Strategies for combating postcollege underemployment.
Colleges and universities need to launch careers, not just produce graduates.
Currently, however, many institutions aren’t doing enough to promote real-world, postgraduation career readiness. Especially at the campuses that serve the largest number of Pell Grant–eligible students, underemployment of bachelor’s degree holders is a critical issue.
A recent report indicates that these institutions are doing a particularly poor job of preparing their graduates for the workforce. Career outcomes, including graduates’ postcollege salary, may not be the only way to assess the value of a college education. But colleges and universities are remiss if they fail to focus on that metric.
If passed, the law would require for-profit institutions to generate at least 15% of their revenue from non-federal sources.
A new bill proposes making it harder for for-profit colleges to rely on federal dollars.
It would change the existing 90/10 rule into the 85/15 rule.
These figures refer to the revenue for-profits can generate through federal financial aid.
The 2024 POST Act is the seventh attempt by U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin to reintroduce the 85/15 rule.
A newly proposed bill aims to further restrict how much of a for-profit college’s revenue can come from the federal government.
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, a Democrat representing Illinois, introduced the Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers (POST) Act this month. If passed, the law would require for-profit colleges and universities to generate at least 15% of their revenue from nonfederal sources, up from the current 10% minimum known as the 90/10 rule.
New requirements for reporting cyberattacks would put undue stress on both small and large institutions, 16 organizations told the Department of Homeland Security in a letter.
More than a dozen higher education–focused organizations are hitting back against a federal proposal that would require the country’s 5,000-plus colleges and universities to report cybersecurity attacks.
Educause, a nonprofit focused on education and technology, sent a letter July 1 to express concerns about a proposal from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
The proposal, filed May 6, expands on the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022. That measure was born out of a larger effort to mitigate cyberattacks, which have increasingly seeped into the higher education sector in the last few years, namely following a mass breach by ransomware group Cl0p in 2023. It impacted thousands of higher education institutions and adjacent institutions, with some going as far as paying the group a ransom.
Higher ed wasn’t a top priority for Donald Trump when he first took office. But now that he and the GOP see attacking elite institutions and regulating colleges as winning political issues, a second term is likely to bring more aggressive policies.
For America’s colleges and universities and the students they serve, the four years of Donald Trump’s first term as president were fraught, defined by threats to international students, allegations of “radical left indoctrination,” free speech controversies and far-reaching attacks on fundamental institutional values such as diversity.
Since Trump left office in 2021, universities have continued to grapple with the legacy of his term and the movement it spawned. His four years in office helped to pave the way for the Supreme Court’s decision last summer banning race-conscious admissions. A controversial executive order spurred a cascade of state laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies. Meanwhile, the rise of MAGA Republicanism spawned supercharged culture wars, entangling campuses and prompting some state officials to get increasingly involved in how public universities are run and what’s taught in classrooms.