Recently, Texas A&M University suddenly announced it would close its campus in Qatar, which had been open for 20 years. Colleges are worried about foreign espionage, shrinking funds and global instability, especially in the Middle East. Read the newsletter from Karin Fischer of the Chronicle of Higher Education. (February 2024)

This Valentine’s Day, an "entrepreneurial power couple," two "e-pals" and others told Sophie Hogan of The PIE News how they found each other through international study. (February 2024)

Data from Project Atlas, which has tracked international student mobility since 2001, shows that more students are resuming studies abroad after the pandemic.

According to University World News, “Rebounds of international student numbers in 2022 and 2023, particularly in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, as reported in Project Atlas, indicate that the global total may again accelerate.” (February 2024)

Land-grant universities were established in the United States more than 160 years ago to provide higher education to citizens with an emphasis on practical skills, especially agriculture and mechanics.

The University Herald explains how budget decisions and political concerns are putting pressure on these American institutions. (February 2024)

International students wanting to study in the United States should start the visa application process right away, read instructions carefully and be careful filling out forms.

Financial Express has compiled tips to help potential students navigate the visa application and interview process. (February 2024)

Among the list: actuaries, art directors, human resources managers, and petroleum engineers.

See the full list from Sarah Wood in US News & World Report. (February 2024)

A century-old university in suburban St. Louis will shut down next year, its president said Monday, citing budget problems and declining enrollment.

Fontbonne University, in Clayton, was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1923, first as a place to educate young Catholic women. Enrollment for the fall semester was 874 students, including 650 undergraduates. A decade ago, Fontbonne's enrollment was about 2,000 students, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

University President Nancy Blattner said in a statement that Fontbonne would not accept freshmen for the fall 2024 semester but would continue with classes through summer 2025. University leaders will work with faculty and staff to help them find new positions elsewhere, she said.

"After many years of declining enrollments and a shrinking endowment, the financial position of the university is no longer able to be sustained for the long term," Blattner said.

Many universities are facing similar struggles. Public and private colleges and universities across the country have announced mass layoffs in recent months, as well as program eliminations and campus closures. Budget shortfalls are blamed on declining enrollment, the end of federal pandemic funding and other factors.

In December, the University of Arizona unveiled a financial recovery plan to address its $240 million budget shortfall. Earlier last year, four of the 14 universities in the Big Ten Conference — Penn State, Nebraska, Minnesota and Rutgers — announced significant budget shortfalls. Bradley University, a private school in Illinois, faced a $13 million budget shortfall representing 10% of its total operating budget.

Blattner said Fontbonne leaders have worked for years to try to turn things around.

"Despite our best efforts to cut costs, create new academic programs and launch athletic teams, the university is unable to recover from years of declining enrollments and budget deficits," she said.

The university's 16-acre campus sits next to Washington University in St. Louis. Washington University announced Monday that it agreed to purchase the Fontbonne campus, but it doesn't have definitive plans for the property.

Many prominent U.S. universities made the ACT and SAT admissions tests optional for undergraduate applicants during the pandemic.

Now, Dartmouth is bringing the SAT back, saying it helps build diverse student cohorts.

Read the story from Susan Svrluga in The Washington Post. (February 2024)

Different prices, different tests, different schedules – college in the U.S. is even a year longer, usually.

Anayat Durrani explains in US News & World Report. (February 2024)

Breshna Musazai endured 19 agonizing months in Qatar, anxiously awaiting resettlement to the United States as a refugee.

Forced to flee Afghanistan just two days after the Taliban seized Kabul in 2021, Musazai found herself separated from her parents and her dreams shattered.

A dull ache in her right leg was a physical echo of the trauma she had endured.

A polio paraplegic in the left leg, Musazai took three bullets in her right leg from suspected Taliban assailants in 2016.

“I was praying at a mosque inside the university’s campus when the shooting started,” Musazai said, recalling the attack on the American University of Afghanistan, or AUAF.

