BOSTON — Madeline Szoo grew up listening to her grandmother talk of being laughed at when she spoke of going to college and becoming an accountant.

“‘No one will trust a woman with their money,’” relatives and friends would scoff.

When Szoo excelled at math in high school, she got her share of ridicule, too — though it was slightly more subtle. “I was told a lot, ‘You’re smart for a girl,’ ” she said. “I knew other girls in my classes who weren’t able to move past that.”

But Szoo had no doubt she’d go to college, with plans to get a Ph.D. and become a mentor to other women as they break through glass ceilings in fields such as chemical engineering and biochemistry, which she now studies as a fourth-year student at Northeastern University.

Szoo is part of a long-running rise in the number of women getting higher educations, even as the number of men has been declining — a trend beginning to hit even male-dominated fields such as engineering and business. The number of college-educated women in the workforce has now overtaken the number of college-educated men, according to the Pew Research Center.

But while this would seem to have significant potential implications for society and the economy — since college graduates make more money over their lifetimes than people who haven’t finished college — other obstacles have stubbornly prevented women from closing leadership and earnings gaps.

Women still earn 82 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men, Pew reports — a figure nearly unchanged since 2002. And, after steadily increasing for more than a decade, the proportion of top managers of companies who are women declined last year, to less than 12 percent, the credit ratings and research company S&P Global says.

“I think we’re getting there, but it’s slow,” said Szoo, in a conference room of a gleaming new engineering and robotics building on Northeastern’s campus.

That slow progress comes despite the fact that women now significantly outnumber men in college. The proportion of college students who are women is closing in on a record 60 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Women who go to college are also 7 percentage points more likely than men to graduate, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports.

Related: An unnoticed result of the decline of men in college: It’s harder for women to get in

While engineering is one college discipline in which men continue to outnumber women, Northeastern has since 2022 even been admitting slightly more female than male first-year engineering students.

Still, said Elizabeth Mynatt, dean of Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, “In no way have we declared victory.”

For one thing, many of the rest of the degrees that women earn are disproportionately in lower-paying fields such as social work (89 percent women) and teaching (83 percent women); women still comprise fewer than a quarter of engineering majors nationwide, and fewer than half of business majors — fields that can lead to higher-paying jobs.

“Even as we see some shifts and changes, disproportionate numbers of men are pursuing pathways through higher education that tend to lead to higher earnings,” said Ruth Watkins, president of postsecondary education at the Strada Education Foundation.

As in Szoo’s case, the disparity begins in high school, where classes in subjects such as math, engineering and computer science “are still pretty gendered,” said Mynatt. “And if you don’t know you want to be a computer scientist as a sophomore in high school, you’re going to have a hard time getting into that program.”

As early as middle school, more than twice as many boys as girls say they plan to work in science or engineering-related jobs, one study by researchers at Harvard found.

Another Northeastern engineering major, Carly Tamer, said she wasn’t outright discouraged pursuing that subject in high school, “but there wasn’t strong encouragement.”

Other factors, beginning in college, perpetuate the disparities. Even with enrollment now female-dominated, women make up only a little more than a third of full professors and a third of college presidents, according to the American Association of University Women and American Council on Education, respectively.

Related: The latest group to get special attention from college admissions offices: men

Women who start in engineering in college are more likely than men to change their majors. Nearly half of the women who originally planned to major in science or engineering switch to something else, compared to fewer than a third of men.

“It was awful,” Mynatt said of her own experience as an engineering student in the 1980s, before she changed her major to computer science. “It was very male dominated. It had such a weed-out culture. I didn’t like the culture. It was about intellectual superiority and competing with the person next to you.”

That weed-out approach can be particularly tough on high achievers used to positive reinforcement, Tamer noted. “It can scare people away.” She said having more women around her, as she does in Northeastern’s engineering program, has proven more supportive.

Even there, Szoo said, she thinks projects submitted by men are sometimes taken more seriously than those turned in by women.

Once they move from college to the workforce, women still overwhelmingly bear family caregiving responsibilities that can interrupt their careers, said Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard. Sixty-one percent of caregiving falls to women, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons.

“The career path associated with decision-making jobs and highly paid jobs, their design logic and even their language is still firmly rooted in a 1960s paradigm,” he said. “If you go to a big global company, the path to the C-suite anticipates one or two international assignments, four or five relocations, very demanding work hours. There’s nothing that prevents a man or a woman from making those commitments, but if you’re the principal caregiver, those burdens still disproportionately fall on women.”

Related: The pandemic is speeding up the mass disappearance of men from college

Caregiving responsibilities also come at points in workers’ careers when they are developing networks and relationships, Fuller said.

A study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the women’s advocacy organization Lean In finds that even as they are more likely than men to finish college, women in corporate roles are less likely to be promoted from entry-level jobs to management positions. Eighty-seven women advanced in their companies, it found, for every 100 men.

Researchers call this obstacle more of a “broken rung” than a glass ceiling.

It’s not that women don’t want to be promoted; nine in 10 say they aspire to move up, and three in four want to become senior managers, the McKinsey & Company study found.

Yet 75 percent of senior management jobs are held by men, S&P Global reports.

“The fundamental bias and the systemic issues in corporate America that are fueling women’s underrepresentation — they haven’t changed,” said Caroline Fairchild, Lean In’s vice president of education.

Among the many reasons for this, Fairchild said, is that men are more likely to find professional mentors and role models.

There has been progress of another kind, however, Mynatt said: Those many college-educated women entering the workforce, especially in male-dominated industries, are changing perspectives.

She told the story of a female computer scientist who used algorithms to identify the kinds of wrist injuries that show up on X-rays after accidents versus the kind that might be the result of domestic violence.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

“The technology was there. The issue was who was motivated to ask the question. What matters is that the women bring the problem to the team,” said Mynatt. “When you bring in diverse voices, it shifts things culturally across the board.”

Another change: The more women there are in senior leadership positions, the less gender-stereotyped language their companies use, researchers at Duke, Stanford and Columbia universities and the University of Chicago found.

At Northeastern, women engineering and computer science students have won awards for projects such as an app on which people can anonymously report harassment, catcalling and sexual assault.

As for Szoo, she hopes to use her chemical engineering degree to help treat cancer.

After her plans for an accounting degree were thwarted, Szoo’s grandmother became a middle school teacher, then started her own business — for which she did her own accounting.

“We’re definitely the type of people who if you say we can’t do it,” Szoo said, “we will prove you wrong.”

This story about women outnumbering men in college 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

The post Even as women outpace men in graduating from college, their earnings remain stuck appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

ATLANTA — Two construction cranes hover over a giant worksite just outside the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

What they’re building is both a show of optimism in and a way to attract more students to something universities badly need but are beginning to worry about: graduate education.

The $200 million project will house Scheller’s graduate and executive business programs in one tower, connected to Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering in another. Linking graduate business programs with other disciplines has proven to increase demand; Scheller has already added a science, technology, engineering and math designation to its master’s program in business administration, with a resulting bump in applications, the school says.

At a university focused on technology, doing this “seemed like a natural fit, and we were seeing some of our competitors doing it,” said Peter Severa, Scheller’s assistant dean for MBA student engagement, in a conference room overlooking the construction site.

It’s also a kind of enticement that’s become essential in response to signs that, after years of increase, the graduate enrollment on which universities heavily rely for revenue may be softening as prospective students question the cost of grad school and as shorter, cheaper and more flexible alternatives pop up.

“What we’re seeing now is a combination of a leveling off and a big question mark as to where this long-term trend will go,” said Brian McKenzie, director of research at the Council of Graduate Schools.

Unlike undergraduate enrollment, which has been on a steady decline, graduate enrollment has gone up over the last decade. Undergraduate numbers fell by 15 percent between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, while graduate enrollment grew by 9 percent. That was fueled in part by a change in 2007 that let graduate students borrow up to the full cost of their educations, unlike undergraduates, who can borrow only a limited amount.

Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter

This growth made graduate programs a lucrative source of revenue for universities. To cash in, private, nonprofit, bachelor’s degree-granting universities and colleges in particular vastly expanded their graduate offerings, listing more than three times as many by 2021 as they had in 2005, according to research conducted at the University of Tennessee.

It seemed a good bet. Not even the pandemic slowed the increase in graduate enrollment. It reached its highest level ever in 2021, as workers who had been laid off or furloughed opted to get graduate degrees. Then, in 2022, it fell.

There was a slight rebound in the fall of 2023. But that was largely driven by an increase in master’s degree enrollment at public as opposed to private, nonprofit universities and in the number of international students, who have quietly come to constitute much of the growth at graduate schools. Among domestic students, graduate enrollment was starting to decline.

Sheer population trends helped drive graduate enrollment during the last decade, with an increase in the number of Americans who are candidates for it — ages 25 to 44, with bachelor’s degrees.

But even as there are more of those 25- to 44-year-old candidates for graduate education, the proportion of them who actually go has started to erode. It’s down from 8.4 percent to 6.5 percent over the last 10 years, the higher education research and advisory firm Eduventures found.

“If that continues, and you see a slowing in the underlying population growth, then we’re starting to talk about some challenges,” said Clint Raine, senior analyst at Eduventures.

That’s because of a looming decline in the number of 18-year-olds beginning next year, which is projected to take another big toll on undergraduate enrollment. Basic math suggests that it will eventually hit graduate programs, too.

“The next five years we may be safe,” said Lily Bi, president and CEO of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB. “But five years down the road, I think we really need to watch.”

There are other challenges. All those graduate programs that universities rushed to add meant that, even when graduate enrollment was going up, the number of students per program — and, therefore, the revenue that institutions made from them — was going down.

