Cuando Angel Amankwaah viajó desde Denver a la Universidad Central de Carolina del Norte este verano para recibir orientación para nuevos estudiantes, supo que había tomado la decisión correcta.

Se divirtió aprendiendo los cantos que corean los aficionados en los partidos de fútbol. Pero también vio que “hay estudiantes que se parecen a mí y profesores que se parecen a mí” en la universidad históricamente negra, dijo Amankwaah, de 18 años, quien es negra. “Sabía que estaba en un espacio seguro”.

De repente, esto se ha convertido en una consideración importante para los estudiantes de todos los orígenes y creencias que van a la universidad.

Durante mucho tiempo, los estudiantes han elegido universidades en función de su reputación académica y vida social. Pero con los campus en la mira de las guerras culturales, ahora muchos estudiantes también están haciendo un balance de los ataques a la diversidad, el contenido de los cursos y los discursos, así como de los oradores en ambos extremos del espectro político. Están monitoreando los crímenes de odio, la legislación anti-LGBTQ, las leyes estatales de aborto y si estudiantes como ellos (negros, de zonas rurales, veteranos militares, LGBTQ o de otros orígenes) están representados y apoyados en el campus.

“No hay duda de que lo que está sucediendo a nivel estatal está afectando directamente a estos estudiantes”, dijo Alyse Levine, fundadora y directora ejecutiva de Premium Prep, una firma consultora de admisiones a universidades privadas en Chapel Hill, Carolina del Norte. Cuando ven las universidades de algunos estados ahora, dice, “hay estudiantes que se preguntan: ‘¿Realmente me quieren ahí?’”.

Para algunos estudiantes en ambos lados de la división política, la respuesta es no. En el caótico nuevo mundo de las universidades e institutos universitarios estadounidenses, muchos dicen que no se sienten bienvenidos en ciertas escuelas, mientras que otros están dispuestos a cancelar oradores y denunciar a profesores con cuyas opiniones no están de acuerdo.

Es demasiado pronto para saber en qué medida esta tendencia afectará dónde y si los futuros estudiantes terminarán yendo a la universidad, ya que los datos de inscripción disponibles públicamente se retrasan en tiempo real. Pero hay indicios de que está teniendo un impacto significativo.

Uno de cada cuatro futuros estudiantes ya ha descartado considerar una facultad o universidad debido al clima político en su estado, según una encuesta realizada por la consultora de educación superior Art & Science Group.

Relacionado: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates

Entre los estudiantes que se describen a sí mismos como liberales, la razón más común para descartar institutos universitarios y universidades, según esa encuesta, es porque es en un estado en particular “demasiado republicano” o tiene lo que consideran regulaciones laxas sobre armas, legislación anti-LGBTQ, leyes restrictivas sobre el aborto y falta de preocupación por el racismo. Los estudiantes que se describen a sí mismos como conservadores rechazan estados que creen que son “demasiado demócratas” y que tienen leyes liberales sobre el aborto y los derechos homosexuales.

Con tanta atención centrada en estos temas, The Hechinger Report ha creado una Campus Welcome Guide (Guía de Bienvenida al Campus)—la primera herramienta de su tipo— que muestra las leyes estatales y las políticas institucionales que afectan a los estudiantes universitarios. Desde prohibiciones de iniciativas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión y “teoría crítica de la raza”, hasta si se aceptan los carnets de estudiantes como prueba de residencia a efectos de votación.

También enumera —para cada institución de cuatro años en el país— aspectos como la diversidad racial y de género entre estudiantes y profesores, el número de estudiantes veteranos matriculados, la incidencia de crímenes de odio motivados por la raza en el campus, clasificaciones de la libertad de expresión y si la universidad o instituto universitario atiende a muchos estudiantes de zonas rurales.

El sesenta por ciento de los futuros estudiantes de todos los orígenes afrima que las nuevas restricciones estatales al aborto es relevante en al menos en cierta medida en el lugar donde eligen ir a la universidad, según encontró una encuesta separada realizada por Gallup y Lumina Foundation. De ellos, ocho de cada 10 dicen que preferirían ir a un estado con mayor acceso a servicios de salud reproductiva. (Lumina se encuentra entre quienes financian a The Hechinger Report, que produjo esta historia).

“Tenemos muchas mujeres jóvenes que no consideran ciertos estados”, dijo Levine. Una de sus propias clientas desistió de ir a una universidad en St. Louis después de que Missouri prohibiera casi todos los abortos tras la decisión Dobbs de la Corte Suprema, dijo.

Las instituciones de Alabama, Florida, Luisiana y Texas son las que tienen más probabilidades de ser eliminadas de las listas de estudiantes liberales, según la encuesta de Art & Science Group. En general, es más probable que se mantengan alejados del sur y el medio oeste, mientras que los estudiantes conservadores eviten California y Nueva York.

Uno de cada ocho estudiantes de secundaria en Florida dice que no iría a una universidad pública en su propio estado debido a sus políticas educativas, según encontró una encuesta separada realizada por el sitio web de información y clasificación de universidades www.Intelligent.com.

Con 494 leyes anti-LGBTQ propuestas o adoptadas este año —según American Civil Liberties Union— los futuros estudiantes que son LGBTQ+ y que han experimentado un acoso significativo a causa de ello tienen casi el doble de probabilidades de decir que no planean ir a la universidad en absoluto que los estudiantes que experimentaron niveles más bajos de acoso, según una encuesta realizada por GLSEN, anteriormente Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

“Estás atacando a niños que ya son vulnerables”, dijo Javier Gómez, un estudiante LGBTQ en su primer año en Miami Dade College. “Y no se trata sólo de estudiantes queer. Muchos jóvenes están hartos”.

Aún no es evidente si las nuevas leyes están afectando el lugar donde los jóvenes LGBTQ eligen ir a la universidad, dijo Casey Pick, director de leyes y políticas de The Trevor Project, que apoya a los jóvenes LGBTQ en crisis. Existe evidencia que los adultos LGBTQ si se están alejando de los estados que aprueban leyes anti-LGBTQ, dijo Pick. Y “si los empleados adultos toman esto en cuenta cuando deciden dónde quieren vivir, puedes apostar que los estudiantes universitarios están tomando las mismas decisiones”.

Mientras tanto, en una era de rechazo a las políticas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión en muchos estados —y contra la acción afirmativa en todo el país— Amankwaah es una de un número creciente de estudiantes negros que eligen lo que consideran la seguridad relativa de una HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). La inscripción en las HBCU aumentó alrededor del 3 por ciento en 2021, el último año del que se dispone de cifras, mientras que el número de estudiantes en otras universidades y facultades disminuyó.

“El verdadero ataque aquí es el sentimiento de pertenencia”, dijo Jerry Young, quien dirige el programa Freedom to Learn en PEN America, que hace seguimiento a las leyes que restringen los esfuerzos de diversidad y la enseñanza sobre la raza en colegios y universidades. “Lo que realmente hace es izar una bandera para decirle a los estudiantes más marginados: ‘No los queremos aquí'”.

Más del 40 por ciento de los administradores de universidades y facultades dicen que el fallo de la Corte Suprema que restringe el uso de la acción afirmativa en las admisiones afectará la diversidad en sus campus, según una encuesta de Princeton Review cuando comenzaba el año escolar.

Los estudiantes universitarios de todas las razas y tendencias políticas informan que se sienten incómodos en los campus que se han convertido en campos de batalla de temas culturales y políticos. Los de izquierda están furiosos por las nuevas leyes que bloquean programas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión y la enseñanza de ciertas perspectivas sobre la raza. Mientras los de derecha lamentan que los oradores conservadores son abucheados o cancelados, los comentarios impopulares criticados en clase y lo que ven como una adopción de valores diferentes a los que aprendieron en casa.

Un padre de Michigan dijo que apoyaba la decisión de su hijo de saltarse la universidad. Según él, otros padres también están disuadiendo a sus hijos de ir a la universidad, citando “el consumo excesivo de alcohol, la cultura de las relaciones, las enseñanzas seculares, profesores de izquierdista radicales que mezclan antiamericanismo, anticapitalismo, anti libertad de expresión y un énfasis en la diversidad, equidad e inclusión” que, según él, es contrario a un enfoque en el mérito. El padre pidió que no se usara su nombre para que sus comentarios no afectaran a su hija, quien asiste a una universidad pública.