Thirteen people, including seven students and a teacher, were killed, and 50 were injured in the complex attack that went on for hours.

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Deadly Attack at American University in Afghanistan

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No group claimed responsibility for the attack, although the Afghan government blamed the Taliban.

A year after the attack, after doctors at First Baptist Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, performed surgery on her bullet wounds, Musazai was able to return to AUAF.

Following her graduation in 2018, Musazai embarked on a career focused on volunteering and advocating for women's rights.

"Out of my four sisters," Musazai told VOA from her home in Virginia, "I'm the only one who has been to university."

Her parents, although they never went to college, supported her difficult pursuit of education.

“I wanted to be a doctor, but the AUAF did not have a medical school, so I decided to study law,” she said.

Opportunities in the US

Upon arriving in the United States, Musazai sought out paralegal and English legal language classes to continue her education.

"There are a lot of opportunities here," she said, explaining her plans to pursue a master’s degree in law before working as a lawyer.

Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has admitted more than 80,000 Afghans.

As special emigrants and refugees, they are entitled to live and work across the United States. Many receive essential support, including medical care, food and other forms of assistance, to aid in their resettlement.

“Most of my classmates have left Afghanistan, but I heard some of them have got married,” she told VOA.

Musazai did not want to leave her home country but feared for her life under Taliban rule.

Despite the grim situation in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, particularly for women, Musazai holds onto the hope that Afghan girls will regain access to secondary education.

"Every other Muslim country lets girls go to school. So, why does Afghanistan deny its girls this basic right?" she asked.

As Afghanistan's schools reopen for a third year under Taliban rule, there is no sign the regime will lift its ban on secondary and university education for girls.

International human rights organizations condemn the Taliban's policy of excluding girls from secondary education, calling it gender apartheid.

SEE ALSO:

UN: Taliban Pursuing Policy of Gender Apartheid

“I hope [the Taliban] understand that girls’ education is good for Afghanistan and even good for them,” she said. “It makes no sense, and it serves no one’s interest to shut schools for anyone.”

FAFSA, the federal form used to apply for financial aid, has been plagued with technical issues this year. Families and colleges are worried this could lead to delayed funding, and the U.S. Department of Education, which administers FAFSA, has announced some measures to help.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of The Washington Post has more. (February 2024)

Many U.S. colleges weigh the difficulty of your high school curriculum in admissions. Even if an applicant’s grades or test scores for advanced coursework aren’t high, just taking the classes reflects well on them.

Read the op-ed from Jay Mathews, education columnist for The Washington Post. (February 2024).

Liberty University has agreed to pay an unprecedented $14 million fine for the Christian school's failure to disclose information about crimes on its campus and for its treatment of sexual assault survivors, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday.

The fine is by far the largest ever levied under the Clery Act, a law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to collect data on campus crime and notify students of threats. Schools must disseminate an annual security report that includes crime reports and information on efforts to improve campus safety.

Liberty has marketed itself for years as having one of the nation's safest campuses, with more than 15,000 students enrolled at the school in Lynchburg, Virginia. But its police department had a single officer with minimal oversight for investigating crimes during most of the period reviewed by federal investigators, 2016 to 2023.

The U.S. Department of Education said it identified numerous cases that resulted in the misclassification or underreporting of crimes. And there were several incidents that the university determined to be unfounded without evidence that the initial report was false.

"This was especially common with respect to sexually based offenses, including rape and fondling cases," the settlement agreement stated.

Federal investigators cited a case in which a woman reported being raped, with the attacker telling her he had a knife, the settlement agreement stated.

Liberty's investigator "unfounded this case based on a claim that the 'victim indicates that she consented to the sexual act,'" the agreement stated. "In point of fact, the victim's own statement merely indicated that she 'gave in' in an attempt to get away from the perpetrator."