“The issue is that graduate student growth has not kept pace,” Raine said. “So we’ve seen a flood of programs in the market, but student demand has not kept up.”

Another challenge for graduate programs: A strong labor market has many people staying in their jobs instead of furthering their educations.

“The choice became, ‘Do I go to graduate school or do I look at some of these very good opportunities?’ Many of them chose to go with the money,” said Julia Kent, vice president for best practices and strategic initiatives at the Council of Graduate Schools.

Meanwhile, there has been a proliferation of alternatives to traditional graduate degrees.

“A prospective student today has never had more options,” Raine said.

Interest in traditional master’s degrees is down since 2019, Eduventures found, while interest in lower-price, shorter-term certificates and other nondegree offerings is up.

“We live in a fast-food society,” Bi said. “People want something easy, something fast.”

And flexible. Twenty-seven percent of master’s programs and 66 percent of MBAs are now offered online, giving students more choice of when and where to take them. That’s up from 12 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in 2012.

Students’ preference for part-time and online MBA programs translated into an increase in applications for those programs in the academic year that started in the fall, the Graduate Management Admission Council says. But applications overall were down by 3 percent, as enthusiasm waned for more conventional and expensive in-person versions, whose enrollments fell.

Related: Universities increasingly turn to graduate programs to balance their books

There has also been growing coverage of and skepticism about the high amount of debt students assumed for graduate programs that don’t necessarily result in earnings high enough to allow them to repay their loans. Those programs are disproportionately at private, nonprofit universities, which charge twice as much as public universities for master’s degrees in fields such as social work, according to a study by the Urban Institute.

The increase in borrowing for graduate study has sparked a warning from the U.S. Department of Education, which notes that growing numbers of borrowers are finishing their graduate educations with very high levels of debt. And while people with graduate degrees generally earn more than people without them, that premium has flattened out, “suggesting a potential decline in the net return,” the department’s chief economist observed.

At 15 percent of master’s, doctoral and professional programs, the median graduate makes less than the median undergraduate degree holder, according to a separate study by three think tanks across the political spectrum: the American Enterprise Institute, EducationCounsel and The Century Foundation.

The average graduate federal student loan holder owes $70,000, that study found, and one in five has borrowed more than $100,000.

While 90 percent of students who are studying toward or just got bachelor’s degrees say they are interested in graduate school, more than half consider the return on investment an important part of their decision, a survey by the higher education marketing firm Spark451 found. That’s the same questioning of value that has been eating away at undergraduate enrollment.

“We have to think about who’s on the doorstep now to graduate programs. It’s Gen Z. They’re that prime graduate-going cohort, and we know from some of our research that this generation is more price- and cost-sensitive compared to the last,” Raine said.

Mindful of this, the Council of Graduate Schools has created a task force to study the cost of graduate education and has recommended expanding eligibility for Pell Grants to graduate students and lowering the graduate student loan interest rate from the current 8.05 percent, Kent said.

Graduate students represent only a little more than a fifth of all students but account for nearly half of federal student borrowing, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

American students who have enrolled in graduate schools are less than enthusiastic about the value of it. Just over half say it was “definitely worth it,” a survey by the think tank Third Way found.

Related: Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?

That has left universities to increasingly rely on one market that continues to grow: international graduate students. A closer look at the data shows that they now account for almost all of the rise in graduate enrollment.

The number of international students in U.S. graduate programs rose 21 percent in 2022 — compared to a 4.3 percent increase among international undergraduates — and 22 percent in 2023, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

In almost every graduate field that reported an increase in enrollment, it was due to a big jump in the number of international students, even as the numbers of U.S. citizen and permanent resident students fell.

The number of graduate business students who are U.S. residents or permanent residents dropped 7 percent while the number from other countries went up 19 percent in the fall, AACSB figures show.

That growing dependence on international students could be risky, as became clear during the pandemic, when they all but disappeared. Geopolitical tensions also could have an impact; though more international students continue to come to the United States from China than from any other country, the number of Chinese students fell slightly last year, according to the Institute of International Education.

Still, McKenzie, of the Council of Graduate Schools, pointed out that the number of students from India increased 35 percent during the same period.

Universities are aggressively recruiting international students. Georgia Tech’s STEM designation for its MBA program was devised in part as a way to help reverse a steady decline in the number of full-time MBA students.

Related: Universities and colleges search for ways to reverse the decline in the ranks of male students

That’s because a STEM designation allows international students to stay in the United States and work in their fields of study, without an employer sponsor, for three years after earning a degree, compared to the usual limit of one year.

“If a large portion of our applicants are international, it’s important to be attractive to them,” said Emily Sharkey, Scheller’s executive director of MBA admissions and recruiting. That third year of a visa “is a game-changer as we look at our applications,” added Dave Deiters, associate dean of MBA programs at Scheller, who heads up its career center.

Among other universities whose business schools have added STEM designations: Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Indiana, Michigan, Northwestern and Rice.

Incorporating technology into business education also appeals to undergraduates who might eventually be candidates for graduate degrees.

Even as an undergraduate at Scheller, “I’ve learned coding and stuff I probably wouldn’t have learned at other business schools,” said Elizabeth Curvin, who just finished her sophomore year there. “Compared to my friends at other business schools, we get a lot more of that,” said Amelia Fox, a junior. “You’re set up very well.” And Daniel Manning, a junior, already has a concentration in strategy and innovation. “That gives you practical information about how to manage engineers,” he said.

But none was ready to commit to investing in an MBA.

“I’d probably go out to the workforce and see if it was something that I wanted,” Curvin said. Junior Aubrey Charron said she also wants to try out her planned career in hospital administration first, “just to make sure I’ve really found what I want to do.”

Concerns about graduate enrollment go beyond what students might earn or owe, or how such changes might affect universities’ bottom lines. There are growing shortages of workers who require graduate degrees, the Council of Graduate Schools says.

“It is concerning that domestic enrollment is slightly down, because it will be critical to have more Americans participating in graduate education,” said Kent, at the Council of Graduate Schools.

Yet what’s happening at graduate schools has so far been eclipsed by a focus on falling undergraduate enrollment, Raine said.

“It’s a very much less discussed future trend that we certainly are trying to shed more light on.”

This story about graduate enrollment 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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BURLINGTON, Vt. — Hopeful young entrepreneurs in business schools routinely pitch ideas for startup companies as part of their classroom assignments. But the ones who were doing it at the University of Vermont were still in high school.

It was the inaugural Vermont Pitch Challenge, to which nearly 150 teams from 27 states and seven countries had submitted their entrepreneurial brainstorms. The final five had come to the campus to battle it out for the grand prize: a full-tuition scholarship to UVM.

Their ideas included a website to help previously incarcerated applicants get jobs, a nonprofit to provide mental health support to competitive snowboarders, a medical device to prevent the recurrence of a herniated disk, a company to rent equipment to farmers in St. Croix and an invention to sustainably recharge laptops, phones and tablets.

This competition wasn’t solely about helping the planet or improving medicine, health, employment opportunities or agriculture, however.

It was part of a long-term strategy to increase the number of men at a university where women now outnumber them by nearly two to one.

Painstaking research had suggested that entrepreneurship programs could appeal to high school boys considering going to college. The findings appeared to be right: More boys than girls had entered the pitch contest. And the university hoped that some would eventually enroll.

The approach is among a fast-growing number of efforts to increase the number of men in college, which has been declining steadily.

“We thought that this idea would attract men,” said Jay Jacobs, UVM’s vice provost for enrollment management, who declared himself pleased with the results. “We thought that this idea would attract racial and ethnically diverse students. We thought that this idea would attract what I’ll call geographically diverse students, students not just from Vermont or New England.”

The university needs all of those kinds of recruits. Vermont has the nation’s third-oldest population, by median age, making it harder to find students generally. That’s even before a dramatic decline in the number of 18-year-olds about to hit the rest of the rest of the country starting next year.

“Here, we’ve already felt the impacts of the quote, unquote ‘demographic cliff,’ ” said Jacobs. “We want to make sure that we are in front of any eligible student who is able to pursue their education at the University of Vermont, or in the state of Vermont.”

That particularly includes men. The proportion of applicants to the university who are male has declined from 44 percent in 2010 to 33 percent today, an analysis of federal data shows.

Related: Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents

“I definitely do notice that,” said Melinda Wetzel, a junior who was having coffee with a friend in the student center. “In my big lecture halls, I’d say there are more women. And I do have one small class where there is only one guy.”

It isn’t just this university that’s searching for new ways to recruit men.

The number of men enrolled in college nationwide has dropped by more than 157,000, or almost 6 percent, in just the last five years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The proportion of college students who are men is now a record-low 41 percent, the U.S. Department of Education says. That’s a complete reversal of the situation 50 years ago, when men outnumbered women in college by about the same extent.

Men are also 7 percentage points more likely than women to drop out, the Clearinghouse reports.

“At conferences, when we’re in rooms together, we all know that this male enrollment gap is something that we’re going to have to deal with,” said Jacobs, whose office window overlooks the university’s grand historic main quad.

The ways universities are trying to address this vary widely.

The University of Montana — whose enrollment overall has fallen from nearly 16,000 to about 10,000 in the last 10 years, and 58 percent of whose undergraduates are women — found in focus groups that many of the men it was trying to recruit were interested in the outdoors. So this spring it sent targeted emails to prospective students highlighting its hunting class, forestry program and recreational opportunities.

“Have you ever eaten fresh meat that you harvested yourself?” one of the emails asks. “Apply to UM and develop a closer bond to the landscape than ever before.” Another shows a brawny, bearded man cutting wood. “Embrace the wilderness, embrace the axe,” it says. “There are few other connections with the natural world better than swinging a sharp axe with the smell of pine in your nose.”

