. [Jon] Yeah, Kirk, MOOCs became a pop-culture phenomenon, even on late-night shows. [Stephen Colbert] My guest tonight is an MIT professor who believes the future of education is on the internet. I can't wait for BuzzFeed's '10 Biggest Comp Lit Fails.' Please welcome … [Kirk] I remember that. They were a really big deal at the time. I mean, how often were university professors on Colbert? Dimitris Bertsimas of MIT taught a MOOC in quantitative methods, which was the second MOOC that was launched by MIT. But even he says MOOCs didn't entirely live up to the hype. [Dimitris Bertsimas] It had about a million learners over a decade. It's a pretty significant. If you look at it from an individual perspective, this is a significant reach in the world. But financially for the institutions it was not a success. [Kirk] That wasn't the only way that MOOCs didn't pan out. It turns out learners really do need to interact with each other, and with faculty. And that was an early lesson that came from trying to teach online. [Dimitris Bertsimas] Education has a social component. If the only thing you do is online education and you have no human experience, no personal relation with your classmates, no personal relationship with your teachers, the data suggests that it is not as satisfying in a somewhat impersonal online experience. [Jon] So, Kirk, there's the first thing to be cautious about when choosing to take courses online: Make sure there are things like office hours and tutors and advisors, just as there are for students who go to college in person. At the beginning, these kinds of things were rare and early results from online higher said, were poor. [Ramya Shankar] I'm Ramya Shankar. I am an associate professor at City College of New York. [Jon] Ramya Shankar says that students tended to do worse online than they did in person. [Ramya Shankar] If you looked at a variety of outcomes - for instance, if you looked at course completion rates or degree completion rates or even labor-market outcomes in terms of the prospects for employment, the prospects of getting a good wage - all of these were found to be consistently lower for students who had enrolled in online degrees compared to traditional degrees. [Jon] Shankar says these comparisons were not entirely fair. That's because the differences in success rates were partly due to who was taking online courses. They were often people who had to balance school with work and families, like Sabria Williams - not more privileged high school graduates with the time and money to live in dorms and spend time in the library. [Ramya Shankar] It may not have been that the online degree itself was of low quality, but the low outcomes were driven more by other features, like the social or economic circumstances of students who were selecting themselves into these degrees. [Jon] Then Kirk, the universe presented an unprecedented opportunity to test this. [sound of television newscaster] Across the country, the coronavirus has abruptly forced at least 55 million kids from elementary school to college out of their classrooms. They're now trying to learn at home. [Jon] The pandemic forced everyone online, and that provided a chance to really test how online higher education worked. [Ramya Shankar] It gave us this wonderful natural experiment where suddenly you didn't have students choosing online versus in person. It was decided for students. [Jon] Basically, the entire world was the control group. So you could see which kinds of students benefited and who was struggling online. [Jon] Shankar's research started to find that online higher education was doing a better job than people had thought it was, before Covid. And she says it's gotten better since. [Ramya Shankar] Technology has advanced so much in the last few years. Remote conferencing technology has advanced so much. An online course is coming very, very close to a substitute, a really good substitute, for an in-person class, and I think that's only going to get better. [Jon] Kirk, as we've heard and will continue to hear, not everyone agrees that online education is a good substitute for in-person learning. But one thing is for certain: For better or worse, the pandemic got people used to it. And that has only sped up the growth of online learning, including with traditional-age students who might once have started as freshmen on a brick-and-mortar campus. [Philip Regier] Flexibility and convenience is a huge reason why students come to online. [Jon] Philip Regier is CEO of Ed Plus, which designs online courses at Arizona State University. [Philip Regier] If everybody could go to an on-campus setting, they would, but that's simply unrealistic for the vast majority of our students. Now what we're seeing with the students who are beginning online is that type of freedom is also a huge attraction for them. [Jon] Not all online higher education is the same. A lot of those for-profit universities are still around, and they still deliver comparatively poor results. Many turn out graduates who don't make enough to pay off their college loans or who don t make more than adults in their states who didn't go to college. That's according to federal data released during the Biden administration. [Philip Regier] Where you got your degree and what you got your degree in is going to be on your resume forever, or your LinkedIn profile, in this case. And I think very carefully about being expeditious versus being thoughtful about quality. [Kirk] Okay, Jon, so the first piece of advice is to be careful where you take your online courses. And today you have a lot more choices, including big flagship universities and smaller private colleges with good reputations. [Jon] Yeah, but Kirk, as with a lot about higher education, not everything is as it seems. Some of those brand-name schools actually contract with third-party providers to run their online divisions. These are called online program managers. But you might never even notice. [Kirk] Okay, this is a really crazy hurdle for students. These online program managers are mostly for-profit. They do their own marketing and some of them hire their own faculty, even though the course says it comes from a well-known institution. So before you sign up for an online course, ask exactly who will be teaching it. [Jon] Okay, Kirk. That's the where, and the who. Now let's deal with how these places teach online. Online learners who are out there alone by themselves, they tend not to do well. That's what happened with the early MOOCs. Good online programs now have real life people available to students who need them when they need them. [Deb Adair] Often they're taking these courses, you know, late at night and at odd times, and so they have to have these resources available, and those are, you now, the tutoring centers and the library materials and the other academic supports that are available. [Jon] Deb Adair is CEO of an organization called Quality Matters. It's a sort of seal of approval for online programs. She says you shouldn't stop at asking simply whether or not a school has these things. Make sure you can find them. [Deb Adair] You can't just walk to campus and knock on a door, right? So you're going to have to have that all spelled out. [Kirk] Okay, Jon, so let's talk about another important question: what to take online. [Jon] Yeah, Kirk, I talked to Scott Pulsipher, the president of Western Governors University. It's not only the biggest online university, it's the country's biggest university of any kind, with nearly 176,000 students. I was surprised to hear Pulsipher say that not every subject can necessarily be taught well online - at least not yet. [Scott Pulsipher] As you moved further into areas that might require project-based learning or hands-on learning or even Socratic methods, those do get a little trickier to do online. It's really hard to teach, if you will, a technical skill that requires, like, reconstructing a particular mechanical item. So if you're going to do mechanical engineering, that might be a little tricky to replicate, even if you were using augmented reality in an online environment. [Jon] Of course, the most important question is whether your online education will lead to a job or a promotion, because that's the main reason you're doing it, right? Pulsipher says there's a simple way to find this out. [Scott Pulsipher] What is the employment rate of the graduates of that program? Are they employed in the field of study? What kind of income gain or data do they have with that? The other thing that you can just even search and just start to understand is, like, to what degree are graduates of different institutions employed at different employers? You can do searches like this on LinkedIn. [Jon] Kirk, this all obviously sounds like a lot of work, but the truth is that online higher education is getting better and finding quality programs is getting easier. [Kirk] Yeah, Jon, a lot of those online program managers are going away or their deals are being renegotiated. More schools are adding advising and office hours for their online students. Online courses are even getting smaller, which allows more personalization. [Jon] Right, Kirk. But that brings us to a surprising reality I learned recently while working on a story about online higher ed. You'd think it would be cheaper than in-person college, right? In fact, 80 percent of