That incident was ultimately counted in the crime statistics, the agreement stated, because Liberty's Clery Act compliance officer realized the case was "mishandled at several points in the process."

Many victims of sexual crimes feared reporting because of concerns of reprisal, the agreement stated. Several were punished for violating the student code of conduct known as 'The Liberty Way,' while their assailants were left unpunished."

"Consequently, victims of sexual assault often felt dissuaded by Liberty administration's reputation for punishing sexual assault survivors rather than helping them," the agreement said. "Such fears created a culture of silence where sexual assaults commonly went unreported."

The university said in a statement Tuesday that it is "fully committed to maintaining the safety and security of students and staff without exception."

The school said it would continue to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Education. And it noted that it has made more than $10 million in significant improvements since 2022 toward complying with the Clery Act and other laws, including in educational programming, new leadership and staffing.

Liberty also acknowledged past problems, including "incorrect statistical reports as well as necessary timely warnings and emergency notifications that were not sent." But the university also said the U.S. Department of Education used methods and calculations that were "drastically different from their historic treatment of other universities."

"Liberty disagrees with this approach and maintains that we have repeatedly endured selective and unfair treatment by the department," the school said.

But Dustin Wahl, co-founder of Save71, an alumni-led organization that advocates for changes, said Liberty is trying to shift the blame.

"Liberty should be apologizing to the students who have been harmed over the years and demonstrating a commitment to change," he said. "Not because they are being dragged along by the government, but because they genuinely want to be transparent and fix the problems."

Before Tuesday, the largest Clery Act fine in history was $4.5 million against Michigan State University in 2019, according to a February report from the Congressional Research Service. Federal investigators said Michigan State failed to adequately respond to sexual assault complaints against Larry Nassar, a campus sports doctor who molested elite gymnasts and other female athletes.

In 2016, Pennsylvania State University was hit with a then-record fine of $2.4 million in the wake of child sexual-abuse complaints against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The $14 million fine against Liberty University appears to be a small fraction of its total operating revenues, which were $1.2 billion without donor restrictions in fiscal year 2022, according to an annual report. The school's net assets were $3.5 billion.

But Clery Act violations are "bigger than just the fines," said Abigail Boyer, associate executive director at the Pennsylvania-based Clery Center, which provides training and assistance to campuses.

"Hand in hand with the fines is institutions navigating how they're now being perceived publicly as a campus that may or may not be focusing on the safety and well-being of students," Boyer said.

Liberty has become one of the world's largest Christian schools since its 1971 co-founding by religious broadcaster Jerry Falwell Sr. In 2022, the school said it hit a record of 115,000 students pursuing degrees online, beyond the more than 15,000 on campus.

The Clery Act investigation became public knowledge in 2022 in the wake of recent litigation over its handling of sex assault cases.

Lawsuits by former students and employees have accused the school of botching sexual assault reports or failing to investigate allegations of rape. The litigation was filed under Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination in education and often overlaps with Clery.

Liberty settled a civil lawsuit filed by 12 women in 2022 after they accused the school of fostering an unsafe environment and mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment.

The lawsuit said the university had a "tacit policy" of weighting investigations in favor of accused male students, and it said the university retaliated against women who did make such reports.

The terms of that lawsuit's settlement were not disclosed. But at the time, Liberty outlined changes it undertook to improve campus security and review how it responds to incidents of sexual harassment or violence.

The number of students from India studying in U.S. colleges and universities is expected to jump in coming years, according to some analysts.

Because of lower birth rates triggered by a recession, the U.S. will have fewer college-age students as early as 2025, The Economic Times of India reports, creating more opportunities for foreign students. (February 2024)

A study published in Frontiers in Public Health found students were angry, afraid and concerned about the loss of rights after the 2021 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Anarticle in Contemporary OB/GYN says the ruling, which removed guaranteed access to abortions in the United States, has also led to increased contraceptive use by young adults. (January 2024)