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

Admitted applicants considering whether or not to enroll are also sent bingo-style checkoff cards with images of hiking, ski and cowboy boots. Other promotional materials include images of country-and-western shows on campus.

Housing deposits from men — which is how the university measures who will be enrolling in the fall, as it doesn’t require enrollment deposits — are up since the campaign began, said Kelly Nolin, director of undergraduate admissions.

“Ultimately all students want to know, ‘Am I going to fit in? Do I belong?’ ” said Nolin.

Among prospective applicants who are increasingly asking those questions, she said, are men from religious conservative families, at a time when universities are accused of being bastions of left-wing cancel culture. “We want them to know they won’t be criticized for their beliefs.”

Further west, the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center has gotten money from the ECMC Foundation to help community colleges enroll and retain more Black and Hispanic men and other men of color. (ECMC is also among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

“If, in fact, colleges and universities want to recruit and enroll and ultimately retain and graduate more men, they have to have a strategy,” said Shaun Harper, founder and executive director of the center. “It has to be based on input and insights from college men themselves.”

Instead of trying to figure out why so many men forgo college or give up on it after starting, he said, institutions should ask, “Wait a minute, what about the ones who are here and are successful?” Harper said. “What were the factors that enabled their enrollment and their ultimate degree attainment? There’s a lot that we can learn from them that we could scale and adapt to everyone else.”

He and others said they were skeptical of some efforts to enroll more men, such as doubling down on sports by adding more men’s teams in the hope that it will lure more male students, as some colleges are doing.

Related: Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?

“They’re not all on sports teams. So that shouldn’t be the only lever that we pull,” said Harper. And even if highlighting hunting might be effective in Montana, “it feels so presumptuous about what really appeals to men. I’m just not sure that institutions understand the full range of young men’s interests, and so they tend to default to things like forestry and outdoor adventures. I’m not sure that would work in California or Maryland.”

Whatever does work, universities are under growing pressure to figure it out. Overall enrollment has declined by 16 percent in the 10 years through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the U.S. Department of Education. Another 11 to 15 percent decline is projected to begin next year.

And there are signs that the problem of attracting men is only likely to get worse.

Of high school boys in Vermont whose parents don’t have four-year degrees, for instance, only 45 percent aspire to go to college themselves, down from 58 percent in 2018, and much lower than the 68 percent of girls who do, a survey found. Even among high school students with at least one parent who has a bachelor’s degree, 87 percent of girls say they want to go to college, compared to 78 percent of boys.

The problem begins early. Girls do better in high school than boys, and are more likely to graduate. In the 37 states that report high school graduation rates by gender, 88 percent of girls finished high school on time, compared to 82 percent of boys, a 2018 study by the Brookings Institution found. Boys are more likely to think they don’t need a degree for the jobs they want, the Pew Research Center found, or go into the trades. Even if they do enroll in colleges, work opportunities lure them away. Men who dropped out of community college are more likely than women to say it was because of other work opportunities, according to a survey by the think tank New America.

That went through John Truslow’s mind when he was deciding whether or not to go to college.

“There was a point where I wasn’t thinking about college” and considered going into the trades or the military, said Truslow, who ultimately decided to major in business at UVM.

Among his male high school classmates who didn’t go to college, said Truslow, who was playing pool in the student center, some couldn’t afford it. “But most of the ones that didn’t directly go to college, it was mostly academic. They just weren’t feeling school and they wanted to do something else.”

A third of men compared to a quarter of women said they didn’t go to or finish college because they just didn’t want to, Pew found.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Richard Reeves, who studies this problem, said it may be more a result of having so successfully encouraged women to get degrees than having discouraged men.

“I think actually what’s probably happened is the opposite — that we’ve sent a really strong and positive message to girls and women. But we haven’t had similar messages for boys and men,” said Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.

“We’ve now got to do a little bit of self-correction here and say, look, of course we want girls and women to continue to rise in the education system, but we don’t want to leave the boys and men behind.”

Reeves said that, just as male-dominated programs in engineering and business have made extra efforts to recruit women, female-dominated fields such as healthcare and education should now reach out to men.

“That’s another thing that higher education institutions can do, is look at their courses and see where are the gender splits the greatest,” he said. “Rather than thinking the football team is the answer, maybe more men in your nursing school is the answer.”

But the football team could be one of many answers. Among the more subtle efforts to attract men at UVM, the university encourages its students, faculty and staff to wear its colors, green and gold, on Fridays — the days when most prospective applicants are touring the campus. “School spiritedness” is another attribute that research showed appeals particularly to men.

“Coincidentally, Fridays are some of our highest visit volume days, yes,” said Jacobs, smiling.

 UVM campus counselors say men who do enroll are less likely to join extracurricular clubs or seek help when they need it. Some men have “this lack of connection,” said Evan Cuttitta, the university’s coordinator of men and masculinities programs. “They have less experience in managing stress and advocating for themselves” and often aren’t as good at “that practice of asking for help.”

So the university has also started a program for Black and Hispanic male students that provides them with peer and professional mentors, summer internships, networking events and priority registration.

All these steps to increase male enrollment appear to be having some effect.

Identical twins Pierson and Parker Jones of Lutz, Florida, found themselves in Vermont for the entrepreneurship competition. It put the University of Vermont on their radar, they said.

“We haven’t looked at the University of Vermont,” Pierson Parker said. “But after this pitch, we’re definitely going to look into it. Because it’s definitely more interesting now.”

This story about recruiting men to college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Liam Elder-Connors. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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It was when the shuttle bus stopped coming that Luka Fernandes began to worry.

Fernandes was a student at Newbury College near Boston whose enrollment had declined in the previous two decades from more than 5,300 to about 600.

“Things started closing down,” Fernandes remembered. “There was definitely a sense of things going wrong. The food went downhill. It felt like they didn’t really care anymore.”

The private, nonprofit school had been placed on probation by its accreditors because of its shaky finances. Then the shuttle bus connecting the suburban campus with the nearest station on the public transportation system started running late or not showing up at all. “That was one of the things that made us feel like they were giving up.”

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After students went home for their winter holiday, an email came: Newbury would shut down at the end of the next semester.

“It was, ‘Unfortunately we have to close after all these many years, and blah, blah, blah,’ ” said Fernandes, who was a junior. “I was very angry.”

The loans that students had taken out to pay the college weren’t forgiven, “which was infuriating. I had already put so much money into my education, and my family didn’t have that money. How am I going to apply this to my future if it doesn’t exist?”

This and other questions are on the minds of more and more students this spring as the pace of college closings dramatically speeds up.

About one university or college per week so far this year, on average, has announced that it will close or merge. That’s up from a little more than two a month last year, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO.

So many colleges are folding that some students who moved from one to another have now found that their new school will also close, often with little or no warning. Some of the students at Newbury, when it closed in 2019, had moved there from nearby Mount Ida College, for example, which shut down the year before.

Most students at colleges that close give up on their educations altogether. Fewer than half transfer to other institutions, a SHEEO study found. Of those, fewer than half stay long enough to get degrees. Many lose credits when they move from one school to another and have to spend longer in college, often taking out more loans to pay for it.

Related: After its college closes, a rural community fights to keep a path to education open

The rest join the growing number of Americans — now more than 40 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — who spent time and money to go to college but never finished. And that’s happening at a time when efforts to increase the proportion of the population with degrees are already facing headwinds.

“I was asking my dad, ‘Can I not go back?’ ” said Fernandes, who eventually decided to continue at another college and now works as a patient coordinator at a hospital.

“I’m glad I did. But it honestly scares me for the future of education. I’m not sure where education’s going to go if all of these colleges keep closing. It’s just another roadblock, especially with people who are struggling with tuition in the first place.”

Colleges are almost certain to keep closing. As many as one in 10 four-year colleges and universities are in financial peril, the consulting firm EY Parthenon estimates.

“It’s simply supply and demand,” said Gary Stocker, a former chief of staff at Westminster College in Missouri and the founder of College Viability, which evaluates institutions’ financial stability. The closings follow an enrollment decline of 14 percent in the decade through 2022, the most recent period for which the figures are available from the Education Department. Another decline of up to 15 percent is projected to begin in 2025.

“The only thing that’s going to fix this is enough closings or consolidations at which supply and demand reach equilibrium,” Stocker said.

That’s likely little comfort to students who attend or have attended closing schools.

Already this year, and within a span of a few days, Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, Fontbonne University in St. Louis and Eastern Gateway Community College in Ohio all announced that they would close — Birmingham-Southern in May, Fontbonne next year and Eastern Gateway by June, unless it gets a financial bailout.

The private, for-profit University of Antelope Valley in California was ordered by the state in late February to shut down because of financial shortfalls. Lincoln Christian University in Illinois and Magdalen College in New Hampshire will close in May, Johnson University of Florida in June and Hodges University in Florida by August. The College of Saint Rose in New York, Cabrini University in Pennsylvania, Oak Point University in Illinois, Goddard College in Vermont and the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University will all be shuttered by the end of this semester.

Notre Dame College in Ohio will also close its doors at the end of this semester, stranding for a second time students who transferred there from Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia, which shut down just days before classes were scheduled to begin the year before.

Related: Getting a college degree was their dream. Then their school suddenly closed

Seven out of 10 students at colleges that have closed got little or no warning. Of those, a smaller proportion were likely to continue their educations than students at colleges that gave more notice and ended operations in an “orderly” way, the SHEEO study found.