Americans think online higher education should be cheaper. That was a big part of the promise of shifting online. I mean, technology has lowered the price of almost every other service that uses it. [Kirk] But … not higher education? [Jon] Nope! More than 8 in 10 online programs cost as much as or more than the in-person versions. And about a quarter of universities and colleges even charge an additional distance learning fee. [Kirk] Just leave it to colleges to take a good thing and make it worse. So what's their explanation? [Jon] I'm glad you asked! So we've been talking all this season about how the number of traditional age students is going down, right? [Kirk] The demographic cliff. [Jon] Yeah, the demographic cliff. So a survey of online officers found that universities are using the money from their online programs to keep the lights on - to basically subsidize everything else they do. If you look on social media, you can see how infuriating this is to students. More importantly, it's yet another reason to keep tuning in here to get the truth about how higher education really works. [Jon] This is College Uncovered. I'm Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report … [Kirk] And I'm Kirk Carapezza from GBH. This episode was produced and written by Jon Marcus … [Jon] … and Kirk Carapezza. This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jenifer McKim. Our fact checker is Ryan Alderman. [Kirk] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. Mei He is our project manager. And head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins. [Jon] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It's produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report, and distributed by PRX. Thanks so much for listening. More information about the topics covered in this episode: Find online courses certified by the organization Quality Matters. Watch a video about what to look for when picking an online course. Read about how most online courses cost as much as or more than in-person ones, and why. The post College Uncovered: Cyber School appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Miami Herald
15-05-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
College Uncovered: The Old College Try
The single fastest-growing group of students in college? It may come as a surprise: They're still in high school. So-called "dual enrollment" - also known as "early college" and "concurrent enrollment" - seems a win-win. Institutions get students, at a time when demographic shifts are making that more difficult; that's especially true at community colleges, whose enrollment has declined the most. Meanwhile, high school students rack up credits, potentially saving time and money. Some finish their associate degrees at the same time that they get their diplomas. And studies show that they're more likely to go on to and graduate from college thgan their classmates who don't. The Department of Education didn't even track how many students were taking dual-enrollment courses until last year. It turned out that two and a half million of them are. Studies show they're more likely to go to and graduate from college than their classmates who don't. High school students now make up a fifth of community college enrollment. At 37 community colleges nationwide, more than half of students are still in high school. But like much in higher education, there are traps and pitfalls. Not all of those credits transfer, for example. In this episode, we provide a road map to navigating dual enrollment. TRANSCRIPT [Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I'm Kirk Carapezza. … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus. [sound from classroom] So if you're a group of five, put a chair on the end of your group of four table, please. [Jon] We're in a sociology class in the general studies building of a community college in Springfield, Massachusetts. The instructor is getting things underway. But there's something different about the students filing into this class in T-shirts and hoodies and setting down their backpacks and water bottles. They're all still in high school. [sound from classroom] Alright, Eli, will you shut the door for me? Okay, so what we're going to do today, you have your individual group assignment based off of the different topics. [Jon] This is the sound of one of the most dramatic and fastest-growing innovations in higher education. Here it's called early college, but it also goes by dual enrollment, dual credit and concurrent enrollment. [Kirk] Right, Jon. Whatever the name, the idea is simple. Students start taking college courses while they're still in high school. That way they can rack up credits and spend less time and money in actual college. Here's Rachel Romano. She's the founder and executive director of Veritas Prep Charter School. That's where those sociology students are actually completing high school. But they take all of their courses at the community college. [Rachel Romano] You're completing both the high school credit and requirement and you're earning college credits at the same time. So that's how it saves time and then how it saves money. [Jon] Like everything else we're talking about this season, dual enrollment is connected to the decline in the number of traditional-age college students. That's the so-called demographic cliff. Colleges need more students, even if they're still in high school. But like pretty much everything in higher education, beware, because the opportunity of dual enrollment comes with traps and pitfalls. This is College Uncovered from GBH News and The Hechinger Report, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I'm Jon Marcus of The Hechinger Report … [Kirk] … and I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH News. Colleges don't want you to know how they operate, so GBH …. [Jon] … in collaboration with the Hechinger Report, is here to show you. Today on the podcast: The Old College Try. [Jon] So are most of your classes in this building? [Eli Frederick] Yes, I take sociology and psychology in this building, and then I take pre-calc and - oh, I'm sorry, I'm blanking - pre- calc and chemistry in Building 17. [Jon] Eli Frederick is a high school junior at Veritas Prep, but he takes all of his classes here at this community college. He's giving us a tour. When you started here, how confusing was it? [Eli Frederick] Actually, not that bad, now that I'm thinking about it. It took a little getting used to because at a typical high school, you don't have to really travel between buildings. [Jon] Our tour ended in the gym. [Eli Frederick] First semester here, they have open gym and so I would go play basketball and so they would all be, like, 'Oh, yeah, what y'all major in?' So it was cool to be considered an actual college student. [Jon] And in addition to saving time and money, that's one of the simplest appeals of dual enrollment: It helps high school students practice fitting in at college. Just take it from Eli Frederick. He hopes to go to Harvard. [Eli Frederick] Yeah, absolutely. I'll be prepared. I know what I'm looking for, know how to ask questions and have that character and that mindset of a college student already locked and loaded. [Jon] Being exposed to the experience of college is a really big deal, Kirk, especially considering that more than 80 percent of the students at Veritas Prep, where Frederick goes, are low income. And low-income young people are typically less likely to go to college than higher-income ones. But most of the students here are taking at least one college course, and 4 in 10 are on schedule to graduate with enough credits to already have an associate degree. [Kirk] That's right, Jon. Here's how Rachel Romano describes it. Remember, she's the head of the charter school where these students are enrolled. [Rachel Romano] We have many kids who are thinking, like, 'Is college really for me? You know, is it worth it? Why would I spend extra money and time when I can just go to work?' So I think it's especially great for those kids who think college might not be for them to have a try at it and to see what it's like to actually learn from a professor, you know, and have the experience of college. [Kirk] That's one of the reasons dual enrollment is growing so fast. The Department of Education didn't even track how many students were taking it until last year. It turned out that 2.5 million of them are. It's free in most states, and where it isn't, it's much less per credit than college. And it does appear to pay off. Studies show that high school students who take college courses are more likely to go to and graduate from college than their classmates who don't. Lauren Schudde is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and she studies dual enrollment. [Lauren Schudde] It's pretty consistently showing that those students are entering higher education and getting degrees from it at higher rates than their peers that didn't take dual-enrollment coursework. [Kirk] But dual enrollment doesn't help everyone. For one thing, like a lot of educational advantages, it tends to be more available to some students than others. [Lauren Schudde] Those students are more likely to be white students, they're more likely to be from higher-income families, and to already be participating in some sort of college acceleration coursework. [Jon] So, Kirk, another