Más de uno de cada 10 estudiantes en universidades de cuatro años ahora dicen que sienten que no pertenecen a su campus, y otros dos de cada 10 no están ni de acuerdo ni muy de acuerdo con que pertenecen, según encontró otra encuesta de Lumina y Gallup. También descubrió que quienes responden de esta manera tienen más probabilidades de experimentar estrés con frecuencia y de abandonar los estudios. Uno de cada cuatro estudiantes hispanos informa que frecuente u ocasionalmente se siente inseguro o sufre falta de respeto, discriminación o acoso.

Los veteranos militares que utilizan los beneficios de la ley G.I. para retomar los estudios dicen que una de sus barreras más importantes es la sensación de que no serán bienvenidos, según una encuesta realizada por el Instituto D’Aniello para Veteranos y Familias Militares de la Universidad de Syracuse. Casi dos tercios dice que los profesores y administradores no entienden los desafíos que enfrentan, y el 70 por ciento dice lo mismo sobre sus compañeros de clase no veteranos.

Las universidades deben ser “espacios seguros y de afirmación”, dijo Pick, del Proyecto Trevor, no lugares de aislamiento y alienación.

Sin embargo, un número significativo de estudiantes dice que no se siente cómodo compartiendo sus puntos de vista en clase, según otra encuesta realizada por College Pulse para el Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth, de tendencia conservadora, en la Universidad Estatal de Dakota del Norte. De ellos, el 72 por ciento dice que teme que sus opiniones sean consideradas inaceptables por sus compañeros de clase y el 45 por ciento por sus profesores. Los estudiantes conservadores tienen menos probabilidades que sus compañeros liberales, de creer que todos los puntos de vista son bienvenidos y están menos dispuestos a compartir los suyos.

“¿Es realmente un entorno intelectualmente diverso?” se pregunta Sean Stevens, director de encuestas y análisis de la Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), que ha lanzado una clasificación de la libertad de expresión en los campus basada en las percepciones de los estudiantes sobre la comodidad al expresar ideas, la tolerancia hacia los oradores y otras medidas.

“Anecdóticamente y por experiencia personal, ciertamente hay un grupo de estudiantes

que están considerando estos factores en términos de dónde ir a la universidad”, dijo Stevens.

El 81 por ciento de los estudiantes liberales y el 53 por ciento de los conservadores dicen que apoyan las denuncias a profesores que hacen comentarios que consideran ofensivos, según la misma encuesta. Esta utilizó comentarios en su muestra como: “No hay evidencia de prejuicios contra los negros en los tiroteos policiales”, “Exigir la vacunación contra el COVID es un asalto a la libertad individual” y “El sexo biológico es un hecho científico”.

Una profesora de la Universidad Texas A&M fue investigada cuando un estudiante la acusó de criticar al vicegobernador del estado durante una conferencia, aunque finalmente fue exonerada. Una profesora de antropología de la Universidad de Chicago que impartió un curso universitario llamado “El problema de la blancura” dijo que se vio inundada de mensajes de odio cuando un estudiante conservador publicó su foto y su dirección de correo electrónico en las redes sociales.

Más de la mitad de los estudiantes de primer año dicen que las universidades tienen derecho a prohibir a oradores radicales, según una encuesta anual realizada por un instituto de la UCLA. La encuesta de College Pulse dice que el sentimiento lo comparte el doble de proporción de estudiantes liberales que de conservadores.

Relacionado: How higher education lost its shine

La aparición de un jurista conservador —quien habló en el Washington College de Maryland el mes pasado— fue interrumpida por estudiantes debido a sus posiciones sobre cuestiones LGBTQ y el aborto. El tema: la libertad de expresión en el campus.

En marzo, un grupo de estudiantes en el campus de Stanford interrumpió un discurso de un juez federal cuyo historial judicial, según dijeron, era anti-LGBTQ. Cuando pidió la intervención de un administrador, un decano asociado de diversidad, equidad e inclusión lo confrontó y le preguntó: “¿Vale la pena el dolor que esto causa y la división que esto causa?”. El decano asociado fue suspendido y luego renunció.

“Hoy es un hecho triste que la mayor amenaza a la libertad de expresión proviene del interior de la academia”, afirmó el American Council of Trustees and Alumni, de tendencia derechista, que está presionando a las universidades para que firmen su Iniciativa de Libertad Universitaria que alienta a enseñar a los estudiantes sobre libertad de expresión durante la orientación para estudiantes de primer año y disciplinar a las personas que interrumpan a los oradores o eventos, entre otras medidas.

“Tengo que imaginar que en las universidades que tienen un mal historial en materia de libertad de expresión o libertad académica, esto afectará su reputación”, dijo Steven Maguire, becario de libertad en el campus de la organización. “Escucho a personas decir cosas como: ‘Me preocupa a qué tipo de instituto universitario o universidad puedo enviar a mis hijos y si serán libres de ser ellos mismos y de expresarse'”.

Algunas universidades ahora están reclutando activamente estudiantes basándose en este tipo de inquietudes. Colorado College creó en septiembre un programa para facilitar el proceso a los estudiantes que desean transferirse de instituciones en estados que han prohibido las iniciativas de diversidad, equidad e inclusión. Hampshire College en Massachusetts ha ofrecido admisión a cualquier estudiante de New College en Florida, sujeto a lo que los críticos han descrito como una toma de posesión conservadora. Hasta ahora, treinta y cinco han aceptado la invitación.

Aunque muchos críticos conservadores de los institutos universitarios y universidades dicen que los profesores están adoctrinando a los estudiantes con opiniones liberales, los estudiantes entrantes de primer año tienden a tener opiniones de izquierda antes de poner un pie en el aula, según esa encuesta de UCLA.

Menos de uno de cada cinco se considera conservador. Tres cuartas partes dicen que el aborto debería ser legal y favorecer leyes de control de armas más estrictas, el 68 por ciento dice que las personas ricas deberían pagar más impuestos de los que pagan ahora y el 86 por ciento que el cambio climático debería ser una prioridad federal y que debería haber un camino claro hacia la ciudadanía para todos los inmigrantes indocumentados.

Los futuros estudiantes dicen que están observando cómo se aprueban nuevas leyes, surgen controversias en los campus y analizan activamente no sólo la calidad de la comida y las especialidades disponibles en las universidades a las que podrían asistir, sino también la política estatal.

“Una vez que decidí que iba a Carolina del Norte Central, busqué si Carolina del Norte era un estado rojo o un estado azul”, dijo Amankwaah. (Carolina del Norte tiene un demócrata como gobernador, pero los republicanos controlan ambas cámaras de la legislatura y tienen una supermayoría a prueba de veto en el Senado estatal).

Las leyes anti-LGBTQ de Florida llevaron a Javier Gómez a dejar su estado natal y mudarse a Nueva York para ir a la escuela de moda. Pero luego regresó y se transfirió a Miami Dade.

“La gente me pregunta: ‘¿Por qué diablos estás de vuelta en Florida?’”, dijo Gómez. “La razón por la que regresé fue porque tenía esa vocación innata de que tenías que quedarte y luchar por los niños queer y trans de aquí. A veces es abrumador. Puede ser muy agotador mentalmente. Pero quería quedarme y continuar la lucha y construir una comunidad contra el odio”.

The post Las guerras culturales en los campus comienzan a afectar el lugar donde los estudiantes eligen ir a la universidad appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When Angel Amankwaah traveled from Denver to North Carolina Central University for incoming student orientation this summer, she decided she had made the right choice.

She had fun learning the chants that fans perform at football games. But she also saw that “there are students who look like me, and professors who look like me” at the historically Black university, said Amankwaah, 18, who is Black. “I knew that I was in a safe space.”

This has now become an important consideration for college-bound students from all backgrounds and beliefs.

Students have long picked schools based on their academic reputations and social life. But with campuses in the crosshairs of the culture wars, many students are now also taking stock of attacks on diversity, course content, and speech and speakers from both ends of the political spectrum. They’re monitoring hate crimes, anti-LGBTQ legislation, state abortion laws and whether students like them —Black, rural, military veterans, LGBTQ or from other backgrounds — are represented and supported on campus.

“There’s no question that what’s happening at the state level is directly affecting these students,” said Alyse Levine, founder and CEO of Premium Prep, a private college admissions consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When they look at colleges in various states now, she said, “There are students who are asking, ‘Am I really wanted here?’ ”

For some students on both sides of the political divide, the answer is no. In the chaotic new world of American colleges and universities, many say they feel unwelcome at certain schools, while others are prepared to shut down speakers and report faculty with whose opinions they disagree.

It’s too early to know how much this trend will affect where and whether prospective students end up going to college, since publicly available enrollment data lags real time. But there are early clues that it’s having a significant impact.