Tatiana Hicks was at her laptop preparing for her final exams in the nursing program she attended at for-profit Stratford University in Virginia when her group chat with fellow students started to blow up. “The only thing that was going through my mind was studying for finals, but my phone would not stop ringing,” said Hicks, who was going to school while working 12-hour shifts three days a week as a nurse assistant in a hospital to pay for it.

An email from the university president had just gone out saying Stratford had lost its accreditation and was closing, effective immediately. Students had a month to get their transcripts, it said. But within a day, the university’s phones and email were shut down, said Hicks, now 27, who lives in Gainesville, Virginia.

“I started panicking. I cried. I cried for hours that day. This just happened out of nowhere,” said Hicks, who lost all of the 94 credits she had earned and owed $30,000 in student loans, though they would later be forgiven after more than a year of red tape.

“Everyone kept asking me, ‘When are you going to go back?’ And I didn’t want to go back,” she said. “I thought, this just proved I shouldn’t have gone to college in the first place.”

Hicks did eventually enroll in a new program, beginning again from scratch on her way to a degree in respiratory therapy.

More common is the experience of Misha Zhuykov, who ended his formal education when Burlington College in Vermont shut down during his junior year there. The college had embarked on an ill-fated expansion, buying an abandoned Catholic orphanage so spooky Zhuykov helped make an award-winning movie in it for his film studies program. (The president at the time of the controversial expansion project was Jane O’Meara Sanders, wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

“There was always this ramshackle feeling” at Burlington, he said. Adjunct instructors were gradually replacing full-time faculty. “We kind of all suspected something might happen. I thought, ‘Just hold out for another two years and I’m out of here.’ ”

Instead, Zhuykov and the last 100 or so other undergraduates were given less than two weeks’ notice that the college would be closing. A private security company came to lock up the buildings. He said he found that not all of his credits would be accepted if he transferred.

Students who transfer lose an average of 43 percent of the credits they’ve already earned and paid for, the Government Accountability Office found in the most recent comprehensive study of this problem.

Like many of his classmates, Zhuykov never took his formal education any further. He now works as a graphic designer in New Hampshire. “A lot of folks just kind of dropped off. They were banking on that degree. I have a friend who’s working at a gas station.”

Related: A campaign to prod high school students into college tries a new tack: Making it simple

Even those who graduated from colleges that later closed run into uncomfortable questions when they look for jobs. Roy Mercon went to Burlington after serving in the Army. He managed to graduate before the college stopped operating. But when he’s applied for jobs, he gets skeptical reactions. “They say, ‘Oh, you’re from that school. I tried to look it up,’ ” he said.

“You kind of trusted the people teaching you that they know what they’re doing. This makes you feel a little cynical and sets the tone for the rest of your life,” said Mercon, who is 35 and working on the help desk of a citywide internet service provider in Burlington. He now has a 12-year-old daughter of his own. If she decides to go to college, he said, he will investigate to make sure the one she picks won’t close. “That’s an insane thing to have to think about.”

Laila Ali, who was in the last group of students to graduate from Newbury College, has run into similar paperwork problems. When she started a new job in December, she said, her employer tried to verify her education, but couldn’t. “I didn’t really know what route to take. Who do I contact?” She ultimately showed them the physical degree that she was handed when she walked at graduation, which the employer accepted. But it triggered unwelcome memories.

“I remember graduation and my last semester being gloomy,” said Ali, now 27 and living in Atlanta. She said she saw a few signs that the college was in trouble, but it had also recently renovated a gym, with new equipment, and added sports teams. So the closing came as a surprise. “They could have given us a warning.”

How much difference a warning can make was evident at Presentation College in South Dakota, which — before announcing that it would close — contracted with the nonprofit College Possible to help its 384 remaining students continue their educations. After the announcement, the college stayed open for a final full semester and kept paying its athletics coaches to connect its many student-athletes with new teams.

At first, when administrators gathered everyone in the fieldhouse to announce the closing, “the students were so struck with disbelief that about half of them just got up and left,” said Catherine Marciano, College Possible’s vice president for partnerships. “Other students were crying very publicly or expressing anger toward the administration.” And when the college held a “teach-out fair” in the same gym with institutions that had agreed to accept its students and their credits, none showed up, despite a deluge of social media promotion.

“It took a little while for us to gain momentum,” Marciano said. Faculty and staff were looking for new jobs, while “students at that point were still in that state of grief where they were paralyzed.”

But given time, she said, “we saw those emotions shift to, ‘Okay, I have to figure out my next steps. I want to keep playing sports or keep pursuing my nursing degree.’ ”

In the end, 90 percent of those last students either graduated in the final semester before the college closed its doors for good or transferred to another institution, Marciano said — a far higher proportion than at closed colleges elsewhere.

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Cassy Loa was one of those. A junior at Presentation when it closed, she played on its softball team and managed to transfer to Dickinson State University. But even with the help provided to her, she said, the path from the day the closing was announced was bumpy.

“All these thoughts were going through my mind. What was I going to do? Will my credits transfer? Can I still play softball? Where will my friends go? I had one more year until I graduated, and now I had to go and find a school for one more year.”

Living through that process, she said, “felt like being a senior in high school again.” In the end, because Presentation had a teach-out agreement with North Dakota’s Dickinson State, most of her credits transferred.

That kind of an experience is an exception to the rule, however. “Students don’t always do well when colleges close. In fact, they typically don’t do well,” said Paula Langteau, the last president of Presentation. “Some colleges literally padlock the door, and that’s their announcement.”

This is not deliberately malicious, Langteau said. Struggling schools “think they can somehow stay open. Or maybe they’re afraid of looking like they failed.”

She now works as a consultant to help other colleges through the process — a sign of how frequently it’s happening.

“We’re starting to get through to colleges and to boards that there needs to be more pre-planning, and it’s hard,” Langteau said. “It’s hard to admit when it’s time for an institution to close or to merge.’ ”

Mergers are also picking up, though they almost always end with the struggling partner fading away. Woodbury University is being merged into the University of Redlands, and St. Augustine College in Chicago into Lewis University. The Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences was absorbed by Saint Joseph’s University in January. Salus University will become part of Drexel University in June and stop running as a separate institution next year. Bluffton University in Ohio will be integrated into the University of Findlay, also next year.

This seems an easier route for students, who presumably can finish at the successor college. But it isn’t always. Students who attended Mills College received a $1.25 million settlement in a lawsuit charging that they were promised they could finish their degrees after the college was absorbed by Northeastern University. The lawsuit alleged that Northeastern phased out programs it didn’t already offer, in which 408 of the Mills students had enrolled. The universities deny having misled the students.

These shutdowns also affect taxpayers, who have to absorb the cost of the federally subsidized student loans that are forgiven in some instances. Students attending ITT Tech had $1.1 billion in debt forgiven when it shut down, for instance.

New U.S. Department of Education rules take effect in July that will require institutions to report if they are entering bankruptcy or facing expensive legal judgments, and to set aside reserves to cover the cost of student loans if they go under.

It’s also growing more important that consumers understand the financial status of colleges they consider, said Stocker, of College Viability.

“If a restaurant has health complaints, we don’t want to go there,” said Stocker. “If a car manufacturer is having trouble, why would we want to buy that car? Same thing for colleges.”

This story about college closings was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Sara Hutchinson. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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Student-parents disproportionately give up before they reach the finish line. Fewer than 4 in 10 graduate with a degree within six years, compared with more than 6 in 10 other students.

Search to learn more about childcare availability at colleges and universities nationwide. Enter an institution name to see if child care is available and how many students are over the age of 24.

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JERSEY CITY, N.J. — When Keischa Taylor sees fellow student-parents around her campus, she pulls them aside and gives them a hug.

“I tell them, ‘Don’t stop. You’ve got this. You didn’t come this far to stop. You’re not going to give up on yourself.’ ”

Taylor is exceedingly well qualified to offer this advice. She began her college education in her early 20s, balancing it with raising two sons and working retail jobs. And she just finished her bachelor’s degree last semester — at 53.

It’s a rare success story. Student-parents disproportionately give up before they reach the finish line. Fewer than four in 10 graduate with a degree within six years, compared to more than six in 10 other students.

Many have long had to rely on themselves and each other, as Taylor did, to make it through.

Now, however, student-parents are beginning to get new attention. A rule that took effect in California in July, for example, gives priority course registration at public universities and colleges to student-parents, who often need more scheduling flexibility than their classmates. New York State in September expanded the capacity of child care centers at community colleges by 200 spots; its campus child care facilities previously handled a total of 4,500 children, though most of those slots — as at many institutions with child care on campus, nationwide — went to faculty and staff.

Taylor put her sons in a Salvation Army daycare center when they were younger. “It’s a matter of paying for college, paying for the babysitter or sneaking them into class,” Taylor recalled, at Hudson County Community College, or HCCC, where she went before moving on to Rutgers University. Even though the community college is among the few that have improved their services for student-parents, she remembered asking herself, “How am I going to do this?”

Parents with children comprise a huge potential market for colleges and universities looking for ways to make up for the plummeting number of 18- to 24-year-olds and states’ growing need for workers to fill jobs requiring a college education. Many of these parents already have some college credits. More than a third of the 40.4 million adults who have gone to college but never finished have children under age 18, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, or IWPR.

“If you want to serve adult learners, which colleges see as their solution to enrollment decline, you have to serve student-parents,” said Su Jin Jez, CEO of California Competes, a nonpartisan research organization that focuses on education and workforce policies.

Another reason student-parents are more visible now: The Covid-19 pandemic reminded Americans how hard it is to be a parent generally, never mind one who is juggling school on top of work and children.