of the reasons dual enrollment has been growing so fast is that community colleges in particular need high school students to help make up for the traditional-age students they've been losing. Community colleges are where most of these dual-enrollment programs are based. Their numbers have fallen so steeply that high school students are their only growth market. And that's even before the demographic cliff hits. Some of them have resorted to advertising it. [sound of community college advertisements] Are you a high school student looking to get an early start on your college education? Dual-enroll at Kella Community College. You can get a jump start on college by completing college credit while still in high school. At Shelton State, our dual-enrollment …. [Jon] High school kids now make up a fifth of community college enrollment. And listen to this, Kirk: At 37 community colleges nationwide, more than half of the students are still in high school. [Kirk] Those are crazy numbers, Jon. No wonder why they're advertising like this. Another thing to keep in mind here is that there are a lot of different kinds of dual enrollment. A small proportion are taught at colleges, like the one we visited. Most are taught in high schools, where they're led sometimes by college faculty and sometimes by high school teachers. And these are differences you need to pay attention to. Here's Lauren Schudde again. [Lauren Schudde] Students that are taking it with their high school teacher are slightly less likely to move on to college later on, whereas those that are taking it the college instructor, their grades may be a little bit lower, but it does seem to make them more likely to move on pretty quickly to go into college immediately. [Kirk] If your high school doesn't offer dual enrollment on a college campus or doesn't offer it at all, you can go and ask for it to be added. That's according to Alex Perry. He's coordinator of an advocacy group called the College in High School Alliance. [Alex Perry] Maybe it's because they think that their students and parents don't necessarily want it. But if you're sort of saying, actually, this is an experience we want to have at our school, there's nothing stopping being able to make that happen. [Kirk] It not only matters where you take a dual-enrollment course, Jon, or who you take it with, it matters what you take. [Jon] Yeah, Kirk. Some high schools offer courses they think their students will like, such as, say, the history of hip-hop. But those credits will be tough to transfer, and that's a big potential trap for students and their parents. [Alex Perry] This isn't something that someone should just tell you to do and you do it without being really thoughtful about it. The journey to saving time and money begins with a set of strategic choices on the front end. So be as careful and strategic as you can about those choices. [Jon] Alex Perry and others say that means thinking through what you want to get from dual enrollment. If it's a college degree, take general education courses such as English, biology, and calculus. [Alex Perry] There are circumstances where students are making course selections, just thinking, 'Well, the more college I take, the better, right?' And they just take a bunch of dual-enrollment courses, they get to their college and they're, like, 'Well, I've taken enough for a year's worth of college.' And it's, like, actually, no, because you took history of hip hop and underwater basket weaving. But if you're taking it because you think it's going to apply to anything other than a bachelor's degree in underwater basket weaving, like, the reality is it probably isn't. [Jon] Rachel Romano, who runs that charter school, wants her students to aim high. [Rachel Romano] You know, they come to the community college, they see these incredible labs and simulators and, look at this, I can be an ultrasound technician. Boom, that's what I want to do. And that's great, that's a cool job. But it's also a job that's pretty limiting in terms of growth potential. So we are spending a good deal of time counseling kids around, great, and that would be a cool entry-level job while you work your way through college Because the difference in your earning potential if you're an ultrasound tech and you're an RN is pretty big [Jon] Now, Kirk, that doesn't mean you can't change your mind later. Here's Alex Perry again. [Alex Perry] I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 16, and I do this now. My life took a very different path than the one I was expecting, and that's fine, right? That's good. We all have those sort of meandering paths to the things we ultimately want to do. [Kirk] Yeah, Jon, you always wanted to be a fireman, right? [Jon] That's right, Kirk. I still want to be. [Kirk] Now, the most important thing to think about when considering dual enrollment is whether the credits will transfer. I mean, that's the whole point, right? And they often don't. This is a huge and expensive problem in all of higher education. Emily Tichenor studies it as a senior program manager for the nonprofit Ithaka S+R. [Emily Tichenor] Dual-enrolled students who are transferring college credit are facing a lot of the same problems that all students across higher education sectors are facing when they're transferring credit. And one of those things is a lack of clear information ahead of time about how the courses they're taking connect to degree requirements at the next place that they are attending. [Kirk] Now, it's easy to transfer credits to the community college that provided the dual-enrollment courses. But community colleges have low graduation rates and low proportions of students who go on to get bachelor's degrees. On the other hand, a four-year university might not accept all of the same credits, and a four-year selective private university like Harvard might not take any of them [Emily Tichenor] They should really be thinking about where do they want to take that credit after high school, because that makes a big difference in how it may be accepted. [Kirk] This is another place where students and their parents can stand up for themselves against the higher education bureaucrats. [Emily Tichenor] You can advocate. So if you do arrive at the institution and you do not think that you are getting the credit that you deserve, don't make that 'no' a hard 'no.' See if there's someone you can talk to. Advocate with faculty and with your advisors. Make sure you bring your syllabus. [Kirk] There are also resources you can find to help. One is maintained by the University of Connecticut. We'll put it in the show notes. You can see how likely your credits will transfer at about 1,000 universities and colleges. Now, Jon, there's one last question I wondered about, especially since we're here among, let's call them the ambitious high school overachievers in greater Boston. [Jon] Yeah, Kirk, what's that? [Kirk] So what's the difference between dual enrollment and taking an Advanced Placement class in high school? [Jon] Ah, good question. You know who administers the AP test, right? [Kirk] Yeah, the same people who bring you the SAT, College Board. [Jon] Exactly. And College Board says the AP is a better way to measure whether students have mastered college-level work. But AP classes are taught in high schools by high school teachers. So they don't really give you an idea of what it's like to be in college. And there's another issue. Sometimes students run into the same problem with getting credit for their hard work on an AP test as they do for dual enrollment. We asked Lauren Schudde at the University of Texas to referee. [Lauren Schudde] With AP courses, you have to pass the test in order for it to count. At a lot of colleges across the country, it's not just passing it - that's a score of a 3. You have to have a 4 or a 5 on the AP test for it count and transfer into a given institution. [Jon] The high school students who we met in that community college sociology course, they're still in 11th grade. So they have some time to go. But they say that since the day they started there, dual enrollment has changed their entire view of college. [Laysha Gonzalez] I was overwhelmed because I've never had, like, a syllabus week. I've never had stuff like that. [Jon] That's 17-year-old Laysha Gonzalez. She says she's already learned a lot, and not just about sociology or chemistry. [Laysha Gonzalez] But as we assimilated into our classes, I felt more at ease. Because they don't just drop you into a college class. We have companion courses where we have time to do our work, we can catch up on stuff, we can ask questions, and I think that's a really important part of the program. [Jon] And that's a big part of the idea. It's not just about getting credits and saving money, though those things are important. It's about young people seeing themselves in college. [Laysha Gonzalez] It made me realize that I can do the hard classes, and it really made me see education as something completely different. They have really opened my eyes to what I can do and the limits I can push myself to. [Jon] So, Kirk, the students who we've met today seem to be firmly on the right track. [Kirk] Right, Jon, but people also need to keep in mind that there are limits to dual enrollment, that the credits won't universally transfer, that some schools won't take them. That's why we're here, right? Because like with everything in higher education, you need to do your homework. This is College Uncovered. I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report. This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza … [Kirk] … and Jon Marcus. This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jenifer McKim. Our fact-checker is Ryan Alderman. [Jon] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. Mei He is our project manager. And head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins. College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It's produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. Thanks so much for listening. More information about the topics covered in this episode: Find a dual-enrollment program accredited by the National Association for Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, or NACEP. Use this database from the University of Connecticut to see if your dual-enrollment credits will transfer. The post College Uncovered: The Old College Try appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Miami Herald
