higher education

How churches are trying to raise the college graduation rate

By Kayleigh Skinner, The Hechinger Report

“What we’re trying to do is move the needle to get as many people into education programs as possible,” said the organization’s associate director, Camy Sorge. “It’s really about, ‘How can we reach the most people?’”…

As states cut student aid, dollars still flow to upper-income families

By Meredith Kolodner

Twelve states plus Washington, D.C., now spend more on merit-based aid than need-based aid, and many others have increased funding for scholarships based on academic achievement instead of need. Some states have cut financial aid for everybody, leaving hundreds of…

Climbing walls aren't driving the rise in college tuition

By Kellie Woodhouse, Inside Higher Ed

There's not much Elizabeth Warren and Chris Christie agree on. But last week they struck a similar chord in speeches that knocked increasingly common and luxurious college amenities like climbing walls and lazy rivers. Such features, Warren said in a…

Nonprofits step in to support college students who need it most

By Laura M. Colarusso, The Hechinger Report

Debbie Chen had always struggled with her schoolwork. So when she arrived at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Chen — whose parents never went to college — worried she might have trouble juggling her assignments and other campus activities.

Corinthian campuses getting nonprofit makeover

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

SAVANNAH, Ga. — As a guarantor of student loans that specialized in collecting from students on the precipice of bankruptcy, the Educational Credit Management Corporation saw up close the “impact of students taking on debt, dropping out of school and…

These groups of Asian-Americans rarely attend college, but California is trying to change that

By Matt Krupnick, The Hechinger Report

As one group of Asians who don’t go to college in large numbers, the Hmong help illustrate the complex changing demographics of students arriving at American universities and colleges: increasingly nonwhite, low-income, and first-generation.

Prisoners might get access to Pell grants for first time in two decades

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The U.S. Department of Education is poised to announce a limited exemption to the federal ban on prisoners receiving Pell Grants to attend college while they are incarcerated.

Threatened with closure, one historically black university charts a path to recovery

By Kyla Calvert Mason

When Darian James walks across the South Carolina State campus in her hometown of Orangeburg she sees a place where much of her life to this point has played out. It's the place where she went to preschool through middle…

Can for-profit colleges survive their slump?

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The dramatic collapse of Corinthian Colleges isn’t the only shake-up happening in for-profit higher education, as a broad swath of the sector is shutting down or selling off campuses after years of declining revenue and enrollment.