Related: The hidden financial aid hurdle derailing college students

“A lot of the current energy has come from the focus on child care crises,” said Theresa Anderson, a principal research associate at the nonprofit research organization the Urban Institute. “Student-parents are at the intersection of that.”

There’s also new attention to the benefits for children of having parents who go to college.

“The greatest impact on a child’s likelihood to be successful is the education of their parents,” said Teresa Eckrich Sommer, a research professor at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research.

Lori Barr dropped out of college when she got pregnant at 19, but went back as a mother and ultimately got a master’s degree. With her son, Minnesota Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr, she later co-founded a scholarship organization for single student-parents in California and Minnesota called Raise The Barr.

“Whatever we’re doing to support the parent directly impacts the child,” Barr said. “A parent can’t be well if the child’s not well, and vice versa.”

The effect works two ways, Sommer said. In a study she co-authored of an unusual program that gives college scholarships to both high school students and their parents in Toledo, Ohio, the Institute for Policy Research found that students and parents alike performed at or above average, despite what Sommer noted were financial challenges and limited academic preparation.

“Call it mutual motivation. The children helped the parents with technical issues. The parents helped the children with time management,” she said. “We think of kids as a barrier to student success. We have to turn that on its head. Kids are a primary motivator to student success.”

Tayla Easterla was enrolled at a community college near Sacramento, California, when her daughter was born prematurely four years ago; she took her midterms and finals in the neonatal intensive care unit. “I just found that motherly drive somewhere deep inside,” said Easterla, 27, who now is majoring in business administration at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Krystle Pale is about to get her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. When she looks at her children who live with her, who are 5, 7, 12 and 13, “I want better for them. I just want them to have a better life,” said Pale, choking up.

Sydney Riester, of Rochester, Minnesota, who is about to earn her dental assistant associate degree, also said her children — ages 3, 6 and 7 — were foremost in her planning. “These kids need me, and I need to get this done for them,” Riester said.

Related: ‘We’re from the university and we’re here to help’

There’s a surprising lack of information about whether students in college have dependent children. Most institutions never ask. That is also slowly changing. California, Michigan, Oregon and Illinois have passed legislation since 2020 requiring that public colleges and universities track whether their students are also parents. A similar federal measure is pending in Congress.

“Ask community college presidents what percentage of their students are parents, and they’ll say, ‘That’s a really good question. I’ll get back to you,’ ” said Marjorie Sims, managing director of Ascend at the Aspen Institute, one of a growing number of research, policy and advocacy organizations focusing on student-parents.

Nearly one in four undergraduate and nearly one in three graduate students, or more than 5.4 million people, are parents, the Urban Institute estimates. More than half have children under age 6, according to the IWPR.

Seventy percent of student-parents are women. Fifty-one percent are Black, Hispanic or Native American. Student mothers are more likely to be single, while student fathers are more likely to be married.

Among student-parents who go to college but drop out, cost and conflicts with work are the most-stated reasons, various research shows; 70 percent have trouble affording food and housing, according to the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University.

Student financial aid is based on an estimated cost of attendance that includes tuition, fees, books, supplies, transportation and living expenses, but not expenses related to raising a child. The out-of-pocket cost of attending a public university or college for a low-income parent can be two to five times higher than for a low-income student without children, according to the advocacy group The Education Trust.

A student-parent would have to work 52 hours a week, on average, to cover both child care and tuition at a public university or college, EdTrust says. A separate analysis by California Competes found that students in that state who have children pay $7,592 per child a year more for their educations and related expenses than their classmates who don’t have kids.

But “when they apply for financial aid, they get financial aid packages as if they don’t have children. It’s ludicrous,” said Jez, at California Competes.

Forty-five percent of student-parents who dropped out cited their need to provide child care as a significant cause, a survey released in February found. Yet the number of colleges and universities with on-campus child care has been dropping steadily, from 1,115 in 2012 to 824 today, federal data shows. That’s a decline of 291 institutions, or 26 percent.

Fewer than four in 10 public and fewer than one in 10 private, nonprofit colleges and universities have on-campus child care for students, an analysis by the think tank New America found. Ninety-five percent of those campus child care centers that existed in 2016 — the most recent year for which data is available — had waiting lists, and the number of children on the average waiting list was 82, according to the IWPR. Other students couldn’t afford the cost.

Related: When a Hawaii college sets up shop in Las Vegas: Universities chase students wherever they are

“Colleges and universities that enroll student-parents should be committed to serving their needs,” said Christopher Nellum, executive director at EdTrust-West and himself the son of a student-mother who ultimately dropped out and enlisted in the military, finding it was easier to be a parent there than at a community college. “It’s almost willful neglect to be accepting their tuition dollars and financial aid dollars and not helping them succeed.”

Even where child care is available and spots are open, it’s often too expensive for students to manage. More than two-thirds of student-parents in Washington State said they couldn’t afford child care, a state survey last year found. About half of student-parents nationwide rely entirely on relatives for child care.

Hannah Allen, who goes to HCCC, gets up at 5 a.m. to get her three kids ready for the day — first the 4-year-old, then the 6-year-old, then the 8-year-old. “I go down the line,” she said. Her schedule is so tight, she has a calendar on her refrigerator and another on the wall.

She can’t drop off her children at school or daycare earlier than 8:30 or pick them up later than 5. “When my kids are in school is when I do as much as I can.” She calls her school days “first shift,” while her time at home at night is “second shift.”

“First you put your kids, then you put your jobs, then you put your school and last you put yourself,” said Allen. “You have to push yourself,” she said, starting to cry softly. “Sometimes you think, ‘I can’t do it.’ ”

There is a little-noticed federal grant program to help low-income student-parents pay for child care: Child Care Access Means Parents in School, or CCAMPIS. Last year CCAMPIS was allocated about $84 million; the Government Accountability Office found that student-parents who got CCAMPIS’s subsidies were more likely to stay in school than students generally. But there were more students on the waiting list for it than received aid. A Democratic proposal in the Senate to significantly increase funding for the program has gone nowhere.

The Association of Community College Trustees, or ACCT, is pressing member colleges to make cheap or free space available for Head Start centers on their campuses in the next five years. Fewer than 100 of the nation’s 1,303 two-year colleges — where more than 40 percent of student-parents go — have them now, the ACCT says.

Related: Aging states to college graduates: We’ll pay you to stay

These things are a start, but much more is needed, said Chastity Lord, president and CEO of the Jeremiah Program, which provides students who are single mothers with coaching, child care and housing. “When your child is sick, what are you going to do with them? It becomes insurmountable. Imagine if we had emergency funding for backup child care.”

Jen Charles struggled with child care as she tried to earn a degree and become a social worker from the time she was 19, when she had a son who was born with disabilities. He was followed by a daughter. Charles was also working, as an administrative assistant and, later, a paralegal.

“When things were going smoothly, I would enroll for one class and say, ‘I’m going to get through this,’ ” she said. But it proved too much. And even though Charles, now 49, got an information technology certification last year through the continuing education arm of HCCC, earning a full-fledged degree “became kind of an extinguished dream.”

As important as an education was to her, she said, “your priority becomes being able to sustain your family — their well-being, their needs being met, a roof, food. All of these other things take precedence. And where in there do you fit your papers that are due, or studying for your quiz? Is that at 10 o’clock at night, when you’re exhausted?”

Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, HCCC has steadily added programs to support the parents among its 20,000 students. It has set aside “family-friendly” spaces in libraries and lounges and holds events for parents with kids, including movie nights, barbecues, trick-or-treating and a holiday tree-lighting ceremony. There’s a food pantry with meals prepared by the students in the college’s culinary program.

Student-parents get to register first for courses. College staff help with applications to public benefit programs. Lactation rooms are planned. And there are longer-range conversations about putting a child care center in a new 11-story campus building scheduled to open in 2026.

The college’s 20,000 students are largely poor and the first in their families to go to college, said Christopher Reber, HCCC’s president, and many are not native English speakers. Ninety-four percent qualify for financial aid. Having children, Reber said, “adds insurmountable challenges to that list of insurmountable challenges.”

There’s an even more immediate motivation for the two-year college to support its student-parents. It graduates only 17 percent of students, even within three years, which is among the lowest proportions in the state.

“If a student doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from, it doesn’t matter how much academic support you offer — the student is not going to succeed,” said Reber, in his office overlooking downtown Jersey City.

Related: One college finds a way to get students to degrees more quickly, simply and cheaply

With a grant it got in January from the Aspen Institute’s Ascend, HCCC is expanding its work with the housing authority in Jersey City to help student-parents there enroll in and complete job-focused certificate programs in fields such as bookkeeping and data analytics, hiring a coordinator to work with them and appointing an advisory committee made up of student-parents.

It can be hard to win the trust of student-parents, said Lori Margolin, HCCC’s associate vice president for continuing education and workforce development. “Either they’ve tried before and it didn’t work out, so they’re reluctant to go back, or it’s too much of an unknown. ‘Do they care that I have children and I’m not going to be able to take classes at these times?’ ”

Like other schools, HCCC had what Reber called “Neanderthal” rules for student-parents. They weren’t allowed to bring their kids to campus, for example.

“I remember one student, a single mother, relying on parents and friends to watch her baby. The only time she could study was late at night [in the library], but the library said no.”

That rule was dropped, with more changes planned. A new program will reward student-parents with financial stipends for doing things such as registering early and researching child care options, said Lisa Dougherty, senior vice president for student affairs and enrollment at HCCC.

A few other colleges and universities have programs designed for student-parents. Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania provides free housing for up to four years for up to 18 single mothers, who also get academic support and tutoring, priority for on-campus jobs and access to a children’s library and sports facilities.