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
College Uncovered: The Student Trade Wars
U.S. universities have long relied on international students, and the big tuition checks they bring, to hit enrollment goals and keep the lights on. But now, just as the number of American college-aged students begins to fall - the trend that higher education experts call the "demographic cliff"- global tensions are making international students think twice about coming to the United States for college. In this episode, hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus take you inside the world of international admissions. With student visa revocations on the rise and a growing number of detentions tied to student activism, some international families say they are rethinking their U.S. college plans. And that has college leaders sounding the alarm. In fact, international student interest was already falling. Now, as the Trump administration ramps up immigration crackdowns on campuses across the country, many worry the U.S. could lose its status as the top destination for global talent. So what happens if international enrollment drops just as domestic numbers dry up? The stakes are high, not just for international students and colleges but for what everybody else pays - and for the whole U.S. economy. TRANSCRIPT [Jon] This is College Uncovered. I'm Jon Marcus … [Kirk] … and I'm Kirk Carapezza. [sound of presentation, in Mandarin] [Kirk] That's Xiaofeng Wan, making his pitch in Mandarin to Chinese students and parents at a high school in Shanghai. Wan used to be an admissions officer at Amherst College in western Massachusetts. Now he's a private college consultant, guiding Chinese students through the maze that is college admissions in the U.S. [Xiaofeng Wan] So I'll walk them through the initial high school years before they apply. And then by the time of their college applications, I'll help them go through the process as well. [Kirk] This is big business for colleges. Like most international students, Chinese families do not qualify for financial aid, and often they pay the full cost. Wan also trains guidance counselors across China, showing them how to support students heading abroad. So he's got a front-row seat to what Chinese families are thinking right now. [Xiaofeng Wan] They see the United States as a primary study-abroad destination. [Kirk] But Wan says that might be starting to shift. [Xiaofeng Wan] America has an image problem right now, so we will definitely start to see reluctance from families. [Kirk] I caught up with him while he was in Ningbo, a port city known for manufacturing, on the same morning President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods took effect. [sound of news anchor] Across the globe this weekend, world leaders are trying to figure out how to respond to President Trump's attempt to reshape the global economy by imposing steep tariffs. … [Kirk] Just hours later, the Chinese government warned the more than 270,000 Chinese students already studying in the U.S. to think twice about staying. Wan says that kind of message stokes fear that's been building. House Republicans sent letters to six universities saying America's student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing, and a lot of Chinese parents worry the U S government doesn't want their kids. [Xiaofeng Wan] That's what they've been hearing from President Trump, his rhetoric toward Chinese students. And now they're seeing news about how international student visas are being revoked. [Kirk] This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really I'm Kirk Carapezza with GBH News … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus with The Hechinger Report. Colleges don't want you to know how they operate, so GBH … [Kirk] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you. This season, we're staring down the demographic cliff. [Jon] If you're just joining us, a quick refresher here: The demographic cliff is a steep drop in the number of 18-year-olds. That's because many Americans stopped having children after the Great Recession of 2008. And now, 18 years later, colleges are feeling the pinch. [Kirk] Yeah, and just when many of them thought the situation couldn't get any worse, international students are under threat. During President Donald Trump's first term, we saw visa restrictions and travel bans contribute to a 12 percent drop in new international enrollment. So we'll ask, could that happen again, just as schools are scrambling to fill empty seats? [Jon] And we'll explain what all of this means for you, whether you're an international student or a domestic one, and why you should care. Today on the show: The Student Trade Wars. [Kirk] Since Trump's return to power, his administration has yanked more than 1,000 student visas, often without explanation. Some students have been detained and faced deportation, fulfilling a pledge he often made on the campaign trail. [Donald Trump] If you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you. You'll be out of that school. [Kirk] In just a few months, that hardline rhetoric has become policy, putting campuses on edge. ICE agents have detained pro-Palestinian student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts. [sound from arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk] [Kirk] This video of her arrest has shaken the international campus community and sparked protests across the country. [sound of protesters] Free Rumeysa, free her now! We want justice, you say how? Free Rumeysa, free her now! [Kirk] And now many international students won't even go on the record, too scared the federal government will target them, or that they'll be doxxed and ostracized online. [Frank Zhao] The biggest difficulty for us is building trust. [Kirk] At Harvard, student journalist Frank Zhao has seen that fear firsthand. He hosts the weekly news podcast for the student newspaper. [sound of podcast] From The Harvard Crimson, I'm Frank Zhao. This is 'News Talk.' [Kirk] Zhao isn't an international student himself, but the Chinese-American junior from Dallas is plugged into the campus, where a quarter of students are international. How would you describe the current climate for international students? [Frank Zhao] The overwhelming sentiment is anxiety. There are so many international student group chats where students were saying, 'Oh my gosh, there are ICE agents on campus.' And so it's quite the Armageddon scenario. [Kirk] The Trump administration has demanded Harvard turn over detailed records of all foreign students' - quote - illegal and violent activities, or lose the right to enroll any international students. Harvard says it has complied but won't publicly disclose details. The university is suing the administration over this and other demands, but some faculty and students question how hard Harvard is really pushing back. Conservatives, though, defend increased immigration enforcement. [Simon Hankinson] If a student is studying and minding their own business and obeying the rules of the college and of the United States and the state that they live in, they have nothing to worry about. This is a very small number of people that is being looked at for fraud. [Kirk] Simon Hankinson is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He says visa vetting on and off campus is essential for national security after a year of disruptive campus protests. [Simon Hankinson] Maybe your parents are shelling out a lot of money for you to go, or you're getting a scholarship. Get your education. Make that the priority. Sure, go out and hold a placard if you want to, and do your thing, light a candle, but if your primary focus is protest and vandalism, I think you're on the wrong type of visa, and we don't have a visa for that. [Jon] Higher education is now a global marketplace, and international students have emerged as a key part of the university funding equation. They're fully baked into the business model as full-pay customers for colleges who subsidize the cost for domestic students. [Kirk] And even before the demographic cliff, the competition for international students was fierce. [Gerardo Blanco] It always has been and sometimes it is intended to be that way, but this is just making it like the Hunger