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Black and Hispanic students are half as likely to transfer as white students, and lower-income students half as likely as higher-income ones, contributing to the fact that only 28 percent of Black and 21 percent of Hispanic adults have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 42 percent of white adults.

The already low proportion of students who transfer from community colleges to bachelor’s degree-granting universities fell by about 10 percent over the last two years, with the decline even larger for Black students and men - part of the drop in people going to college at all. Read more»

Enrollment challenges have hastened the closings of 121 private, nonprofit colleges in the last decade, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

As college enrollment erodes and skepticism mounts about the need for a degree, the pace of annual increases in tuition and fees has for the first time since the early 1980s slowed to a rate that’s well below inflation - now, some education institutions are starting to lower their prices. Read more»

Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 67 percent more than people with only high school diplomas, according to the BLS.

There has been a significant and steady drop nationwide in the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in college in the fall after they finish high school, as fewer than one in three adults now say a degree is worth the cost. Read more»

Now the off-campus housing crunch is affecting on-campus housing, which is typically cheaper and for which there is intensifying competition.

Rents have risen 14 percent on average over the last year, and that’s becoming a huge problem for college students faced with spiraling off-campus housing costs. It’s also spilling over into long waiting lists for less-expensive on-campus dorms. Read more»

Most states significantly reduced their support for public higher education in the recession that took root in 2008.

Many states are boosting their budgets for public higher education more than at any time since 2008 and proposing even higher allocations down the road as politicians are focusing on the need for educated workers in an economy that’s short of talent. Read more»

Twelve percent of full-time private and 10 percent of full-time public university and college students are finishing four-year degrees within three years.

Several conventional colleges and universities are offering bachelor’s degrees in three years instead of the customary four as students and families increasingly chafe at the more than four years - and the cost - it now takes most of those earning degrees. Read more»

Chinese universities produce more Ph.D.s in science, engineering, technology and math; by 2025, China will be turning out nearly twice as many graduates with doctorates in those fields than American universities will.

A sharp decline in the number of Americans going to college - down nearly a million since the start of the pandemic and by nearly 3 million over the last decade - could alter American society for the worse, even as economic rivals such as China vastly increase university enrollment. Read more»

Getting a education in the skilled trades pays off more quickly (and sometimes just more in general) than going to college and getting a bachelor’s degree.

Education for the skilled trades appears to be returning to fashion, as Americans see firsthand the labor shortages and rising pay in fields such as construction, transportation and logistics - along with the lower debt and the shorter timetables needed to train for them. Read more»

For years, economists have been warning that more and more people hoping to switch careers would need to get additional education to go from one workplace to another.

For years, economists have been warning that people hoping to switch careers would need additional education - even in industries that have not previously required it. Now that prophecy is coming true, to the surprise of many of the record number of Americans quitting their jobs. Read more»

Ninety percent of entering freshmen think they'll graduate within four years, yet only 45 percent of them will.

Colleges have gradually moved the finish line to give themselves credit for success if students graduate in six years — or even eight years, which is what consumers find reported on the government’s newest consumer website, College Scorecard. Read more»

Caldwell Hall at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Catholic University is spending $5 million on marketing and branding - a small sum compared to what other colleges and universities are investing in advertising, marketing and promotion, which has been rising and is on track this year to be nearly double what it was last year. Read more»

After more than a decade of remaking itself, the university has become a model of what higher education in America should be, according to a book by its outspoken president, Michael Crow: a place judged not by who it turns away, but by who it accepts, and how many of its students graduate. But critics wonder whether other campuses should copy ASU’s dramatic changes. Read more»

Led by continuing drops at private, for-profit colleges, higher-education enrollment declined this fall for a sixth semester in a row, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports. Read more»

As March Madness nears its all-consuming climax, a less widely noticed kind of intercollegiate competition is forcing students to churn endlessly through the higher-education system, wasting their own—and taxpayers’—money. In this game, the players score but it doesn’t count. Read more»

A national campaign that starts Wednesday will promote the sometimes-derided practice with a nationwide program to help adults prepare portfolios of their job experience online that will be evaluated by independent faculty for academic credit. Read more»