At Wilson College in Pennsylvania, up to 12 single parents annually are awarded grants for on-campus housing and for child care, and their children can eat in the campus dining hall for free.

St. Catherine University in Minnesota subsidizes child care for eligible student-parents and has child-friendly study rooms.

And Howard Community College in Maryland, whose president was once a student-parent, provides mentorship, peer support, career counseling, financial assistance and a family study room in the library.

“That may not seem like a big deal, but those are the messages that say, ‘You belong here, too,’ ” Lord said.

These efforts have so far helped a small number of students. Forty single mothers have graduated from the Misericordia program since it was launched more than 20 years ago, for instance.

Some of the obstacles for student-parents are hard to measure, said Jessica Pelton, who finished community college after having a daughter at age 20 and ultimately graduated from the University of Michigan, where her husband also was enrolled.

“You’re typically isolated and alone,” said Pelton. “I just kind of stuck to myself.”

She would often miss out on nighttime study groups with classmates who lived on campus. “Their priorities are not to go home, make dinner and put their kid to bed. We don’t have the option to go party. We’re not here on our parents’ money. We’re paying our own way.”

Some faculty offered to let her bring her daughter to class, she said. “It really meant a lot to me, because it made me feel like a part of campus.”

Finding fellow student-parents helps, too, said Omonie Richardson, 22, who is going to college online to become a midwife while raising her 1-year-old son and working as a chiropractic assistant 35 hours a week in Fargo, North Dakota.

“I felt very isolated before I found a group of other single moms,” she said. “If we had the understanding and support in place, a lot more parents would be ready to pursue their educations and not feel like it’s unattainable.”

This story about student-parents 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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BRISTOL, Vt. — The mobile home park in this rural village seemed to be hibernating on a subfreezing, snowy day. But there was evidence of damage from an earlier storm that had brought high winds and freezing rain — another in an unusual number of weather events that have battered this state with flooding and other natural disasters.

“It looks like they just had to replace some skirting, probably from the storm,” said Chris Ouellette, property manager for a local affordable housing agency that owns the park, pointing at the plywood wrapped around the base of one home shared by several people she said had recently been homeless. “We have a roof that was ripped off a house over there. We’ve had a couple sheds that have been lost.”

At least one of the residents had started a GoFundMe page to pay for repairs, Ouellette said. “There’s no funding that is designated in any way for mobile home parks,” she said, before trailing off. “So when you have a situation like these storms that continue to keep coming …”

Now help is arriving from an unexpected source: The University of Vermont, or UVM, the state’s flagship higher education institution, has opened a new center to help rural communities like this one. Among other projects, it has taken on the long-neglected job of finding ways to make this kind of mobile home park more resistant to extreme weather.

Supporting their neighbors isn’t always a priority for universities and colleges. Even when it is, it often happens so quietly that it isn’t widely noticed.

“It’s not on the national radar,” said Glenda Gillaspy, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is upgrading and expanding a network of weather and environmental monitoring stations crucial to that state’s farmers and foresters.

But advocates suggest that such help is one way to counteract crashing public confidence in higher education, a problem that has been worsened by political attacks and self-destructive missteps by even the most elite universities.

Related: More universities and colleges reach out to boost their home communities

Universities that engage in community outreach “are that middle piece in between what the community needs and this political thing,” Gillaspy said.

This kind of work pulls faculty, students and researchers away from grand, picturesque campuses with neat grassy quads like UVM’s and into neighborhoods like Bristol’s mobile home park, 30 miles away and a world apart, where people can be surprised to see them.

“When you’re knocking on people’s doors and saying, ‘Hi, I’m a student from the University of Vermont,’ people would look at you a little perplexed at first,” said Kelly Hamshaw, a research lecturer in the university’s Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, who is working on the disaster resilience project.

Even before the culture wars and the recent resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania following their performances before a congressional committee and disclosures of plagiarism, Americans’ faith in higher education had dropped more than their confidence in any other institution tracked by the Gallup polling organization, including the presidency, Congress, big business and the criminal justice system.

“There’s huge mistrust between universities and communities, so there is a whole process of culture shift and rebuilding that needs to happen,” said Sarah McKinley, director of community wealth-building programs for The Democracy Collaborative, which encourages universities to leverage some of their $702 billion a year in direct spending and nearly 4 million employees to boost their neighborhoods.

Helping solve community problems is a step toward restoring public confidence, she said. “Whether there’s been a conscious articulation or awareness of that within universities, I don’t know, but there is certainly something to it.”

And not just in rural areas. Through the Greater University Circle Initiative, for example, Case Western Reserve University and several nearby hospitals — more than half of whose neighbors in East Cleveland live in poverty — have agreed to leverage their purchasing power by buying locally and hiring local residents.

Of 100 urban universities surveyed by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, three-quarters included public service as part of their missions.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Some appear to be acting from self-interest.

For one thing, universities are increasingly fending off calls to pay more taxes on the property they own and on their endowments. Showing communities that they’re contributing in other ways can help deflect those kinds of demands.

Some have also been struggling to attract students and faculty to remote places, inner cities and other areas in economic decline by helping to transform them, “rather than put up walls and be surrounded by a sort of deteriorating urban wasteland,” said Democracy Collaborative President Joe Guinan.

Such interventions can “help stabilize and develop local communities in a way that makes them more attractive places for faculty, for students, to come,” said Guinan. “It’s very much in [universities’] interest to do a thing they should be doing anyway.”

Colby College in Maine, for instance, is helping to revitalize its surrounding city of Waterville, which was hammered by the closing of several manufacturing plants that provided well-paying jobs. The college built a dorm on the main street to help restore foot traffic to the fading downtown, where it has also seeded $200 million worth of projects including an arts center and boutique hotel.

“The people we’re attracting have lots of choices about where they can go and where they can live,” said David Greene, Colby’s president. By helping the community stay vibrant, he said, “you have a much better chance of being able to recruit them to your college.”

Unlike private companies, universities are place-bound, said McKinley. “They aren’t going to pick up and leave. There is that economic stickiness, whether they like it or not.”

Yet “by no means is higher education doing everything it can,” said Bobbie Laur, president of Campus Compact, a coalition of 500 colleges and universities that have committed to serving their communities. It “has a more critical role than it has ever had to make an impact. We should say that it’s an expectation.”

Related: Columbia and N.Y.U. would lose $327 million in tax breaks under proposal

Making that sort of an impact isn’t always smooth, however. Parachuting in to offer solutions to communities’ problems — as in, “We’re from the university, and we’re here to help” — can come across as paternalistic, especially in the current political climate, people who do this work acknowledged.

“A certain amount of humility is absolutely required in almost any of those situations, and universities haven’t been terribly good at humility in the past,” said Kirk Dombrowski, vice president for research and economic development at UVM, who oversees its new Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and other community engagement projects.

“We have names for it, right? The ‘town-gown’ dynamic,” said Dombrowski, a cultural anthropologist. “The university sat on a hill and was full of people with big robes and funny hats.”

That perception “has always been kind of true,” he said as bundled-up students just outside his window scurried across the campus of historic red-brick buildings. “And it’s also been not true.” Universities like his were started largely to train teachers for the local schools, for instance, and farmers how to use new and more effective techniques.

Today, Dombrowski said, “Showing that large institutions like this are interested in what’s happening in towns can show goodwill.”

UVM has branched into a multitude of projects through the Leahy Institute, which is named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy and being funded by the same four-year federal grant that is paying for the outreach in Wisconsin and work at Auburn University in Alabama to support chicken farmers, the forest-products industry and the estimated 210,000 jobs they represent in that state.

The institute helped the Town Hall Theater in the town of Middlebury to apply for grants to build a $7.5 million addition, for example, researching such things as the economic impact of the arts in the surrounding county and the number of jobs they represent — a complex task the small nonprofit community theater couldn’t have afforded to do on its own.

“It would have been a tremendous struggle for us to understand what that impact is, or even to have the basic data to be able to craft our narrative,” said Lisa Mitchell, executive director of the theater, which has since raised much of the money that it needs and has begun construction. “This was really game-changing for us.”

Upstairs in the building, a landmark in the heart of town that dates to 1884, performers were rehearsing for an upcoming musical, “Next to Normal,” accompanied on a piano. Downstairs in a gallery was an exhibition of art by a retired local veterinarian.

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

Getting things like free data and statistics might not seem glamorous, but “it’s a wonderful service that we would each have to pay a lot of money for” without the university, said Fred Kenney, executive director of the Addison County Economic Development Corporation, who connected Mitchell with UVM and who also relies on the university for data. “It’s not the only example, but it’s a really useful one.”

As for what’s in it for UVM, he said in a conference room hung with photos of industrial buildings, maps and a framed invitation to the opening of a microbrewery, the theater’s leaders are “letting a lot of people know that they won some grants” and giving some of the credit to the university. “So the word is getting out.”

University employees, of course, are also almost always members of the communities around their campuses. That’s how Hamshaw got involved with another project: making recommendations about a local teen center called the Hub, in rural Bristol, where she lives.

“We intersected on a dog walk actually,” Hamshaw said of the director of the center, Taylor Welch-Plante. The result was a research project conducted largely by students on how Vermont towns are helping and failing their young people.

Related: Experts predicted dozens of colleges would close in 2023 – and they were right

“It’s a really great place to kind of get that information in one quick dose,” said Hamshaw of the teen center, in a former bingo hall across a ballfield from the trailer park and filled with musical instruments, TVs, beanbag chairs and other mismatched furniture, board games, an air-hockey table, art supplies and a disco ball. There’s a skate park outside.