One in four prospective students has already ruled out a college or university for consideration because of the political climate in its state, according to a survey by the higher education consulting firm Art & Science Group.

Related: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates

Among students who describe themselves as liberal, the most common reason to rule out colleges and universities in a particular state, that survey found, is because it’s “too Republican” or has what they consider lax gun regulations, anti-LGBTQ legislation, restrictive abortion laws and a lack of concern about racism. Students who describe themselves as conservative are rejecting states they believe to be “too Democrat” and that have liberal abortion and gay-rights laws.

With so much attention focused on these issues, The Hechinger Report has created a first-of-its-kind College Welcome Guide showing state laws and institutional policies that affect college and university students, from bans on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “critical race theory” to rules about whether student IDs are accepted as proof of residency for voting purposes.

The interactive guide also lists, for every four-year institution in the country, such things as racial and gender diversity among students and faculty, the number of student veterans enrolled, free-speech rankings, the incidence of on-campus race-motivated hate crimes and if the university or college serves many students from rural places.

Sixty percent of prospective students of all backgrounds say new state restrictions on abortion would at least somewhat influence where they choose to go to college, a separate poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found. Of these, eight in 10 say they would prefer to go to a state with greater access to reproductive health services. (Lumina is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)

“We have many young women who will not look at certain states,” said Levine. One of her own clients backed out of going to a university in St. Louis after Missouri banned almost all abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, she said.

Institutions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas are the most likely to be knocked off the lists of liberal students, according to the Art & Science Group survey, while conservative students avoid California and New York.

One in four prospective students has already ruled out a college or university for consideration because of the political climate in its state.

One in eight high school students in Florida say they won’t go to a public university in their own state because of its education policies, a separate poll, by the college ranking and information website Intelligent.com, found.

With 494 anti-LGBTQ laws proposed or adopted this year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, prospective students who are LGBTQ and have experienced significant harassment because of it are nearly twice as likely to say they don’t plan to go to college at all than students who experienced lower levels of harassment, according to a survey by GLSEN, formerly the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

“You are attacking kids who are already vulnerable,” said Javier Gomez, an LGBTQ student in his first year at Miami Dade College. “And it’s not just queer students. So many young people are fed up.”

Related: The college degree gap between Black and white Americans was always bad. It’s getting worse

It’s not yet evident whether the new laws are affecting where LGBTQ young people are choosing to go to college, said Casey Pick, director of law and policy at The Trevor Project, which supports LGBTQ young people in crisis. But LGBTQ adults are moving away from states passing anti-LGBTQ laws, she said. And “if adult employees are taking this into account when they decide where they want to live, you can bet that college students are making the same decisions.”

Meanwhile, in an era of pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion policies in many states, and against affirmative action nationwide, Amankwaah is one of a growing number of Black students choosing what they see as the relative security of an HBCU. Enrollment at HBCUs increased by around 3 percent in 2021, the last year for which the figure is available, while the number of students at other universities and colleges fell.

“The real attack here is on the feeling of belonging,” said Jeremy Young, who directs the Freedom to Learn program at PEN America, which tracks laws that restrict college and university diversity efforts and teaching about race. “What it really does is hoist a flag to say to the most marginalized students, ‘We don’t want you here.’ ”

More than 40 percent of university and college administrators say the Supreme Court ruling curbing the use of affirmative action in admissions will affect diversity on their campuses, a Princeton Review poll found as the school year was beginning.

Sixty percent of prospective students of all backgrounds say new state restrictions on abortion would at least somewhat influence where they choose to go to college.

College students of all races and political persuasions report feeling uncomfortable on campuses that have become political battlegrounds. Those on the left are bristling at new laws blocking programs in diversity, equity and inclusion and the teaching of certain perspectives about race; on the right, at conservative speakers being shouted down or canceled, unpopular comments being called out in class and what they see as an embrace of values different from what they learned at home.

One Michigan father said he supported his son’s decision to skip college. Other parents, he said, are discouraging their kids from going, citing “binge-drinking, hookup culture, secular teachings, a lopsided leftist faculty mixed with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-free speech and a diversity, equity and inclusion emphasis” that he said is at odds with a focus on merit. The father asked that his name not be used so that his comments didn’t reflect on his daughter, who attends a public university.

More than one in 10 students at four-year universities now say they feel as if they downright don’t belong on their campus, and another two in 10 neither agree nor strongly agree that they belong, another Lumina and Gallup survey found. It found that those who answer in these ways are more likely to frequently experience stress and more likely to drop out. One in four Hispanic students report frequently or occasionally feeling unsafe or experiencing disrespect, discrimination or harassment.

Related: American confidence in higher education hits a new low, yet most still see value in a college degree

Military veterans who use their G.I. Bill benefits to return to school say one of their most significant barriers is a feeling that they won’t be welcome, a survey by the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University found. Nearly two-thirds say that faculty and administrators don’t understand the challenges they face, and 70 percent say the same thing about their non-veteran classmates.

Colleges should be “safe and affirming spaces,” said Pick, of the Trevor Project — not places of isolation and alienation.

Yet a significant number of students say they don’t feel comfortable sharing their views in class, according to another survey, conducted by College Pulse for the right-leaning Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University. Of those, 72 percent say they worry their opinions would be considered unacceptable by classmates and 45 percent, by their professors. Conservative students are less likely than their liberal classmates to believe that all points of view are welcome and less willing to share theirs.

“I do hear people saying things like, ‘I’m worried about what kind of a college or university I can send my kids to and whether they’ll be free to be themselves and to express themselves.’ ”

Steve Maguire, campus freedom fellow, American Council of Trustees and Alumni

“Is that really an intellectually diverse environment?” asked Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which has launched a campus free-speech ranking based on students’ perceptions of comfort expressing ideas, tolerance for speakers and other measures.

“Anecdotally and from personal experience, there’s certainly a pocket of students who are weighing these factors in terms of where to go to college,” Stevens said.

Eighty-one percent of liberal students and 53 percent of conservative ones say they support reporting faculty who make comments that they find offensive, the same survey found. It used sample comments such as, “There is no evidence of anti-Black bias in police shootings,” “Requiring vaccination for COVID is an assault on individual freedom” and “Biological sex is a scientific fact.”

A professor at Texas A&M University was put under investigation when a student accused her of criticizing the state’s lieutenant governor during a lecture, though she was ultimately exonerated. An anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who taught an undergraduate course called “The Problem of Whiteness” said she was deluged with hateful messages when a conservative student posted her photo and email address on social media.

More than half of all freshmen say that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers, according to an annual survey by an institute at UCLA; the College Pulse poll says that sentiment is held by twice the proportion of liberal students as conservative ones.

Related: How higher education lost its shine

An appearance by a conservative legal scholar who spoke at Washington College in Maryland last month was disrupted by students because of his positions about LGBTQ issues and abortion. The subject: free speech on campus.

A group of Stanford students in March disrupted an on-campus speech by a federal judge whose judicial record they said was anti-LGBTQ. When he asked for an administrator to intervene, an associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion confronted him and asked: “Is it worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” The associate dean was put on leave and later resigned.

“Today it is a sad fact that the greatest threat to free speech comes from within the academy,” pronounced the right-leaning American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which is pushing colleges to sign on to its Campus Freedom Initiative that encourages teaching students about free expression during freshman orientation and disciplining people who disrupt speakers or events, among other measures.

Seventy-two percent of students say they worry their opinions would be considered unacceptable by their classmates and 45 percent that their comments would be considered unacceptable by their professors.

“I have to imagine that universities that have a bad track record on freedom of expression or academic freedom, that it will affect their reputations,” said Steven Maguire, the organization’s campus freedom fellow. “I do hear people saying things like, ‘I’m worried about what kind of a college or university I can send my kids to and whether they’ll be free to be themselves and to express themselves.’ ”

Some colleges are now actively recruiting students on the basis of these kinds of concerns. Colorado College in September created a program to ease the process for students who want to transfer away from institutions in states that have banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; Hampshire College in Massachusetts has offered admission to any student from New College in Florida, subject of what critics have described as a conservative takeover. Thirty-five have so far accepted the invitation.

Though many conservative critics of colleges and universities say faculty are indoctrinating students with liberal opinions, incoming freshmen tend to hold left-leaning views before they ever set foot in a classroom, according to that UCLA survey.

If everyone is thinking the same way or in similar ways about all topics, “is that really an intellectually diverse environment?”

Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Fewer than one in five consider themselves conservative. Three-quarters say abortion should be legal and favor stricter gun control laws, 68 percent say wealthy people should pay more taxes than they do now and 86 percent that climate change should be a federal priority and that there should be a clear path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Prospective students say they are watching as new laws are passed and controversies erupt on campuses, and actively looking into not just the quality of food and available majors at the colleges they might attend, but state politics.

“Once I decided I was going to North Carolina Central, I looked up whether North Carolina was a red state or a blue state,” Amankwaah said. (North Carolina has a Democrat as governor but Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and hold a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate.)

Florida’s anti-LGBTQ laws prompted Javier Gomez to leave his native state and move to New York to go to fashion school. But then he came back, transferring to Miami Dade.

“People ask me, ‘Why the hell are you back in Florida?’ ” said Gomez. “The reason I came back was that there was this innate calling in me that you have to stick around and fight for the queer and trans kids here. It’s overwhelming at times. It can be very mentally depleting. But I wanted to stay and continue the fight and build community against hatred.”

This story about choosing colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

To create our College Welcome Guide we relied on more than a dozen data sources. If you haven’t seen our tool, you can find it here. Read on to learn more about where the information comes from.

Campus-level data

All of the data other than what is shown on the maps or otherwise noted comes from IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. IPEDS data is reported directly by colleges to the U.S. Department of Education. Our dataset includes all two- and four-year colleges.

Figures for total enrollment and enrollment by race/ethnicity and gender show the 12-month unduplicated undergraduate student numbers in 2021-22, the latest year for which the information is available. When 12-month enrollment was unavailable, as was the case for enrollment by age and attendance status (part- or full-time), data from the fall 2021 semester has been used. Pell Grant enrollment data is from 2020-21.

Institutional affiliation indicates whether a private, nonprofit institution is associated with a religious group or denomination.

Graduation rates were calculated using the most recent five years of data. In the case of institutions for which those five full years were not available, the graduation rate was calculated from the available years. This figure represents the percentage of students who complete a bachelor’s degree within six years or an associate degree within three years.

The proportion of students with disabilities represents the percentage of undergraduates in the fall who formally registered with their institutions’ offices of disability services.

Under the IPEDS definition, a point of contact for veterans refers to whether a school has dedicated support services for veterans, military service members and their families. An institution is shown as having services for student veterans if it offers at least one of the following: the Yellow Ribbon Program, academic credit for military training or a recognized student veteran organization; or if it is a member of the Department of Defense Voluntary Education Partnership Memorandum of Understanding. The number of students receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits and tuition assistance includes spouses and dependents. Only benefits awarded through or certified by the institution are shown.

Hate crimes are reported by institutions to the U.S. Department of Education and are defined as crimes for which there is evidence “that the victim was intentionally selected because of the perpetrator’s bias against the victim.” The data, which was downloaded from the department’s Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool, includes hate crimes committed in any building owned or controlled by an institution or student organization or on any public property within or adjacent to a campus, such as streets, sidewalks and parking facilities.

Data about first-generation students came from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, which gets it from the National Student Loan Data System. Under the federal definition, students are considered first generation if they do not have a parent who graduated with a four-year degree. First-generation status is self reported by the student.

Data about whether or not there is an LGBTQ+ student resource center on a campus comes from the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals.

In addition to indicating which institutions are designated as historically Black, Hispanic-serving or affiliated with a religion, we used data from the MSI Data Project to show colleges and universities that have Black, Hispanic, Asian-American and Indigenous enrollments that exceed the proportion of the general population for those categories. We also used data from the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges to indicate which institutions are considered rural-serving, meaning they’re in rural places or serve students from those places.

State-level data

Information about whether a state allows undocumented immigrants residing in that state to pay in-state tuition comes from the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

Veterans’ tuition status was determined on a state-by-state basis by a review of policies of public higher education institutions, as well as state higher education and veterans’ agencies.

States that restrict the teaching of critical race theory are tracked by PEN America. Legislatures that have constrained or banned the use of diversity, equity and inclusion programs were identified through legislative tracking services and news reports. Some states that have not yet limited or banned DEI have ordered that public universities disclose how much they spend on those programs. We included this measure because it is a step that has historically been a precursor for legislatures to cut public institutions’ budgets by those amounts.

Anti-LGBTQ+ laws affecting college students are monitored by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Trans Legislation Tracker. Anti-trans laws are those passed since 2022 and include legislation restricting trans athletes or medical procedures for trans people including those of college age.

Information on state laws allowing or restricting the use of student IDs to vote comes from the Voting Rights Lab.

LGBTQ+ Profile scores produced by the Movement Advancement Project are based on measures including the proportion of adults and of workers who are LGBTQ+ and a state’s policies and laws around LGBTQ+ issues.

Data from the Center for Reproductive Rights has been used to show abortion laws by state.

Download the data here.

This College Welcome Guide was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post How we made our College Welcome Guide appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

College decisions used to depend mostly on an institution’s academic reputation and its social life. Today, many other factors influence a prospective student’s thinking. We’ve gathered those into this interactive College Welcome Guide, to help you assess how receptive colleges are to students from a variety of backgrounds, and to map state laws that affect college students.

If you have a question about the information here, or would like to share your perspective with us, email us at editor@hechingerreport.org. 

The table above has data for more than 4,000 colleges and universities. You can explore this data by clicking the buttons at the top of the table. After selecting a  category, enter the name of a college or university in the search bar. The table resets when the data type is changed, so if you change the category, you need to enter the college name again. If you search for a college that shares its name with other colleges, only one of them will show up in the table. You can view the data for each of them by clicking on the page arrows in the bottom center of the table.

Colored dots under some college names indicate whether the institution is religiously affiliated and/or serves a significant portion of particular types of students, including those who are Black, Hispanic, Asian-American and Indigenous. We also mark institutions that are in rural places or serve students from those areas. A key at the bottom of the table describes what each colored dot represents.

The map below shows laws and policies that affect students, across nine categories in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. 

You can explore categories by clicking on the buttons. (By default, the map shows which states restrict the teaching of critical race theory, or CRT, in higher education.) Click on any state to see additional information for particular categories. The sources of information for each category are noted at the bottom of the map, and linked so you can learn more.

Among other things, these maps show whether states offer resident tuition or free tuition to veterans even if they aren’t using GI Bill benefits. (The federal government requires that veterans qualify for in-state tuition if they’re on the GI Bill, regardless of where they live.)

In addition to constraining or banning the use of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, some states have ordered that public universities disclose how much they spend on DEI efforts — a step that has historically served as a precursor for legislatures to cut public institutions’ budgets by those amounts.

Anti-trans laws shown here are those passed since 2022 and include measures restricting trans athletes or medical procedures for people including those of college age.

State laws allowing or restricting the use of student IDs to vote can also affect students. In Georgia, for example, students at public universities can use a student ID to vote, but those at private universities – including several historically Black institutions – cannot. 

LGBTQ+ Profile scores from the Movement Advancement Project reflect the proportion of adults in a state who are LGBTQ+ and state policies and laws around LGBTQ+ issues.

In addition to the reproductive rights laws listed in our maps, total or near-total abortion bans have been signed into law but are so far enjoined by courts in these states: Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Prospective students might also care about how likely they are to succeed at a given college. The graphic below shows graduation rates, both for the entire student body and broken out by race or ethnicity, and you can compare up to five colleges on any of these measures. 

Choose a category from the dropdown at the top of the graphic and then enter a college or university in the search bar; institution names will appear as you begin to type.

You can learn more about all our data sources here or download the data here.

Design and development by Fazil Khan

Additional reporting by Meredith Kolodner, Jon Marcus, Olivia Sanchez, Amanda Chen and Sarah Butrymowicz

Illustration by Camilla Forte

The post Beyond the Rankings: The College Welcome Guide appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Northeastern Ohio, it was the National Guardsmen and women who stepped up to save the day. They were deployed to emergency food distribution sites, ran massive vaccine clinics, and even filled in at county jails when there were staffing shortages

These are people who have jobs outside the military, but who report to training one weekend per month and two weeks per year, even in the most uneventful of times. When there is a crisis or disaster, these are the people who drop everything else to serve their communities.

These are people who David Merriman, the director of Cuyahoga County’s Department of Health and Human Services, respects immensely. So when the opportunity arose for the county to help them earn college degrees by offering personalized college coaching, he was eager to support it.

Members of the Ohio National Guard already have access to full college scholarships, but many still don’t graduate. Only about 19 percent of  the state’s National Guard members (about 3,000 of 16,000 total members) have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 22 percent of all National Guard members and about 37 percent of the total U.S. adult population, according to the most recent data from the military and U.S. Census Bureau.