Games [Kirk] That's Gerardo Blanco, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. He warns tht Trump's America First approach, combined with federal funding cuts, is putting U.S. colleges at risk of losing a generation of global talent. Is that hyperbole? [Gerardo Blanco] I don't think it's hyperbole in any way. [Kirk] Why not? [Gerardo Blanco] The system has been built on the assumption that there wouldn't be decreases in a dramatic scale to the funding dedicated to research. And therefore they have made some decisions that are somewhat risky. [Kirk] What's your biggest concern when it comes to international students? [Gerardo Blanco] It's just the generalized sense of uncertainty. I think there are so many balls up in the air and I think it's really difficult to even focus our attention. [Kirk] Take the reduction of research funding, for example. It's affecting many graduate students, especially those who are international and can't find work in labs. Some schools like Iowa State University, Penn, and West Virginia University are rescinding graduate admissions offers. [Gerardo Blanco] So that's one squeeze. We also are looking at just the general rhetoric that tends to be negative. [Kirk] And Blanco says that rhetoric matters. One survey at the start of Trump's second term found that nearly 60 percent of European students were less interested in coming to the U.S. Blanco said, considering the demographic cliff, the timing for all of this uncertainty couldn't be worse for colleges. [Gerardo Blanco] The clock is ticking and nobody really knows what's happening. [Kirk] Okay, so, Jon, why should American students and citizens care about all of this? [Jon] Well, international students bring different perspectives and experiences to the classroom. And as we said earlier, they also tend to pay full tuition. So they subsidize tuition that American students pay. But a drop in international student numbers isn't just a college cash-flow problem. It's a broader economic one. International students infuse $44 billion into the U.S. economy each year. Here's Barnet Sherman, a business professor at Boston University. It's New England's largest private university, and one in five students there are international. [Barnet Sherman] Look, I just teach business and finance. So if one of my top 10 customers comes to me with $44 billion to spend and creates a lot of American jobs, over 375,000 American jobs, I don't know about you, but I'm opening up the door and giving them the best treatment I possibly can. [Jon] Here in Massachusetts alone, there are about 80,000 international students contributing $4 billion to the state's economy each year. That puts the state fourth in the U.S., after California, Texas and New York. So, yeah, this matters. But Sherman says the impact goes far beyond big cities like Boston, New York, and L.A. Take the tiny town of Mankato, Minnesota, for example - population, 45,000. [Barnet Sherman] And they've got about 1,700 international students there contributing to the local economy. They're bringing in literally over $25 million to, you know, a perfectly nice burg. [Jon] In addition to tuition dollars, these students contribute to businesses and local communities that are losing population. [Kirk] And, Jon, if fewer international and domestic students are coming through the pipeline to fill jobs that require college educations, it puts the U.S. at a serious disadvantage, just as other countries are actively recruiting talent and increasing the number of their citizens with degrees. More and more countries are recruiting international students, including Canada, France, Japan, South Korea and Spain, but also countries that hadn't recruited before, like Poland and Kazakhstan. Right before Trump's first term, I went to Germany, where the government was offering free language classes to attract international students and scholars, including Americans. Because just like the U.S., Germany is losing population. A demographic cliff has already hit Europe, so it needs immigrants and international students, too. Think of it like this: It's a global talent draft. All of these students, they're the trading cards. The collectors are the countries. And the more talent you attract, the more ideas, innovation and business growth you get. [Dorothea Ruland] If you look at Germany, the only resource we do have are human resources, actually. [Kirk] Dorothea Ruland is the former secretary general of the German Academic Exchange Service, which is in charge of Germany's international push. When I visited Bonn, we had coffee at her headquarters. [Dorothea Ruland] We depend on innovation, on inventions, of course, and where do they come from? From institutions of higher education or from research institutions. [Kirk] Ruland told me nearly half of foreign students earning degrees in Germany stick around. And not just for the short-term. About half of them stay for at least a decade. In the U.S., most international graduates leave and take their talent back home, often because of scarce visas available for skilled workers. Do you see Germany competing with American universities? [Dorothea Ruland] Yes, I would say so. You know, we are doing marketing worldwide because we are part of this world and we cannot neglect these trends going on. So of course we are competitors. [Kirk] But she also made it clear the student trade war isn't just about competition. It's about collaboration. [Dorothea Ruland] If you look at the global challenges everybody's talking about, questions of climate change, energy, water, high tech, whatever, this cannot be solved by one institution or one country. So you have to have big international networks. [Kirk] Since my visit, though, isolationism has been creeping in, not only in Germany, but Hungary and Russia, and obviously here in the U.S., too. Some professors and students have pointed to recent issues with visas and detainments without due process and accused the Trump administration of taking an authoritarian approach. [sound of protest] [Kirk] Outside Harvard's Memorial Church in Cambridge, more than 100 students and faculty recently held signs and waved American flags, cheering the university for standing up to the White House and calling on Harvard to do more to protect their civil rights. Among other things, they spoke out about visa revocations. It is incredibly scary here. Leo Gerdén is a senior from Sweden. He says the administration is trying to divide the campus community. [Leo Gerdén] At first I was very anxious about speaking up. They want us to point fingers to each other and say, you know, deport them, don't deport us. And you know, it's classic authoritarian playbook. [Jon] Trump supporters? Well, they see it very differently. [Simon Hankinson] I would call that ridiculous. I mean, that's an insane argument to make. [Jon] Simon Hankinson is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Border Security and Immigration. We heard from him at the top of this episode, and we should also add he's a career foreign service officer. [Simon Hankinson] So I've certainly interviewed tens of thousands of these applicants, including thousands of students. [Jon] Hankinson acknowledges the uptick in visa revocations lately, but says it's still a tiny number compared to the one million international students in the U.S. [Simon Hankinson] But just looking at the scale of it all, it is more than we've seen in the past, because, generally speaking, this wasn't something that the government devoted a lot of resources to. But it was always a power that they had. [Jon] And he's not buying the narrative that these changes and the crackdowns on visas will scare off students from coming to the U.S. [Simon Hankinson] Are people not going to go to Harvard because, you know, they're afraid that they're going to get hassled. No. Try going to Russia or China and speaking your mind. Good luck with that. [Jon] Hankinson also argues some universities - especially ones with a high percentage of international students, like Columbia, NYU, Northeastern, and Boston University - they have a financial incentive for complaining. [Simon Hankinson] It's a strong constituency that they want to keep happy and they want to keep the money flowing. So they want to make this as big an issue as possible. They want to cry panic. [Jon] So, Kirk, colleges signal all the time that they're open to international students. Just listen to some of these welcome videos. [sound of international recruiting videos] [Jon] But parents like Claire from Beijing don't feel like their kids are welcome. [Claire] I think the government is really hostile right now. [Jon] Claire asked us to withhold her full name, worried it could affect her son, who's already studying here. She also has a daughter in high school who was thinking about college in the U.S., but now they're rethinking her plans and looking at schools in the UK, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. [Claire] You know, we have to consider all the possibilities, obviously in a trade war, you know, like, because next year, when my child has to go to college, you know, Trump is still the president. [Kirk] Claire says she still believes in the power of an American education, so it's really hard for her to just write it off completely. [Jon] Okay. So, Kirk, we've tackled a lot in this episode. Bottom line, do you think American