Student Union
- By Esha Sarai
US Women's Colleges Seen as Incubators for Independence
BRYN MAWR, PENNSYLVANIA — When Sandy Doran became president of Salem College, a women’s college in North Carolina, she inherited a daunting task.
“When I arrived, we were in a bit of a financial pickle,” Doran told VOA.
Doran faced a decline in enrollment seen across higher education. According to figures by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment in higher education began declining in 2011. One possible reason for the decline is that after the economy recovered from the stock market crash in 2008, young people felt more secure jumping into jobs or putting off college for a few years after high school.
But like many colleges and universities, Salem hadn't seen the decline coming, and took on debt to build new facilities. Doran and the school turned to alumni for support.
“Through relentless communication, transparency about what was needed, we were really able to unify the campus, unify the students, faculty, staff, and the wider alumni community and the wider community of Winston-Salem,” Doran said, referring to the city that is home to the campus.
Salem College was founded in 1722, Doran said. “It predates the U.S. Constitution!”
And like many other women’s colleges in the United States, Salem has seen significant positive change in the past four years.
“Our applications have increased by 100%,” Doran said.
Notable women’s colleges, including Barnard College in New York, Mount Holyoke College and Smith College in Massachusetts, Agnes Scott College in Georgia, and Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, have all noted increased applications and enrollment since 2016 and the #MeToo movement, which was created in reaction to sexual harassment and assaults.
“After the 2016 election, we definitely saw an uptick in young women looking for these spaces where women are empowered, and they're empowered to use their voice,” Marissa Turchi, director of undergraduate admissions at Bryn Mawr College, told VOA.
“Years ago, students were selecting Bryn Mawr despite the fact that it was a women's college. I think more and more now are choosing Bryn Mawr because it’s a women's college,” Turchi said.
For some students, the choice to study at a women’s college has always been an easy one.
“Women's colleges actually run in my family,” Katarina Karris-Flores, a student at Bryn Mawr told VOA.
“Both my aunts went to Wellesley and my cousin went to Wellesley and my mom went to a woman's college in California,” she explained.
But her classmate, Liz Marchini, said she had never planned to attend a women’s college.
“I thought that was kind of ridiculous, you know,” Marchini told VOA.
“My thought process was like, well I'll have to work with men later on in life,” she added.
But both Marchini and Karris-Flores said that during summer internships in which they worked in co-ed settings, they felt confident in a way they didn’t see mirrored by young women coming from coed environments.
“I noticed that out of all the women in the group that I worked with, I was the only outspoken one like I was the one very confident in what I had to say,” Karris-Flores said of her experience working at Princeton last summer.
“I quickly realized that it's not about the absence of men, it's more about the presence of women,” Marchini said, describing her first tour of the campus before the even enrolled in classes.
“The space was built with women in mind, you know, women don't have to fight for their place. And so you can just focus on making yourself a better person rather than just like trying to even to find a spot,” she added.
Additionally, these women said that their experience at Bryn Mawr has defied stereotypes about women’s colleges - including their isolation and lack of interaction with men.
Students at Bryn Mawr can also take classes at the nearby Haverford College, and vice versa.
“Men are in your space,” Marchini said.
“It’s not a convent.”
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College tuition has fallen significantly at many US schools, research finds
The cost of college keeps spiraling ever higher, right?
Not necessarily. New research indicates students are paying significantly less to attend public universities than they were a decade ago. And tuition increases at private colleges have finally slowed after years of hefty rises.
Figures compiled by the nonprofit College Board indicate the average student attending an in-state public university this year faces a tuition bill of $11,610, which is down 4% from a decade earlier when taking inflation into account. But the real savings come in what the average student actually pays after getting grants and financial aid. That's down 40% over the decade, from $4,140 to $2,480 annually, according to the data.
That reduced cost means less borrowing. Just under half of students attending in-state public universities are graduating with some debt, down from 59% a decade earlier, according to the College Board figures. And among those who do borrow, the average loan balance has fallen by 17%, to $27,100.