Getting through college as an adult can be a near insurmountable challenge, even without National Guard responsibilities. Often, adult students have jobs and family caretaking responsibilities. They frequently face financial challenges that result in housing, transportation or food insecurity. School is squeezed into whatever space is left in their lives. 

“There’s no cookie cutter intervention here. If there was, we’d be doing it.”

David Merriman, the director of health and human services in Cuyahoga County

Now, Ohio National Guard members who live in or attend college in Cuyahoga County can receive up to four years of free college coaching designed to help them juggle all these competing priorities and graduate.

The program, which began this September, is a countywide pilot run in partnership with education nonprofit InsideTrack to see if giving National Guard members personalized support can help them take advantage of the existing college scholarship.

“Every one of them is going to have a different experience,” Merriman said. “There’s no cookie cutter intervention here. If there was, we’d be doing it.”

The coaching targets student’s individual needs. Some might need help figuring out how to navigate the bureaucracy of higher education or balance all their responsibilities outside the classroom. Others might want someone to bounce career ideas off of and help planning for postgraduation life. And the students can reach their coaches in whatever ways work best for them, whether it’s Zoom, phone calls or texts.

“Getting your degree is hard. Completing is hard, right? And that’s for any normal person,” said Jessica Hector, associate vice president of partner success at InsideTrack, which provides the coaches. “Many times, if a student’s not successful in school, it’s not academics, it’s because of all the other things that kind of come into play that pull you away from your long-term goal.”

Roughly 9,600 Ohio National Guard members, or 60 percent, have only earned a high school diploma or GED. Some of them did attend college but did not graduate.

InsideTrack will initially have the capacity to serve roughly 500 students in the program, Hector said, but might increase that number if there is greater interest. And if the program is successful, Merriman and Hector said they hope the coaching can be offered to National Guard members across the state. 

Right now, funding for the program hinges on whether students continue their classes and earn certificates or degrees.

Only about 19 percent of  the state’s National Guard members (about 3,000 of 16,000 total members) have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 22 percent of all National Guard members and about 37 percent of the total U.S. adult population.

They’re using a “pay for success” model, meaning that InsideTrack is paid for its coaching services by the social impact investment firm Maycomb Capital. If students stay enrolled and graduate, Cuyahoga County pays InsideTrack, which in turn reimburses Maycomb. The hope is that linking payment to outcomes will drive success.

Public-private partnerships can be complicated, Merriman said, and are only worth it if they are developing services that meet residents’ needs. He thinks this program will do just that. 

Merriman, who also serves on the county’s workforce development board, said that members can gain valuable work experiences from their National Guard deployment. Those experiences, when combined with a college degree, can make them attractive candidates for in-demand jobs. The National Guard members who staffed the outdoor food distribution centers during Covid had to have sharp logistics skills and learned how to use machinery to load and unload the donated food. The members who ran the vaccine clinics now have months worth of valuable work experience in medical settings. 

In addition to helping the National Guard members manage their personal, work, service and school responsibilities, Merriman said he thinks it will be valuable for the members to have the support of someone to help them brainstorm how to use those skills in possible careers. 

“These are prime candidates to fill in demand jobs that, frankly, are essential to our community’s economic stability,” Merriman said. “We have to do something that connects these guardsmen to the jobs that really can lead out of these deployment experiences.” 

This story about the Ohio National Guard was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post Can free college coaching help National Guard members graduate? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

College application season is in high gear, and as colleges and universities make decisions about who to accept, I urge them to pay closer attention to one group in their applicant pool: veterans.

Improving access for veterans at selective institutions is important for three reasons: First, graduation rates at these institutions are significantly higher, and degree attainment is integral to realizing the many benefits, financial and otherwise, that higher education affords.

Second, students at these colleges and universities go on, in disproportionate numbers, to be leaders in our society. Having traditional-aged students engage with enlisted veterans, while ensuring that veterans have access to civilian leadership opportunities, contributes to a healthier democracy.

Third, the role of the military in our democracy must not be taken for granted. As one of the institutions that supports our democratic traditions, we need to better appreciate its role in our society.

Importantly, our military members swear an oath to our Constitution, not to our political leaders — despite the fact that our elected president is the commander in chief. This guarantees that the military will not interfere in political battles and strengthens our institutions’ ability to protect the transfer of power based on election results.

This commitment to the Constitution also provides a contrast to many countries around the world, where militaries and their leaders often support, install or oust presidents and prime ministers, challenging democratic norms and contributing to the rise of authoritarianism.

Related: At some colleges that recruit veterans and their GI Bill money, none graduate

We saw greater attention to ensuring college access for veterans after World War II, with the GI Bill enabling about 8 million returning servicemen to enroll in college and graduate school, changing the paths of their lives.

The sheer number of Americans mobilized for World War II created a generation who understood and respected the role of the military in America.

While there were significant failures to extend this program to all GIs, particularly African Americans, there are still lessons to be learned from it for the 21st century.

Today, with an all-volunteer military and far fewer Americans serving, the military-civilian divide has increased. This is apparent in our government, where fewer and fewer veterans are now being elected to national public office or appointed to the judiciary.

If most people in America never have to worry about serving, they pay much less attention to members of the military and fail to ensure that they are treated appropriately.

Meanwhile, those who enlist and are sent into harm’s way may question the fairness of the system. Many are first-generation Americans and from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, and enlist because they feel that other options for investing in their futures are restricted.

Related: Getting educated while on active duty is getting harder as military rolls back benefits

If those who serve are very different from those who don’t, and those who serve don’t feel that our society treats them fairly, we put our democracy at risk.

One way to counter this: Make greater investments in those who do serve. There are a variety of steps we should take, including making sure that veterans have access to housing, health care and jobs. Making sure they can take advantage of the post-9/11 GI Bill benefits is critical.

Enrolling more veterans in higher education will not only enable them to earn the credentials that will allow them to compete in the civilian labor market, but will also benefit those who haven’t served by encouraging them to learn from those who have.

If those who serve are very different from those who don’t, and those who serve don’t feel that our society treats them fairly, we put our democracy at risk.

Over the last decade, many selective colleges and universities have in fact stepped up. The University of Chicago, Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Syracuse and William & Mary have all increased their recruitment of enlisted veterans. Columbia has done so for longer, through their general studies program.

Among the smaller liberal arts colleges, both Vassar and Wesleyan stand out for having recruited veterans earlier and more consistently than others. Princeton and Yale have gone from enrolling less than a handful of veterans to 30 to 40 per year over the last decade. These colleges and universities have been assisted by several nonprofit organizations whose missions are to help enlisted veterans consider, successfully apply to and succeed at selective schools. These groups include the Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP), Service to School and the Posse Veterans Program. (Disclaimer: I recently joined WSP’s board and chair the Posse Veterans Program Advisory Committee. I also introduced the pilot Posse Veterans Program at Vassar when president.)

With the help of these organizations and a commitment by the more-selective colleges and universities, we can ensure that enlisted veterans are given the educational opportunities that they deserve.

America’s selective colleges and universities opened their doors wide to returning veterans once before. Our nation will be well served if they do so again, to all students who qualify for admission, at the start of the 21st century. We risk a hollowed-out version of democracy if we fail our veterans.

Catharine “Cappy” Hill is managing director of Ithaka S+R and former president of Vassar College.

This story about veterans and selective colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: Why veterans should not be overlooked at selective colleges appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Jodie Parks works full time as an occupational therapist at a Michigan state psychiatric hospital. But since October she’s had a second job: spending four hours a week, she estimates, making calls and chasing down paperwork to prove that she previously served in the military.

She needs that proof to have her student loans forgiven under the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, created by a 2007 law that pledged to erase students’ debt if they took lower-paying but critical jobs with nonprofits and the government.

It’s a promise that, for most borrowers, has yet to pay off. Fewer than 2 percent of applicants were approved between 2017, when the first borrowers became eligible, and the onset of Covid-19. And among the huge number of applications denied or lost in the bureaucracy were many from Americans who perform perhaps the ultimate public service: joining the armed forces.

“I’m another veteran who’s been told that there’s a service for veterans, and then when you try to get through the red tape, it’s too hard,” said Parks, who was in the Air Force from 2009 to 2015, stationed in Arizona, Europe and Africa, before leaving the military and getting a degree in occupational therapy. “So you just kind of give up.”

Ninety-two percent of military borrowers who applied for loan forgiveness before the pandemic were denied by the Department of Education, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, due to confusing and narrow rules about eligible loan types and repayment plans that made it difficult for them to qualify.