colleges will still be able to recruit and enroll enough international students to help offset this looming shortage we've been talking about in the number of 18-year-olds? [Kirk] Well, it's not looking great for colleges. International enrollment, as we said, dropped 12 percent during Trump's first term, and now we're heading toward a 15 percent drop in the number of 18-year-olds by 2039. That's a big gap to fill, and the reality is the current climate would have to shift dramatically and quickly for the U.S. to stay competitive. International students are essential for filling seats and making budgets, especially in regions like New England and the Midwest, where the demographic cliff isn't coming - it's already here. A college consultant once told me, if your campus isn't near an international airport, the clock is ticking on your institution. And that was before America developed this reputation as an unwelcoming place. [Jon] So what do you think you'll be watching as we continue to cover this issue? [Kirk] Yeah, for me, one of the biggest questions is how colleges handle what I see as a major communication and messaging problem. Administrators and faculty haven't done a great job telling the full story of what U.S. universities actually do, or why international mobility benefits the country as a whole. [Jon] This is College Uncovered. I'm Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report … [Kirk] … and I'm Kirk Carapezza from GBH News. [Jon] This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza … [Kirk] … and Jon Marcus, and it was edited by Jonathan A. Davis. Our executive editor is Jenifer McKim. Our fact checker is Ryan Alderman. GBH's Robert Goulston contributed reporting to this episode. [Jon] Mixing and sound design by David Goodman and Gary Mott. All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. Mei He is our project manager, and head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins. [Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It's a production of GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. Thanks so much for listening. The post College Uncovered: The Student Trade Wars appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Miami Herald
04-05-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
College Uncovered: The Revenge of the Humanities
American higher education is approaching a sharp drop in the number of college-aged students - a trend known as the demographic cliff. At the same time, following decades of declining enrollment, humanities programs are being forced to adapt or risk disappearing altogether. In this episode of College Uncovered, hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus explore how some colleges are rebranding liberal arts as "applied humanities" or "leadership studies" to better connect with career paths and market demand. With the number of humanities majors down significantly over the past two decades, schools are searching for new ways to make these degrees more relevant - and more appealing. We travel to Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where enrollment in the College of Liberal Arts has jumped 80 percent over the past five years, thanks to a fresh focus on technology, leadership and career readiness. We hear from Richard Utz, interim dean at Georgia Tech, and Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, who argue that humanities graduates bring some of the most in-demand skills to the workforce: communication, critical thinking, collaboration and the ability to navigate ambiguity. Listen to learn how the liberal arts are evolving - and why their survival may be essential to the future of higher education and the workforce. TRANSCRIPT [Jon] This is College Uncovered. I'm Jon Marcus. … [Kirk] … and I'm Kirk Carrapezza. And that's the steam whistle here at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. It's been a campus staple since the 1880s. It was originally designed to mimic the industrial whistles of that era, calling students to their shop classes. Today, the whistle still blows every hour, marking the end of classes. Or when the Yellow Jackets are playing at home, celebrating touchdowns. [sound of play-by-play] Knocked out and Georgia Tech with an opportunity. You can't believe what … [Kirk] You might know Georgia Tech for its sports teams and its world-class science and engineering program, but what you might not know is that Georgia Tech's College of Liberal Arts is setting the pace nationally: While humanities enrollment has been declining across the U.S. For decades, Georgia Tech is bucking that trend with an 80 percent increase in enrollment over the past five years. [classroom sound] Really looking at the intersections between politics and medicine and certain. … [Kirk] This year, the college welcomed its largest humanities class yet, nearly 2,000 students. One of them is Senior Kristin Hsu. [Kristin Hsu] When I'm in these classes, I'm surrounded by engineers and computing students and things like that. And it's very different, but I think getting to work alongside those types of people has really shaped my experience and helped me figure out what I want to do in the future. [Kirk] In high school, she thought she'd become a doctor. [Kristin Hsu] I would do, like, STEM summer camps and learn more about biology and things like that. And then I had a small injury and I fainted when I saw blood. [Kirk] At Georgia Tech, she pivoted to literature, media and communication. [Kristin Hsu] I didn't want to just narrow in on something full of humanities, and I wanted to broaden my experience, be surrounded by people who think differently, and see what that's like. [Kirk] What skills would you say you're developing in the humanities program? [Kristin Hsu] Every single class teaches you how to communicate professionally and help break down harder, more complex concepts in a more understandable, digestible way for an average person. And so, whether that's through writing, or through design, or through accessibility, technical communication has been a constant for me. And it's one of the biggest things that is pushed and learned here. [Kirk] So why are students like Kristen Su the exception, rather than the norm, on American college campuses? As the number of college-age students shrinks, how are schools like Georgia Tech rebranding these liberal arts degrees as applied humanities, making them more career ready and job friendly? [Jon] And, as always, we'll ask the big consumer-facing question: Should you or your kid major in the humanities? This is College Uncovered, a podcast pulling back the ivy to reveal how colleges really work. I'm Jon Marcus with The Hechinger Report. … [Kirk] And I'm Kirk Carapezza, with GBH News. Colleges don't want you to know how they operate. So, GBH, … [Jon] … in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is here to show you. In this season, we're peering over the edge of the demographic cliff. The demographic cliff relates to the steep decline in the number of 18-year-olds that are alive today, 18 years after the Great Recession, when many Americans stopped having babies. And we're getting a preview of how colleges are responding or not to this major shift. Today on the show: "The Revenge of the Humanities." [Kirk] In many ways, college is becoming more and more transactional. Students and their parents pay tuition in exchange for jobs. [Jon] Yeah, I mean, facing soaring sticker prices, understandably, they want an immediate return on their investment. And so maybe that's why we've seen more and more students shy away from art history. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, between 2012 and 2022, the proportion of students majoring in the humanities fell by almost a third. And over the past two decades, English majors fell from 10 percent to 5 percent of all graduates. [Kirk] Instead, they're studying business, computer science and engineering, hoping it all leads to a lucrative career. And many schools struggling to respond to the market and save their bottom lines have slashed liberal arts programs, especially in rural America. Delta State University in Mississippi, for example, eliminated its highly regarded music program. It also cut English. And Delta State's far from alone here. The University of North Carolina Greensboro, Youngstown State in Ohio and West Virginia University have all made significant cuts in the humanities. [Jon] Now some of these programs are fighting back and resurfacing in unexpected corners of the marketplace and in different forms. Colleges like Georgia Tech are repackaging them as applied humanities or leadership studies. At the University of Arizona, it's paid off. Since Arizona introduced a bachelor's degree in applied humanities, connecting the dots between liberal arts, business, engineering and medicine, the number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities there has increased 76 percent. St. Anselm College in New Hampshire has created a humanities institute, trying to discover ways to weave - quote - humanistic thought into everyday life. And the humanities' fiercest advocates want you to know that their students are actually acquiring some of the most in-demand skills on the job market today: clear communication, critical thinking and collaboration. [Richard Utz] They're learning to think in other people's shoes. [Kirk] That's Richard