Another benefit: exposing local high school students to their only slightly older college counterparts, helping overcome growing reluctance among rural young people to continue their educations. “The teens can then see the college kids and be, like, ‘Wow, I want to go to college,’ ” Welch-Plante said.

But more people than teenagers, theater lovers and mobile home park residents should be hearing about these community outreach initiatives, said Emma Spett, engagement initiatives coordinator at the Leahy Institute.

“I feel like we’re doing a lot of doing and not a lot of telling,” Spett said.

When a community does see and hear about these good works, it “can completely change the tone” of how the public perceives its local college or university, said Greene, at Colby.

“Colleges and universities have been losing the trust of the public, and there’s no doubt that a piece of this is that they often seem more apart from their communities than a part of their communities,” Greene said. That “can lead to a real distrust of the institutions — that the institutions are not for me, they’re for someone else.”

When he first arrived on campus, he said, “I just felt enormous distrust in the community about Colby and how we seemed to ignore the challenges the city was facing. Now we can have discussions in the city that are completely productive, without having that piece that we don’t trust each other.”

Gillaspy cited the example in Wisconsin of a collaboration with Native Americans by university scientists — one a Native American himself — to return to traditional farming practices while growing particular types of corn.

Projects like those have several advantages, she said. “There’s economic impact. There’s the exchange of ideas and knowledge. And then there’s the people part of it — that confidence and trust.”

This story about college community outreach 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ohio — Ghosts populate the campus of Chatfield College.

They’re in the fading photos on the library walls of students who, over 177 years, attended the college and the boarding school from which it sprang, and of the Ursuline nuns who taught them, in their simple tunics and scapulars.

Amid seemingly endless acres of tobacco, soybean and wheat farms in a village in southwest Ohio with a population of 241, the now-closed college sits at the end of a narrow entrance road flanked by Bradford pear trees, colorless and bare in the winter gloom. Just about the only traffic on the way is an occasional stray chicken.

Chatfield has been shut down for a year now, though the buildings and grounds remain so neatly tended that they look as if they’re ready for the students to return. It’s among a fast-growing number of closed colleges in rural America, stripping communities of nearby higher education options to which young people can aspire and eventually go.

In this case, however, something unusual has happened: The assets left by the defunct college are being used to help at least some local students continue their educations past high school.

It’s a story that underscores the role played by colleges and universities in rural America, what’s lost when they close and how advocates are trying to keep the proportion of rural high school graduates who go to college from falling even further than it already has.

“It was a really great starting point for me, and it could have been a starting point for other students,” said Anna Robertson, 23, who attended Chatfield until the end.

Related: Rural universities, already few and far between, are being stripped of majors

Locals once saw greater potential for the college, which was founded in 1845 as a boarding school by an English-born Ursuline nun named Julia Chatfield. In the early 20th century, it benefited from being close to U.S. 50, a heavily trafficked major east-west route. And in 1971, it evolved into Chatfield College, which conferred two-year associate degrees.

“It was the heart of the area,” said Amber Saeidi Asl, who grew up next to the campus. She took courses offered by Chatfield through a dual-enrollment program while she was still in high school, and eventually went there.

Just having a college nearby inspired her to go, she said.

“The people of the area really wanted a college,” Sister Ellen Doyle, president from 1986 to 1997, said in a video history.

“A lot of kids that wouldn’t otherwise go to college felt comfortable coming here,” Mary Jacobs, a Chatfield graduate who later worked as its director of finance, said on the video. “If it hadn’t been for this college, a lot of them wouldn’t have attended college at all.”

But the interstate highway system long ago supplanted U.S. 50. Even the village where the college was located, St. Martin, was dissolved in 2011, when the population had dwindled to 129; the campus was absorbed into Fayetteville.

Like other small, rural, tuition-dependent and religiously affiliated institutions, Chatfield grew even more imperiled as Americans increasingly questioned the cost and value of postsecondary education. There are only about 80  two-year private, nonprofit colleges left, fewer than half as many as just 30 years ago.

It’s also in a part of the country that has been among the most acutely affected by a decline in the number of high school graduates and their interest in going to college. The number of students in Ohio’s public high schools slid by 7 percent from 2012 to 2022, and the percentage of them going directly to college fell to 53 percent by 2020, the most recent year for which the figure is available — nearly 10 percentage points below its peak, and well below the national average of 62 percent.

Related: MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Even though Chatfield accepted everyone who applied, and charged a comparatively low $14,080 in tuition and fees, it was down to 129 students in its last semester, according to federal data. Nearly half took their classes exclusively online.

With an annual budget of around $4.5 million, the college lost $373,520 in 2020 and $850,202 in 2021, tax records show.

“We could see the enrollment trends,” said Robert Elmore, Chatfield’s last president. “We just didn’t see how we could sustain this and continue operating.”

So the school announced in the fall of 2022 that it would shut down at the end of that semester, taking 70 jobs with it. It barely made the headlines. But it had joined more than a dozen other private, nonprofit universities and colleges in rural areas or that serve rural students that have closed or announced their closings just since 2020.

Those include Nebraska Christian College, Marlboro College in Vermont, Holy Family College in Wisconsin, Judson College in Alabama, Ohio Valley and Alderson Broaddus universities in West Virginia, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, Iowa Wesleyan University, Marymount California University, Cazenovia College in New York, Finlandia University in Michigan, Presentation College in South Dakota and Lincoln College, Lincoln Christian University and MacMurray College in Illinois.

Nearly 13 million Americans now live in places, mostly in the Midwest and Great Plains, where the nearest college or university is beyond a reasonable commute away, the American Council on Education reports. The nearest colleges to the Chatfield campus — a community college and a branch of the University of Cincinnati — are about 45 minutes away.

Related: A campaign to prod high school students into college tries a new tack: Making it simple

“For a lot of college students who are living in rural areas, it’s just not feasible to drive to one of the city universities,” said Robertson.

Helping overcome those kinds of obstacles is now the purpose of the nonprofit set up with the remaining Chatfield College endowment, which Elmore put at $4 million; the organization also claims the grounds and buildings as assets, valued along with the endowment at $11 million.

Called the Chatfield Edge, it has provided volunteer mentors, career counseling, assistance with admission and financial aid applications and other help to 21 students, and scholarships of about $1,500 per semester to 19 of them, said David Hesson, director of programs, who was an associate dean at the college.

It’s not only about getting students to college; the Chatfield Edge will also help with trade school and certificate programs. The target is low-income high school students who would be the first in their families to go to college and students who are older than the traditional age. Robertson, who now is finishing her bachelor’s degree at Asbury University in Kentucky, is among the beneficiaries.

“We said we don’t have to necessarily provide the education. But we could support them, and we know what that looks like, and we have the scholarship money to cover the gap,” Elmore said.

Other than Hesson and Elmore, the only employees left are a facilities director and the director of development. They work in the onetime student center. “We’re the whole gang,” said Hesson as he held open the door for some rare visitors. An Ursuline sister, Patricia Homan, has an office in a separate, otherwise empty building, and spends time in the library compiling an archive of the college’s history.

The small number of students it has helped so far speaks to the challenges faced by the Chatfield Edge and other organizations promoting access to college and other education after high school for young people growing up in rural places.

“A lot of the kids I knew grew up to do what their parents did,” said Saeidi Asl, who now volunteers as a mentor. “If your parents were farmers, you became a farmer. If your parents were truckers, you became a trucker.”

Related: Often overwhelmed on big campuses, rural college students push for support

That was not the case for Destiny Jones, who also was at Chatfield when it closed. “I didn’t think I was going to do well in the workforce without an education,” Jones said. “I’m a person who needs to be told how to do something.” Plus, “it was going to lead to a higher-paying job.”

Jones, who is 21, was speaking at a daycare center where she works during breaks to help make money for tuition at Mount Saint Joseph University in Cincinnati, which she now attends on her way to getting a degree in art education and becoming a teacher.

Going to Chatfield was much easier. “I didn’t feel like I had to stress about not being able to get there,” she said. Now, at Mount Saint Joseph, “I definitely get pretty homesick, especially in the middle of the semester.” As someone who is close to her family, “I didn’t want to be away.”

Chatfield’s very existence, Jones said, “made people think about college because it was close by.” Still, many of her high school classmates didn’t go. They took “blue-collar jobs, working in restaurants, doing mechanical work, construction — anything they can get their hands on.”

Rural high school graduates are far less likely to go directly to college than their suburban counterparts, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — 56 percent, compared to 62 percent, respectively. That’s down substantially in just the last three years.

A big reason for that is a lack of confidence, said Hesson. “They don’t think they can do it. It’s unknown.” And without a college close by, “you lose accessibility.”

Related: Aging states to college graduates: We’ll pay you to stay

Rural students who do go to college generally prefer to stay close to home, research shows.

Robertson, for instance, had never driven on a highway before Chatfield’s closing forced her to transfer to her Kentucky university, nearly two and a half hours away, which has 1,395 undergraduates.

“She said Asbury is such a big college, and I cracked up, because it’s not,” said April Houk, a Fayetteville resident who is Robertson’s volunteer mentor. “She was kind of like a deer in the headlights.” So Houk sent her a bouquet of flowers and some words of encouragement at the beginning of the school year; two weeks later, Robertson had joined some extracurricular clubs, found a friend to study with and was majoring in equine science with plans to become a veterinarian.

Still, Robertson said, she misses having a college closer to home, which was also cheaper, since she could commute. Her new life “is a pretty different experience,” she said, “because I’m living away from home for the first time. It’s a much bigger campus. There’s more of a sense of anonymity. It can be a little lonely.”