“The law made a promise to people that if they went into public service jobs, they would have their loans forgiven. And a lot of people went to school on that basis,” said Christopher Madaio, vice president for legal affairs at Veterans Education Success, which advocates for military members.

Related: Getting educated while on active duty is getting harder as military rolls back benefits

In October, the Biden administration temporarily loosened the program’s rules for one year to give more borrowers the chance to qualify. Waived are many of the strict guidelines that stymied applicants. Borrowers now can retroactively convert to a loan type that makes them eligible. That’s helped more members of the military with student debt: About 1,500 have had their loans forgiven under the waiver since October, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education said in an email.

But that’s a tiny portion of the almost 177,000 active-duty service members whose federal loans are or could be eligible for forgiveness according to the GAO. And that larger number doesn’t include the thousands like Parks who are no longer on active duty. She and other veterans said they’ve spent months trapped in a bureaucratic maze that may actually make it harder for them than for nonmilitary borrowers to get forgiveness.

It’s not clear how many other people might be stuck. The Department of Education had about 173,000 forgiveness applications in process as of the end of February.

Thousands of dollars apiece are in play for those who joined the military. About half the active-duty service members who have federal student loans have balances of more than $13,000, according to the GAO.

A lot is at stake for the armed forces, too. In an all-volunteer system, they have a tough time finding people to fill mission-critical jobs, including doctors and information technology specialists, for whom the forgiveness program could be an effective recruitment tool, the GAO noted. In a survey of military lawyers, 94 percent said they’d be more likely to quit the service if the program were eliminated.

For Parks and other veterans, the biggest hurdle in getting loan forgiveness has been proving to the Department of Education that they served — an odd problem, since a fellow federal agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, has that information.

Parks, 39, has about $48,000 in student loans, and when she heard about the temporary waiver in October, she got to work assembling her forgiveness application. A key piece of it is a form that applicants must get signed by eligible current or former employers — government agencies or nonprofits — certifying the dates that forgiveness applicants worked there.

For Parks, getting that employment certification form signed by the state of Michigan, her current employer, couldn’t have been easier: “They were on it. They knew exactly what form it was,” she said. 

She thought it would go the same with the Air Force. Instead, she spent weeks making calls to find out who in the bureaucracy might sign. Finally given the number of a person she was told could do it, she tried him every day for a month and never heard back.

Related: Overdue tuition and fees — as little as $41 — derail hundreds of thousands of California college students

Next, she tried the Veterans Administration, getting rerouted repeatedly until she reached an official who leveled with her: It would be nearly impossible to get a signature out of the VA because it didn’t have anyone designated to provide one. He suggested she go to a military base in person and ask someone there to sign the form, or contact a commander she knew. But most of her commanders had retired in the six years since she’d served.

All this would have been avoided had her loan servicer, a Department of Education contractor called FedLoan Servicing, accepted as proof a standard official document veterans get when they leave the military: their certificate of release or discharge from active duty, better known as DD Form 214. It shows veterans’ dates of service and is used as proof for benefits, including VA home loans.

But, Parks said, FedLoan told her it wasn’t enough — she’d need an actual signature on the employment certification form.

Since she couldn’t get one, FedLoan told her to pull together the documents she had, including Air Force W-2s from the time she’d served. She had only one, because her tax preparer throws away documents older than seven years. She finally submitted her application in February, four months after she started the process, but she doubts the single W-2 will be accepted as proof.

Other veterans and service members have experienced similar frustrations.

To qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a person has to not only work full time in a public agency or nonprofit, but also make the first 120 payments on their loans — which typically takes 10 years. Navy veteran Stacy Hunter, 46, submitted her DD 214 with her forgiveness application in October but was told in a letter from FedLoan and the Department of Education that her seven years of Navy service, during which her loan payments were deferred, didn’t count toward her 120 payments.

That’s despite the department’s announcement in October that months spent on active duty count toward PSLF even if the service member’s loan payments were in deferment. But neither the department nor FedLoan has explained why they’re not counting Hunter’s time, and she’s spent the months since trying to get answers. In February, she wrote her congressperson for help.

Mike Smiley, 42, also spent many hours getting military sign-off for, and seeking answers about, the loan forgiveness he believed he’d earned. He served 14 years in the Navy as a doctor, leaving in 2019. Today he’s a pediatric pulmonologist at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, a nonprofit in St. Louis. With $50,000 owed in student loans and four kids, he would be hugely helped by getting out from under that debt, he said. 

Related: At some colleges that recruit veterans and their GI Bill money, none graduate

FedLoan wouldn’t accept his DD 214 and even rejected a letter from the Navy’s personnel command verifying his service, Smiley said. But former Navy co-workers connected him with the human resources department at his old command, and the department signed his employment form. He submitted his forgiveness application in early December.

After hearing nothing for several weeks, he became concerned that his paperwork had gotten lost, especially when a nonmilitary co-worker who’d applied for loan forgiveness two weeks after he did was approved. So Smiley submitted a complaint to the Department of Education and later went to the department’s ombudsman. He also started calling FedLoan every two to three weeks, spending at least an hour on hold over his lunch hour waiting to talk to someone. On one call in early March, he found out that his application was stuck because he’d saved it as a PDF file.

Finally, on March 22, the department’s ombudsman contacted him: His loan forgiveness was approved.  

“I really wish they would come up with a process to take care of people, not just myself, but other people who are in my shoes who maybe aren’t as persistent,” he said.

For the Department of Education, part of the problem may be the avalanche of forgiveness applications. After the waiver announcement in October, the number spiked by 40 percent, said a Department of Education spokesperson. “The loan servicer system had not quite been reconfigured to be able to send the kind of automated communications that align with the terms of the waiver and the benefits that were being offered. … This is not a perfect process,” she said. (The latest department data show that, from October through early March, about 100,000 people total had qualified for loan forgiveness.)

If a forgiveness application is otherwise in order, the spokesperson said, the DD 214 “generally suffices” to prove military service. Asked in what cases it wouldn’t be enough, she said she didn’t know. “But it is a form of additional documentation that is acceptable,” she said.

Related: Veterans continue to battle for their military training to count as college credit

As for FedLoan, spokesperson Keith New said by email that DD 214 forms are acceptable if submitted with other information “supporting that the requirements for eligible employment have been met (e.g., full-time employment).” Such forms are “reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” he added. He said he couldn’t comment on Smiley’s and Hunter’s cases because of privacy laws. 

For all that, Madaio of Veterans Education Success gives the Biden administration credit for using its authority to temporarily waive the program’s narrow rules, a step military borrower advocates had called for since at least November 2020. “The administration is trying as hard as it can,” Madaio said.

And the Department of Education said it’s making improvements. It’s working with the Department of Defense to set up a system that would automatically match data across the two agencies, said a department spokesperson — which could end borrowers’ hours on the phone seeking signatures. And it’s collaborating with advocates to draft new permanent regulations designed to help more borrowers qualify after the waiver expires in October.

Ninety-two percent of military borrowers who applied for public service student loan forgiveness before the pandemic were denied by the Department of Education

“We’re really hopeful,” said Kelly Hruska, government relations director at the National Military Family Association. “We’re glad that the Department of Education is doing this rulemaking and taking on these issues, and so we are anxious to see the final results.”

For her part, Parks feels lucky that her work schedule makes it possible to keep on top of her forgiveness application.

“If I wasn’t at a job with an afternoon shift, there’s no way that I would have gotten any of this done,” she said.

This story about military veterans and student loans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Though the past year has put a spotlight on the limits and possibilities of using technology for teaching and learning, we began exploring the utility of using virtual reality as a medium for Holocaust education before the pandemic reshaped the educational landscape.  

Virtual reality (VR) has existed for over 30 years, but only recently has it become affordable enough to use widely. It is reasonable to expect that VR will become a mainstream technology in the coming years.  

Over the past decade, researchers, museum professionals and educators have started to explore the use of virtual and augmented reality in relation to Holocaust education and memory. At the same time, the Future Projects team (a group focused on innovations in Holocaust education and memory at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, or USHMM) and a group of faculty and students at the Rowan University Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (the Rowan Center) have been working on independent, but parallel, virtual reality projects.  

Students revealed that they were eager to spend more time with the experience. One even said she had “never wanted to learn history’’ before.

Both of these projects focus on the Warsaw Ghetto, the well-known ghetto established in German-occupied Poland by the Third Reich during World War II. Teams from the USHMM and the Rowan Center developed and deployed and then gathered feedback about these projects from a number of stakeholders, including scholars, museum professionals, middle and high school teachers, college students and a general audience.  