Utz. He's the dean of Georgia Tech's College of Liberal Arts, and he says the applied humanities is not just about increasing empathy. [Richard Utz] It's actually aggressively becoming a feminist when you have nothing to do with feminism. [Kirk] By training, Utz is not a career coach or a feminist. He's a medievalist. [Richard Utz] But my real specialization is actually the afterlife of medieval culture in contemporary culture. [Kirk] What does it mean to be a medievalist in 2025? [Richard Utz] Think about issues such as, I mean, that have been in the news, like loyalty. Loyalty is usually about to one single person, right? That's a medieval principle. [Kirk] What are you doing to make these humanities courses more appealing to students and families who are really skeptical of the value of an English or philosophy or degree in medieval studies? [Richard Utz] One of the things is that we don't really conform to some of those categories. There is no English department at Georgia Tech. There's a school of literature, media and communication. Think of a parent, think of a student who hears that. They're thinking, 'Oh, I can do a little bit of literature, but it's also related to media studies. It's also related to technology. It's related to digital.' [classroom sound] Why am I asking you to work on this assignment? First of all … [Kirk] Here in his classroom, Utz is assigning students to read 15th-century ballads about Robin Hood. [classroom sound] It requires that you thoroughly read 'Robin Hood and the Monk' and interpret it based on a set of priorities and values that may not necessarily be your own. [Richard Utz] It's an opportunity to alienate them, and I mean that in a positive sense, of course, to throw them into a culture, a time where they have to do a lot of research to understand what's going on here. [Kirk] Then he challenges them to think about how that skill might help them in a job interview, something he knows old-school professors bristle at. [Richard Utz] I know the concerns of humanities scholars. Humanities scholars need to get over their own myths they have created about themselves. [Kirk] Which is what? [Richard Utz] Which is that we are sort of the Hunger Games, we're the last of the race, we are the last remnant of humanity and that without us humanity and the world will come to an end. [Kirk] Okay, so how did we get to this point where the humanities are fighting for their survival and facing an existential threat? When I went to college, Jon, the message was pretty clear: Just get a four-year degree, study whatever you're passionate about, and then you can do anything. So I studied history and Italian and then went to work for a small documentary film company in New Hampshire as a production assistant. How about you? [Jon] An English major and a political science major, and my first job out of college was as a newspaper reporter, so I needed to figure out how to solve problems and get information and interact with people and communicate all of those things that I had learned, I think, in college. [Kirk] And humanities advocates insist that the college-for-all message that you and I both received - it was right. [Joy Connolly] A degree in the liberal arts, but in humanities in particular, equips people with the skills of critical thinking, of understanding other kinds of people, their values, their histories, literally their languages, and the field of action is unlimited. [Kirk] That's Joy Connolly, president of the American Council of Learned Societies. Connolly is an expert in ancient Roman political thought and how those ideas still shape our world today. [Joy Connolly] It's relevant in all kinds of ways. Above all, in the way we think about class and the way think about political representation and the role of wealth in it, and our ideas about masculinity and, you know, quiet strength, and, you know there was a reason that Russell Crowe really hit the nail on the head 25 years ago with Gladiator. [sound from Gladiator] Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?! Is this not why you were here? [Kirk] Since the early 2000s, Connolly points out, we've seen a steep decline in young people studying Latin and ancient Rome, specifically, and the humanities in general. So I asked her, besides high tuition and families demanding that return on their investment, what's going on here? [Joy Connolly] It's a mix of things, I think. I have to highlight the massive disparity in research funding that underlies so much of what a college or university, especially if you're talking about an elite one, a selective one, that gets federal research funding. [Kirk] Or did, she says, until President Trump took over the White House for the second time. [Joy Connolly] Everything, of course, is chaotic now. But the massive disparity, I mean, the numbers are in the double billions when it comes to the sciences, and about $250 million at most for the humanities. [Kirk] Connolly says sciences versus the humanities is a false choice. Georgia Tech senior Kristin Hsu, who we heard from earlier, told me that when she first toured the campus in Atlanta, she did not want to go there. [Kristin Hsu] To start off, it was a rainy day, so I was, like, this looks depressing and sad, and I don't think I would be happy here. But then when I started getting a tour of the actual campus, I saw the buildings for the STEM students were so shiny and new, and then when saw the LMC building - literature, media, communication building - I was, like, what is this? [Laughs.] [Kirk] It's this old, brutalist building from the 1960s. [Kristin Hsu] It's, like, half outdoors, half indoors. It looks like a high school. It's not pretty, and no one here thinks it is. [Kirk] Despite the architecture and the bad weather, Hsu decided to go there anyway, and to major in the humanities. Joy Connolly says it's a common experience, and students and their families often do see more opportunities in internships and labs, in more technical programs. [Joy Connolly] They do see nice buildings with spaces for them that are comfortable and spiffy and, you know, look shiny and look like the university cares about them. And they look at the libraries and the humanities spaces that are less well looked after, that don't offer paths to internships, that don't have big mentor programs, and that clearly have, and do, in fact, have fewer resources in the university, and they follow the money. [Kirk] That's why she recommends colleges stand up and say to students, parents and tuition payers, it is an excellent bet to major in the humanities. [Joy Connolly] It is true that the first job, the immediate job after college for humanities majors is often less well compensated than the first job for someone who's working as a coder. But later on in the career, those numbers even out. [Kirk] In fact, Conley points out that more than 80 percent of humanities majors are happy with their jobs. That's higher than in most other fields, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [Joy Connolly] Studying something one has a passion for in college is really the key, because it's that experience of digging into a topic, whether it be astrophysics or art history, that really gives your brain the workout and the preparation for a life that these days is going to involve six or seven career changes in a really unpredictable world. [Jon] For years, politicians on the right and the left have urged American families to seek more technical degrees. Here's former President Barack Obama speaking to General Electric workers in Waukesha, Wisconsin, back in 2014. [Barack Obama] A lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career, but I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. No, nothing wrong with art history. I love art history, so I don't want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. [Jon] He did get a bunch of emails, Kirk. For that art history insult, Obama faced immediate backlash from the academy and the Democratic base. So he apologized. And more recently, speaking to students on stage at Hamilton College in upstate New York, he took a very different tone. [Barack Obama] I would argue right now, unless you are really good, like one of the top 1 percent in terms of understanding how to code, you're better off with a liberal arts education. [Jon] Obama predicted artificial intelligence will soon be just as disruptive to white-collar professions as machines were in steel mills and textile factories. [Barack Obama] What these machines can't yet do, and I don't anticipate will be able to do, is tell as good a story or show compassion or be able to inspire a child or build a sense of teamwork and get people to understand and believe in a common mission. So, those kinds of people-based skills, human skills? Unique to us, there will be more need for that than ever. [Jon] Looking forward, Obama says those kinds of people-based skills will be in high demand. [Kirk] Inside Georgia Tech's atudent center, sophomore Zara Vaughan tells me she's hoping her decision to major in literature, media and communication instead of neuroscience will pay off. [Zara Vaughan] In our classes we are so heavily discouraged from, like, ChatGPT and things like that. And I know, you know, you don't normally have to read an essay as an adult, but, you know, communication skills are really important. [Kirk] She says one of the