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Administrators at Alabama’s Bishop State Community College had a goal: Re-enroll some of the 800 students who had recently completed some coursework but never finished their degree.
A proposed $9 billion in federal funding dedicated to college completion and student success could be transformative for colleges like Bishop State, which often lack the resources to help students get back on track with their studies.

The welcome-back greetings from many colleges this fall had a common message: Life on campus is back to normal—despite another fall term taking place in the shadow of the pandemic.
Yet despite the marked shift from last year’s virtual events to this year’s in-person ones at most colleges, life on campus hasn’t fully snapped back to 2019’s volume of offerings—and some mix of hybrid and virtual events seems like it’s here to stay.

Viet Nguyen has long been bothered by the idea of legacy admissions, a system designed to exacerbate inequity for higher education.
So Nguyen came up with Leave Your Legacy, an effort in which young alumni and students would pledge not to give anything to colleges and universities that favor alumni children in the admissions process. So far, 578 people have signed up.

A troubled student debt relief program for teachers, police officers, and other public service workers will soon get the makeover that borrowers have been demanding.
This week, the U.S. Department of Education is expected to unveil a significant overhaul of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which has been a magnet of confusion, mistakes, and mismanagement since its inception in 2007.

Jadyn Turner is a student at Catholic University. She was drawn to the school in part by its aggressive marketing campaign.
Marketing and advertising at colleges and universities are getting big budgets and setting new records these days. Declines in enrollment, made worse by the pandemic, and increasing competition from online providers and others are behind the burgeoning investments.

During his back-to-school bus tour, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona spent time promoting college access, free community college, and in-person classes alongside local politicians and federal officials.
But Cardona turned serious when asked if hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of congressional aid and pandemic-spurred federal stimulus for schools could carry out the vision to reimagine public education after the pandemic exposed deeply entrenched inequities. He doesn't want educators to recycle old strategies.