Both projects use technology that creates an immersive experience, but they are aimed at different audiences. The USHMM experience is being developed with a museum audience in mind, with users ranging from those who have never encountered the Holocaust before to Holocaust scholars from around the world. 

“The Warsaw Project” designed by the Rowan Center is created for classroom use on the portable Oculus Quest system. It’s intended for larger museum, school and community spaces. 

Though the projects are different, the results of the interviews, focus groups and written feedback about them were remarkably similar. Teachers who viewed the recreated spaces from the Warsaw Ghetto were enthusiastic, because many had struggled to engage all learners in their (often brief) units about the Holocaust. A high school teacher who shared feedback on the project said, “The VR brings history to life in a really different way.”  

The teachers believe that the hands-on, independent nature of virtual reality will bring reluctant students to the study of history. Interactive digital and virtual experiences allow students to make choices about materials and people, something the teachers said rarely happens in a traditional unit of study. This is critically important to learning. 

Related: Virtual field trips bring students face-to-face with Earth’s most fragile ecosystems 

Feedback from students revealed that they were eager to spend more time with the experiences. One even said that she had “never wanted to learn history’’ before. 

Perhaps more importantly, students asked questions about what they saw in the virtual environments and sought to learn more through other media after exploring the projects. They found that VR allowed them to learn in new ways, and they considered the experiences engaging, emotional and immersive.  

Standing in a recreated virtual space helps users learn something qualitatively different from simply looking at a photograph, reading primary source material or listening to survivor testimony.  

The immersive nature of virtual reality allows users to gain a deeper understanding of the scope and scale of the Warsaw Ghetto as they manipulate and examine artifacts destroyed during the war. 

Our teams are now identifying best practices for using virtual reality to teach and learn about the Holocaust, as well as other complicated histories. The key to these practices is meeting users where they are.  

Users who are less familiar with virtual reality need instructions about how to use the technology along with an overview of what the tool can — and cannot — do. 

Most young people are already engaged with emerging technologies and bring expectations of what they will experience while in a virtual world. They understand that they will be steered toward certain learning outcomes embedded in these projects, but they expect choices so that they can interact with the experiences in different ways and spend more time in spaces that interest them.  

In addition, we learned: 

• Historical accuracy is essential. End users will assume that the experience is historically accurate and that they do not need to worry about “fake news.” There are different ways to avoid betraying this trust, including captions, digital footnotes and “educational rabbit holes.” 
• Sensitivity is required. Using virtual reality to teach about the Holocaust requires the same — if not more — thought to ethics and sensitivity than other teaching methods and materials require. Due to the immersive nature of the virtual environment, those who create VR learning experiences must ensure that users aren’t thrust into a “gotcha” scenario, made to feel unsafe or asked to play the role of a perpetrator or victim of the Holocaust.  
• Content outside of the virtual world is necessary. In order to contextualize the virtual experience, additional content should be provided before and after the experience. This content might take the shape of a series of digital tools, videos or printed materials.  
• Consider witnessing over empathy. While attention has been given to VR’s potential to facilitate empathetic understanding, in Holocaust education, fostering such empathy risks unintentionally minimizing survivor and victim experiences. A focus on witnessing, and the role of the observer, can provide powerful experiences in virtual spaces while avoiding that risk. 

Even though virtual reality has already been used in educational contexts, teaching and learning about the Holocaust through VR is new. There is bound to be hesitancy from some about using this technology to teach such a traumatic history. It is our hope that these guidelines, while they will no doubt change and grow over time, provide a starting point for creating and selecting virtual experiences that are engaging, accurate and ethical.

Jennifer Rich is an associate professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rowan University and the executive director of the Rowan Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights.  

Michael Haley Goldman is the director of Future Projects at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Sara Pitcairn is the product developer and researcher for Future Projects at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

This story about virtual reality and education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. 

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For almost as long as there have been wars, there have been people who study veterans. Until now, the work has been done by students of sociology and psychology and anthropology. But a specific degree program to study veterans is being launched this fall at Saint Leo University in central Florida. Believed to be the first in the country, the bachelor’s degree program in veteran studies is designed to break down and examine the veteran experience, from decision to enlist to service to discharge and beyond. 

At Saint Leo, about one third of the student population is connected to the military in some way, including actively enlisted members, veterans and their spouses and children. But Luke McLees, director of Saint Leo’s office of military affairs and services, said the program is open to and valuable for all students, regardless of their veteran status. 

And it will differ from programs in military studies at colleges around the country, which focus on strategy, military systems and the history of warfare.  

Will Hubbard, the interim chief policy officer at the advocacy group Veterans Education Success, said a veteran is different from someone actively serving, but it’s impossible to decouple the two. He said veteran studies is more about the long-term impacts of war than the logistics of arming and deploying forces.   

The students at Saint Leo will start with a course that takes a holistic look at the veteran experience, McLees said, and then move to a class that looks at “legendary warriors” from wars across time and geography outside the United States, and a course specifically focused on Native American veterans serving two sovereigns. For elective courses, he said, they will be able to choose from topics like conflict resolution, death and the meaning of life, the role of the military in the modern world, military psychology, human memory, social ethics, human behavior in crisis, political psychology and an array of other courses on specific wars.  

The 39-credit curriculum is designed so that students can double major. Students also have the option of pursuing a 15-credit minor in veteran studies.  

Related: Military veterans decry debt, useless diplomas from for-profit colleges    

Karen Hannel, the chair of Saint Leo’s interdisciplinary studies department, said she hopes more schools will consider adding four-year veteran studies programs. 

For academics who haven’t served in the military, Hannel said, “maybe this hasn’t been part of their life, they’ve never thought to look through this lens, but when it’s presented to them, I think they’re suddenly going to start seeing stories, artwork, policies, things they have known for years, decades maybe, in a different light.”  

McLees hopes that, as more people become educated about the veteran experience, it will dispel stereotypes about veterans and help nonveterans understand the implications of military service. 

Some scholars who have been studying veterans have published their work in the Journal of Veterans Studies, which was established in 2016 by Mariana Grohowski, who is also the editor. Grohowski, who has family connections to the military, has a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition but has largely focused her research on the experiences of women veterans.

“We understand that a person has very many intersecting identities – race, culture, ethnicity, social class, education,” Grohowski said. “And with veteran studies, we’re trying to bring that veteran element to the forefront to try to understand how they’re making their life.”  

As minor programs become more prevalent and the Saint Leo program begins this fall, Grohowski said she hopes scholars in the field and the people running the programs can establish the theoretical infrastructure to ensure there is some consistency among colleges. 

“We’d like you to ask deeper questions—instead of ‘thank you for your service,’ how about ‘tell me about your service,’ or ‘explain to me what you did.’”

Jim Craig, associate dean at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis. 

The program at Saint Leo comes nearly a decade after the first veteran studies minors began appearing in course catalogues around the country, said Jim Craig, an associate dean at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis. He said he believes Missouri’s program, first offered in 2014, was among the first in the country. 

Craig said it’s an effort to get more people thinking about veterans beyond “simply standing up at a baseball game and cheering.” 

“We’d like you to ask deeper questions—instead of ‘thank you for your service,’ how about ‘tell me about your service,’ or ‘explain to me what you did,’” Craig said.  

Related: Despite family and work commitments, student veterans outpace classmates  

Craig said he modeled Missouri’s program after that of Eastern Kentucky University, which had launched a year earlier.  

“If you look at the history of women’s studies programs on campuses, or Latino Studies on campuses, a lot of that is a groundswell of students saying ‘I want to study this,’ advocating, agitating in all sorts of ways. And, then the university responding with programs that start to develop around those degrees,” Craig said. “There is not a groundswell of veteran students clamoring to say, ‘I want to study my experience more deeply.’ I think there should be, but there isn’t.” 

Advocates hope the interdisciplinary nature of these programs means students will be well equipped to go into jobs in advocacy, social work, business consulting, disaster and recovery services, law or education, among others.  

Though at Missouri the program is housed in the Department of Military and Veteran Studies, Craig said there is a distinct difference between the two.  Military studies tends to focus on defense strategy, history and force readiness, whereas veteran studies focuses on the way these things affect people while they are coming in and out of their primary culture. 

Hubbard of Veterans Education Success said he thinks of veterans as alumni of the military, whose experiences merit study. 

This story about veteran studies programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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NEWBURGH, N.Y. — By his own account, Oscar Tendilla was a horrible middle school student, unmotivated and indifferent. Last month he became his family’s first college graduate. He now has plenty of career options, no debt and a diploma from Cornell University.

