Dear Community College President, If you accepted your presidency believing your primary responsibility was to lead a community college, you now occupy a role far more complex than the one you inherited. The community college…
In the past 15 years, American community colleges have experienced significant declines in enrollment among adult students. This was not a Covid phenomenon but started soon after the recovery from the Great Recession began. As…
The U.S. Education Department’s (ED) new FAFSA identity verification screening system, first implemented in April, has so far rejected more than 53,000 fraudulent applications, preventing more than $212 million in financial aid from being disbursed…
Most campuses are aware of the pending proposal by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to radically overhaul the federal government’s procedures for awarding grant funds. This initiative changes the current “Uniform Guidance” procedures…
Many readers will remember the viral story from May 2025 in which a student parent at the University at Buffalo was pursued by campus security for carrying his infant across the graduation stage. The university…
The U.S. Education Department (ED) on Monday released final regulations that establish a new accountability regime based on program completers’ earnings. The regulations, based on provisions in last year’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, take…
The Workforce Pell program, launching on July 1, faces a serious implementation problem. The accountability infrastructure it needs to distinguish between programs that open doors and programs that merely collect tuition doesn’t yet exist at…
Sen. Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas), chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, this week released a proposal to reauthorize the Farm Bill, which governs the Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs. While the most…
Over the last couple of months, I’ve sat with presidents and system leaders from Alabama, Virginia, Illinois, California, Texas, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan and Massachusetts, just to name a few — and I’m watching something…
Something impressive is happening at California’s community colleges. In fall 2024, 58% of students taking a transfer-level math course for the first time completed that class on their first attempt — a 7 percentage-point gain in just…