Meanwhile, at private colleges, tuition continues to rise, but at a much slower rate. It has increased 4% over the past decade, when taking inflation into account, to an average $43,350, according to the College Board. That's a big change from the two decades prior, when tuition increased 68%.
Costs are coming down as Americans question whether college is worth the price. Surveys find that Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value of a degree, and the percentage of high school graduates heading to college has fallen to levels not seen in decades, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet research still finds that, over time, a degree pays off. Americans with a bachelor's degree earn a median of $2.8 million during their careers, 75% more than if they had only a high school diploma, according to research from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.
COVID effect
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a big factor in the cost reductions, said Jennifer Ma, an executive research scientist at the College Board and lead author of the study.
"We know that during COVID, a lot of institutions — public and private — froze tuition," Ma said.
As states and the federal government responded to the pandemic, Ma said, they increased higher education funding, allowing colleges to reduce the cost of attendance. Some of that money has since expired, however, including an infusion of federal pandemic aid that was mostly used up by the end of 2022.
Cost was a major consideration in Kai Mattinson's decision to attend Northern Arizona University. It would have cost her about $39,000 annually to attend the public university but discounts and scholarships bring that down to between $15,000 and $20,000 for the 22-year-old senior from Nevada.
"I originally wanted to go to the University of Arizona, but when it came down to tuition and other cost, Northern Arizona University was the best option," said Mattinson, a physical education major who also works as a long-term substitute at a local elementary school.
Many institutions have tried to limit cost increases. Purdue University in Indiana, for example, has frozen its annual in-state tuition at $9,992 for the past 13 years.
Mark Becker, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said he was pleased to see the new data.
"Institutional efforts to control costs, combined with many states' efforts to increase investments in public universities and federal investment in the Pell Grant, have increased college affordability and enabled significant progress on tackling student debt," Becker said in a statement.
Costs for those attending public two-year community colleges have fallen even more, by 9% over the past decade, according to the College Board data, which is broadly in line with federal figures collected by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Still, for parents paying for their children to attend out-of-state public universities or private colleges, the costs remain daunting — as much as $95,000 annually, in some cases. However, many institutions offer significant discounts to the sticker price for middle- and lower-income students.
Some private colleges have been expanding their financial aid, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which in November announced undergraduates with a family income below $200,000 would no longer need to pay any tuition at all starting in the fall.
Other private colleges are discounting tuition as a marketing move in an increasingly difficult environment. They face a dwindling pool of young adults, and students who are more wary of signing up for giant loans. Recruiting students is crucial for staying afloat as operational costs rise. After temporary relief thanks to federal money during the pandemic, many colleges have cut programs to try to keep costs under control.
As regional schools struggle to survive, AI could provide hope
Declining enrollments are causing problems for some smaller, regional colleges struggling to survive.
But schools that embrace artificial intelligence and customer experience could be at an advantage, Eric Skipper writes in Times Higher Education. (December 2024)
Universities move away from DEI initiatives
Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have fallen out of favor in higher education recruiting and hiring in recent years, but even more colleges and universities are moving away from the programs now, Thea Felicity reports in University Herald.
In addition to political opposition to the programs, there are concerns that DEI initiatives hinder free speech, affect ideological balances and discourage academic freedom. (December 2024)
‘College Deserts’ leave many communities without higher education options
“College Deserts” – areas where high schools are located more than 30 miles away from the nearest community college – leave large groups of people unable to pursue higher education because of transportation problems, Lexi Lonas Cochran writes in The Hill.
Most college deserts are in the Southern U.S., with a recent study in Texas showing that long commuting distances discourage many potential students from attending college. (December 2024)
Analysts say rate of college closures likely to increase
If current trends continue, the rate of college closures is expected to increase, according to a new study reported in Forbes.
Closures are more likely to affect private institutions, and while the number of closures might seem small on a national level, it could cause serious problems for the smaller and mid-sized communities where those colleges are located. (December 2024)