The 21-year-old son of Mexican immigrants relishes the tale of his turnaround. “I did poorly in middle school because I didn’t care,” Tendilla told me. He credits his rising ambitions to encouragement from his teachers at his Brooklyn high school, part of what was then a relatively new and untested high school network known as Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH).

Tendilla’s unlikely rise from muddled middle schooler to Ivy League graduate — he became valedictorian of Brooklyn P-TECH’s third graduating class in 2017, while also earning an associate degree from the New York City College of Technology (City Tech) — is explained in “Breaking Barriers: How P-TECH Schools Create a Pathway From High School to College to Career.” The new book was written by Stanley Litow, a former vice president of IBM and architect of the school model, and journalist Tina Kelley.  

“If you tell these ninth graders that you are going to be college students, and this is the path you are going to take, those who are really searching will hook on and believe in you.”

Rashid Ferrod Davis, principal, P-TECH Brooklyn

So many here-today, gone-tomorrow models in education don’t stick around, but P-TECH’s model, now in its 10th year, directly links students from historically underserved backgrounds to colleges and careers, with paid internships and intensive mentoring. Students have six years to graduate high school and obtain an associate degree for free, in an early college model that is becoming increasing durable, as new research shows.

By bridging the gap between what high schools teach and industries need, P-TECH, initially a partnership among IBM, the New York City school system and City Tech, has opened doors for thousands of students in communities with high concentrations of poverty. Its 266 schools now operate in 12 U.S. states and 28 countries, Litow told me. (The book is being published this month by Teachers College Press; The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College).

Even after reading the book, I still found myself skeptical that recent middle school grads with no preparation could be ready for college-level work by tenth grade. As it turns out, many were not at first; NPR reported that in the fall of 2014, some 21 percent of the grades P-TECH students earned in their college courses were Ds and Fs.

Because P-TECH schools admit students from middle school via lottery, and have no entrance exams or academic requirements, these students can show up utterly unprepared. P-TECH networks everywhere recognized they had a lot of work to do immediately if they were going to get these teenagers ready. Not to mention all the eye-rolling confusion of early teenage years: distrust of authority, moodiness, uncertainty and a burning desire to fit in.

Related: What does career readiness look like in middle school?

“It’s allabout ninth grade,” Kevin Rothman, a former middle school math teacher and founding principal of Newburgh Free Academy P-TECH told me when I visited last week. Rothman loves this impossible age: He’s also the parent of a middle schooler and a ninth grader who himself attended schools in this largely Black and Latino school system 60 miles from New York City.

At P-TECH, ninth grade begins immediately after middle school graduation, every July. Ninth graders are assessed early – and often. “We try to keep tabs on their progress and build habits that help them succeed. If students do falter, we make adjustments and they try again,” Rothman said.

They also take part in study groups and attend school all year, supported by industry mentors, community college professors and one another. That model became particularly challenging when the pandemic moved the summer training program that builds the culture and foundation for the P-TECH experience online, a setback for incoming freshmen who couldn’t meet their teachers and one another in person until some trickled back two days a week last fall.

“Being at home, at first I really wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk to my teachers and I didn’t know how they’d get to know me. I had to find my groove,” Omari Jones, 15, told me. He nearly failed art class because he had trouble understanding the directions online.

Now he’s back in-person four days a week, a National Junior Honor Society student hoping to graduate with an associate degree in cybersecurity from P-TECH’s partner, Orange County Community College.

P-TECH Newburgh first opened in 2014 (along with 16 other P-TECH schools that began in New York State that fall), helped by state grants and public-private partnerships. This year, a record 29 P-TECH Newburgh students received associate degrees; 20 of them did it in four years. The school enrolls about 50 students each year and its 4-year high school graduation is 97 percent, Rothman said.

Freshman Matison Fowlin managed to thrive at P-TECH this year, despite taking all of her classes virtually and never setting a foot on campus because she was too worried about getting and spreading Covid. Working from home, she still managed to produce a beautifully detailed group science project with other classmates on the dangers of invasive species. She spoke to her teachers daily via Zoom.

“Of course, it was hard; this year was like a kick in the butt. But my teachers were really cool, and I’m keeping my priorities straight,” Matison told me during a Zoom conversation from principal Rothman’s office, where he sat behind an enormous plastic shield. “I have to figure out how to get to my goal: attend NYU and study medicine. My mom keeps telling her friends, ‘My baby is going to be a doctor, she is going to take care of me,’ and I know P-TECH can help me get there.”

Getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of the ninth-grade class has been challenging for P-TECH teachers during this on-again, off-again year, when they had to master teaching online and in-person simultaneously. Nationwide, nearly half of teachers who responded to a RAND survey said pandemic stress had hastened their decision to leave the profession.

P-TECH Newburgh’s teaching squad is tiny, just nine full-time instructors and a guidance counselor. When I spoke with a group of them last week and asked how many were planning to leave, they looked surprised. None are. 

“We care about the kids and believe in them from day one, and they know it,” said Torrance Harvey, the social studies teacher who also happens to be the mayor of the city of Newburgh and has a daughter at P-TECH.

“Being at home, at first I really wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk to my teachers and I didn’t know how they’d get to know me. I had to find my groove.”

Omari Jones, 15, freshman, P-TECH Newburgh

Before he joined P-TECH from a nearby district school, skeptical colleagues warned Harvey the new endeavor wouldn’t last. They’d already seen so many programs come and go in Newburgh, a scenic but high-crime community perched above the Hudson River, perennially poised for a comeback after being named the worst place to live in New York. Some 73 percent of students in the city school district graduate within four years, compared with 84.8 percent statewide.

Each year, P-TECH Newburgh gets about 75 applicants for its 50 spots. Teachers stay with the same student cohort all four years, learning their strengths, weaknesses and personal stories. During my visit, I watched English teacher Jacqueline Hesse encourage the 15 students in her class and about 10 others on Zoom to compile a portfolio for their personal websites.

“You might want to look back at your writing one day to remember what it was like starting high school in a pandemic,” Hesse told them.

Omari showed me an essay he was writing about his ideal high school. Notwithstanding a few outsized and unrealistic exceptions — how many high schools have a barbershop, sports facility, recording story, 24-hour surveillance, kitchen and full-time counseling center? — it sounded a lot like P-TECH.

“In my ideal school, there would be a strong relationship between students and teachers,” Omari wrote. “There would be classes that all benefit the students in their adult life.”

That is part of what makes P-TECH stand out, along with internships and job opportunities at corporations like IBM and GlobalFoundries, and projects like a competition in an environmental science class to build the fastest car from recycled materials that was taking place the day I visited. Omari designed a car from old soda cans and added two motors “so I can crush the competition.” (He came in second.)

“This,” Rothman told me, as he pointed at the groups of students working together on their cars, “is the most tangible example of what college and career readiness is. We are doing it. Many of our students would not have gone to or graduated from college without P-TECH.”

Related: Momentum builds for career-focused P-TECH schools

Nationally, about 60 percent of P-TECH students earn an associate degree within six years of starting high school, Litow told me. The path to a degree for students who don’t get a head start in high school is a lot rockier: Forty-five percent of students who enter community college full time hold an associate degree six years later, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Just 14 percent finish within two years of starting.  

Of course, even at P-TECH, not all students attend or graduate from four-year colleges, but success is also measured by the number of students who get good jobs in the industries they were exposed to during internships. More than 200 young people have entered the workforce at companies like IBM, Corning and Tesla after completing the six-year program, Litow told me.

There are also plenty of challenges ahead for the school network, as detailed in the book: the need for ongoing federal, state, district and industry support to cover college tuition – and, Rothman said, “the need to change people’s minds” about the value of combining college and high school.

And not every P-TECH succeeds: P-TECH Adirondack was phased out, in part due to funding struggles, while others have stumbled elsewhere and are trying to get back on track, the book acknowledges.

Rashid Ferrod Davis, the principal of P-TECH Brooklyn, is a firm believer in learning from earlier mistakes at his school, the network’s first and one that drew national attention after President Barack Obama visited in 2013. Like Rothman, Davis is a relentless advocate for his students, lining the school’s hallways with life size photos of its college graduates and constantly posting their career successes on social media.

He also loves to recount how many low performers in middle school now work at IBM, and remembers all the struggles they overcame.

“If you tell these ninth graders that you are going to be college students, and this is the path you are going to take, those who are really searching will hook on and believe in you,” Davis said. “That’s what happened to Oscar.”

This story about P-TECH was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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