benefits of studying the humanities is the ability to slow down at a time when she and many of her peers are constantly on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. [Zara Vaughan] Everything is, you know, so fast-tracked. We have short attention spans. Like, all that stuff, we get to really discuss and talk about in our classes, which I feel, like, you know, STEM students, they'll experience those things, but they don't get to, you, know, break it down. Like, especially in my social media class, we really are, like, breaking those things down and why things are the way they are. And we get touch on the media part and the social part. [Kirk] Vaughan is hoping to leverage her humanities major into landing a job as a sports reporter, hopefully covering college basketball or the WNBA. But if that doesn't work out, she's hedging her bets, minoring in pre-law, so she might apply to some law schools, too. [Jon] Ninety percent of employers say it's important that college graduates have communication, critical thinking and collaboration skills. [Kirk] Yeah, but, Jon, most say students are coming out of college without them. And with the growth of AI, the demand for these skills is actually growing. [Rishi Jaitly] There are a number of CEOs now that have been on the record since the launch of GPT that have been talking about how much they're beginning to run in the direction of humanities skills. [Kirk] That's Rishi Jaitly, the founder of an executive education program at Virginia Tech. The program uses the humanities to help mid-career managers become stronger leaders. In its first few years, Jaitly says it's hosted executives from Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Zillow and TikTok. [Rishi Jaitly] Yes, TikTok coming to our program because they sense that leadership inside of organizations is and can be about matters of the heart. [Kirk] Jaitly is a former Google and Twitter executive. While computer science and coding might be some of the more popular courses these days, he points out that the humanities have long powered the global tech industry. [Rishi Jaitly] The founder of AOL studied politics, the founder of Reddit studied history, the founders of Airbnb were designers, the founder of Salesforce was a history major, the founder of Slack was a philosophy major, and on and on and on. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. [Kirk] We should point out that many of them went to selective colleges, like Williams and USC. So at a time when many American families are questioning the value of the humanities, I asked Jaitly: How should colleges re-brand? [Rishi Jaitly] I think we need to transcend majors and minors as the end-all, be-all metric, right? We tend to evaluate - in the humanities at least, but across disciplines - tend to evaluate the stickiness of a discipline informed by the number of essentially full-time scholars in the field: minors, majors, graduate students and the like. I see the humanities as a lifelong, always-on pursuit, and I think we need to reimagine how we think about how the humanities, perhaps with a lowercase 'h,' go to market, meet people where they are, and show up in the cultivation of really what is a superpower. [Kirk] Another unexpected corner of the higher-ed world that sees studying the humanities as a superpower is the military. Jon, you've reported on how the military academies are adding humanities programs rather than cutting them. [Jon] Yeah, surprisingly, these military schools refuse to drop the liberal arts. In fact, they're expanding them, because they see the humanities as essential to their graduate success. West Point and the Naval Academy, they're extending liberal arts requirements, because they believe it helps future leaders think more. [Kirk] Well, we spoke with someone who knows a few things about this: retired four-star admiral James Foggo. [James Foggo] I am the dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States. I was a submarine officer all my life, commanded nine times over the course of 40 years. [Kirk] Admiral Foggo was a chemistry major, but he says military leaders still see the value in studying the humanities. Foggo often tells young cadets hoping to become engineers, they are what they write. [James Foggo] If you cannot communicate - and there are a lot of engineers out there who are really, really smart, but they cannot communicate in the English language - then nobody's going to understand what you want, what you need, what you recommend. [Kirk] Okay, so what does this all mean for you, whether you're planning to attend a military academy or not? Should you consider studying the humanities, or the applied humanities? Rishi Jaitly, the founder of the executive education program at Virginia Tech, says yes. But choosing a major is a very personal decision, and there are many bridges into the humanities. [Rishi Jaitly] The argument I'm making is you need a bridge. You need to bridge into the humanities in a serious, sustained way. And choose your own adventure in terms of what that bridge looks like. The soft skills are becoming the hard skills, and the hard schools are becoming softer. The hard skills are becoming software because they're increasingly accessible and pervasive and YouTube-able [Jon] Georgia Tech senior Kristin Hsu recommends that more young people spend less time on YouTube and slow down and study the humanities. She's graduating this spring majoring in literature, media and communication - with a computer science minor, she says, just in case. She's already got a job secured as a full-time instructional designer with a human resources and tech company. [Kristin Hsu] I'm just so excited because I knew I wanted to work at a tech company after like my first year of college and so to be able to do that and just like feel secure and know what I'm doing when I'm graduating is the best feeling. [Jon] In the end, Hsu says having a humanities mindset and a technical background set her apart in a tough job market. [Kirk] Okay, so, Jon, do you think the demographic cliff will force more and more colleges to kind of rethink how they sell these humanities programs to the public? [Jon] Well, they don't really have much of a choice, Kirk, because people are voting with their feet and leaving the humanities in droves. So unless humanities departments do more to attract these students and to convince them that they need these skills out there in the workforce, they're just going to dry up and blow away. [Kirk] What's taking so long? Why does it always take a crisis for things to change in higher ed? [Jon] They don't even change in a crisis. Everything takes forever to change in higher ed. The name liberal arts - I went to a conference once where there was a conversation about how do you sell the liberal arts? And I hear this every year. Somebody went to the whiteboard and wrote down liberal arts and said, 'These are the two worst words in America right now.' And it's true that colleges and universities have never done a good job making clear why someone should study the humanities. [Kirk] And as we've reported, they hate things like marketing or the idea that they're job training. [Jon] Well, I think smart humanities departments, like at the University of Arizona and Georgia Tech, they're coming around to understanding this. Because they also know that if they don't, because they're funded based on their enrollments, they won't have jobs. [Kirk] And we're seeing things like, it's funny, like even at Harvard and, you know, elite schools where departments might be struggling to attract students, they're doing things like Taylor Swift studies or, you know, 2016 when Hamilton was all the rage, it was, you know, Hamilton studies. [Jon] Yeah, and we could probably argue about whether that's a good idea. But just learning the capacity to think critically, to communicate, to work in teams - it's clearly what employers want, and what they say they haven't gotten. [Kirk] This is College Uncovered. I'm Kirk Carapezza from GBH … [Jon] … and I'm Jon Marcus from The Hechinger Report. This episode was produced and written by Kirk Carapezza … [Kirk] … and Jon Marcus. And to be transparent, our team bios show a bias for the humanities. Our executive editor is Jennifer McKim, an English major. Our fact checker is Ryan Alderman, a philosophy and journalism double major. Mixing and sound design by David Goodman. He majored in political science with a minor, he says, in procrastination. And Gary Mott, who double-majored English writing and speech communication. [Jon] All of our music is by college bands. Our theme song and original music is by Left Roman out of MIT. We also use an excerpt of the song "Legionnaire," by Scott Buckley. English and journalism major Mei He is our project manager. This episode was edited by Jonathan A. Davis, quite the overachiever, who majored in accounting and sustainability studies. And head of GBH podcasts is Devin Maverick Robins, a communications major - of course. [Kirk] College Uncovered is made possible by Lumina Foundation. It's produced by GBH News and The Hechinger Report and distributed by PRX. Thanks so much for listening. More information about the topics covered in this episode: Colleges rebrand humanities majors as job-friendly The post College Uncovered: The Revenge of the Humanities appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