Small rural colleges are more supportive, said Homan, the Ursuline nun and archivist, who also went to Chatfield and later worked there and at a tiny branch campus in Cincinnati that has also closed. “I was the cheerleader,” she said. “I found students if they didn’t show up. If they didn’t have bus fare, we would help them with that.”

Her experience of working in the area “is that the older generation says, ‘I don’t have a college education and I did fine.’ Students aren’t looking for a college education. It is not the aspiration.”

Many, when they’re older, find they do need one, however. That was the case for Jackie Schmidt, who got her associate degree at Chatfield and went on to a successful career as an office manager and accounting manager before helping start a contract manufacturing company. When she was laid off — “I was 54 and had the rug pulled out from under me” — she found “the jobs I thought I was qualified for required a bachelor’s degree.” But “I was intimidated at this age to be going back to school.”

Schmidt, now 56, found her way to the Chatfield Edge and with its help enrolled in an online bachelor’s degree program in business administration.

With rural colleges closing, she said, “I worry because not only for kids just getting out of high school but adults who decide they want to go back to school — what avenues do they have?”

Chatfield College created a sense of community not only for its students, but for the surrounding township, said Houk, who lives a mile from the campus on a 1,300-acre farm. Her husband’s grandmother worked there as a cook, and Houk went to summer camps at Chatfield and was married in the chapel. “We loved this place,” she said. “It really has a lot of history.”

She looked around at the all-but-abandoned campus. “It almost makes you emotional — the integrity it brought to the community.” Even though it’s no longer operating, she said, “I still say, ‘I live one mile from Chatfield College at the stop sign.’ It’s sad to have it gone.”

Without the college, “We lose that educational opportunity and the gifts that these young people have if they were educated,” said Homan, who is now on the board of the Chatfield Edge and Schmidt’s mentor. She, too, looked around the campus. “Oh my gosh, it’s quiet. But it lives on. It does. I know that.”

This story about rural higher education 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 After its college closes, a rural community fights to keep a path to education open appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Aléshah Brown wasn’t yet in high school when she started having doubts about college.

“Even in middle school, you’re feeling all this pressure and stress about going to college, but no one’s asking you, ‘What do you want to do?’ ” said Brown, of San Antonio, Texas. “That was a very stressful thing for me.”

This anxiety, along with the cost and other issues, is among the many things discouraging growing numbers of students from even applying to college.

Brown eventually found a website that promised, in plain and simple English, to help her start her journey. Much of the information was conveyed by other young people who had already graduated from high school and begun careers. And the site prominently included how much money she could make in particular jobs.

“It’s showing students, ‘Hey, let’s see what you individually like to do, what you love and how you can make a difference in the world,’ ” she said. “You’re being asked that question instead of being given this general list of options that you don’t understand.”

This clear-cut, straightforward message didn’t come from academics or administrators, policymakers or politicians. It’s the brainchild of an advertising executive, Roy Spence, the man behind such well-known slogans as “Don’t Mess With Texas” and “You are now free to move about the country.”

The proportion of high school graduates going directly to college has fallen from a high of 70 percent in 2016 to 62 percent in 2021.

Spence’s campaign underscores how glaringly little the higher education industry itself has done to confront the crisis of confidence that is eating away at its business.

“Universities tend to have a hard time having a very clear, focused message,” said Eunkyu Lee, associate dean and a professor of marketing at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management. “There’s a lot more focus on rankings and much less collective effort to rebuild confidence in the value of higher education.”

That’s one of the reasons Spence set up an independent nonprofit group two years ago called the Make It Movement — the organization whose website Brown found — to show students in central Texas how and why to continue their educations past high school. There are now plans to expand the campaign nationwide.

Related: College leaders refocus attention on their students’ top priority: Jobs after graduation

It doesn’t promote any particular university or college — not even Spence’s beloved University of Texas at Austin, whose logo adorns the bright orange fleece he’s wearing at the stand-up desk in his Austin office. In fact, it doesn’t suggest that students have to go to college at all; it just encourages them to learn something that can set them up for jobs that pay more than if they stopped at high school. They could train for a trade, for instance.

There’s an interactive tool from which users can choose what kind of workplace they prefer (indoor, outdoor, at home), their personalities (thinker, doer, creator, planner) and what they value. Various careers pop up, with the educations required to reach each one, and what they pay.

“The world doesn’t deal with complex stuff anymore. You have to get it to me fast and compelling, interactive, peer to peer and simple,” said Spence, co-founder and chair of GSD&M, a marketing and advertising company whose clients have included Walmart, DreamWorks, the PGA Tour, BMW and the U.S. Air Force.

The point, the website tells the middle and high school students at whom it’s aimed, “is to help you discover your purpose” — something that has gotten blurred as young people question the traditional paths once taken after high school, such as going straight to college.

“At some point universities and colleges must advertise not the college but have a young person look in the camera and say, ‘I went to Boston University. Here’s what happened.’ ” Spence said.

The idea has proven popular beyond expectations. Make It Movement hoped to reach 20,000 central Texas students with its website; more than 80,000 have logged on, the organization says. Billboards drawing more attention to the campaign line the sides of highways in the region.

A survey of 300 middle and high school students in Austin and central Texas found that the proportion who were very aware of how they could make at least $50,000 soon after high school rose from 23 percent before they used the website to 61 percent afterward, Make It Movement says. The proportion who were aware that there were options close to home to train for jobs doing what they wanted went from 42 percent to 93 percent.

In other industries with image problems, competitors have banded together to change public perception, often using marketing and advertising the way the Make It Movement has, Spence said.

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college

If universities came together that way, in a sort of alliance for higher learning, “you would have the best [advertising] agencies in the country bidding on it.” Instead, he said, “what you have now is every university doing its own thing, when what we have is an industry image issue.”

There’s myriad evidence that many Americans are souring on college.

The proportion of high school graduates going directly to college has fallen from a high of 70 percent in 2016 to 62 percent in 2021, the most recent year for which the figure is available, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s the equivalent of hundreds of thousands fewer high school grads entering college that year as freshmen.

“What you have now is every university doing its own thing, when what we have is an industry image issue.”

Roy Spence, founder, Make It Movement

One important reason this is happening is the cost, which has doubled in the last 40 years, even after being adjusted for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

But another is an indisputable lack of faith in the payoff.

Nearly half of high school graduates age 18 to 30 who decided not to go to college or dropped out agreed that getting a college degree was not worth the cost because they couldn’t afford to go into debt to pay for it without a guarantee of a career, according to focus groups convened by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Fewer than four in 10 of the 1,675 non-college-goer focus group participants believed that getting a degree would lead to a career allowing them to be financially stable.

In fact, people with college and university degrees make back in annual income 14 percent to 36 percent more than what they spent per year on their educations, depending on their race and gender, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates. While this premium has been falling, it still makes college “an excellent investment,” the Fed concluded.

Related: Aging states to college graduates: We’ll pay you to stay

Yet universities don’t like talking about jobs and salaries, said Marcus Collins, a former head of strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, New York, and a marketing executive who has done work for Apple and McDonald’s, headed a digital strategy for Beyoncé and is now a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

“I see it as an incongruence of expectations and ambitions,” Collins said. Universities believe themselves to be places people come to learn, he said, “and in doing so you get some skills that will help you in the job market.” But consumers are increasingly focused first and foremost on careers; 62 percent say they would be willing to go into debt to pay for college if they knew there was a good job at the end, those Gates Foundation focus groups found.

“Universities tend to have a hard time having a very clear, focused message. There’s a lot more focus on rankings and much less collective effort to rebuild confidence in the value of higher education.”

Eunkyu Lee, associate dean and professor of marketing, Martin J. Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University

“It’s about product market fit, in that the product that we bring to market has to meet the ambitions of the market,” said Collins, author of the new book “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.” And many prospective students no longer connect the product of a college education with the outcome of a good job.

Meanwhile, universities have struggled to reverse even basic misperceptions — that students all pay the full advertised tuition listed on their websites, for example.

“The cost of higher education is real and it’s very high, but what people generally hear about is the sticker price at prestigious universities, where in fact the net price that most people pay is much lower” after accounting for discounts and financial aid, Syracuse’s Lee said.

After cost, the second most common reason people age 18 to 30 give for not going to college or for dropping out is stress. Also in the top four: not being certain of a career. That’s according to focus groups assembled by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, which was trying to figure out why high school students weren’t going on to college — a trend that’s jeopardizing that state’s goal of increasing the proportion of its population with degrees.

Related: Spending summer in class means these college students will be done in three years

The decline in college-going is worrying employers struggling to fill jobs that require workers who are college educated or trained in the trades. Among the funders of the Make It Movement are the Austin chamber of commerce, the Texas Association of Builders and the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association.

“We have a massive surplus of high-skill careers out there,” Spence said, “and nobody to apply for them.”

The Make It Movement hoped to reach 20,000 central Texas students with its website; so far, more than 80,000 have logged on.

More of this kind of marketing outreach is critical, Lee said.

“There needs to be a more collective effort to deal with this public skepticism” about education after high school, he said. “Building a common voice that could reverse the negative trend of confidence in higher education is critical not only for the well-being of the institutions, but also the well-being of the nation economically.”

As for Brown, the student in San Antonio, she’s now in college studying toward a degree in digital marketing with plans to work in the entertainment industry. She liked the Make It Movement’s work so much, she has become a “student ambassador” for it.

Other young people, Brown said, are “almost succumbing — I know that’s a dramatic word — to an idea that they have to do things a specific way: ‘I have to go to college. I don’t know what I want to do, but I have to go.’ And that’s so stressful.”

This story about college-going 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. Listen to our higher education podcast.

The post A campaign to prod high school students into college tries a new tack: Making it simple appeared first on The Hechinger Report.