Texas' education funding revamp brings big changes

Jan 5, 2024
The new funding approach puts more money into the system and more emphasis on outcomes rather than enrollment totals.
Texas' new funding approach for community colleges puts more emphasis on outcomes rather than enrollment totals. Above, the campus of Richland College in Dallas.
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A year after the Taliban barred women from universities, many remain bereft of options

Jan 2, 2024
The World Bank has warned the ban on educating women will hurt the country’s prospects for economic growth. 
Male students stand in front of a poster ordering women to wear hijabs at a private university in Kabul in March 2023. Women have been unable to attend universities in Afghanistan since December 2022.
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Night School Bar offers college-level courses with a chaser

Nov 27, 2023
At Night School Bar, there are no grades and no credit. Classes are pay-as-you-can. The listed cost is $320 per class, but students can pay as little as $10.
Night School Bar owner Lindsey Andrews (center) teaches a class on art and labor in the front classroom, while customers order drinks at the speakeasy at the back of the building.
Peyton Sickles

An improved FAFSA is on the way, but delays mean students and schools will have to scramble

Nov 16, 2023
This year's form will be shorter and easier to fill out. But it'll also arrive more than two months late.
Colleges use the information on the FAFSA to decide how much financial aid to offer applicants.
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International students are returning to U.S. colleges and universities 

Nov 15, 2023
But they're not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, and they're coming from different parts of the world.
The impact of international student enrollment on a university's bottom line varies — are the students are undergraduates paying full tuition or graduate students who get paid a stipend?
Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images

Why is it so hard for community college students to transfer credits to 4-year institutions?

Nov 10, 2023
The Department of Education says institutions need to talk to each other about how to make credits transfer.
"Sometimes you have a cultural reluctance to accept community college courses as being identical to what was taught at the university," says James Kvaal, undersecretary for the Department of Education. 
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More than 800,000 people are getting student loans forgiven

Sep 5, 2023
It's part of a one-time fix by the Biden administration to the income-driven repayment program for federal student loans.
Last spring, the Biden administration announced a one-time fix to rectify what the education secretary called “years of administrative failures” with the income-driven repayment program.
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Visa denials for international students increasing

Aug 3, 2023
The Cato Institute found that the United States denied 35% of international student visas in 2022 — the highest denial percentage in decades.
In 2022, the number of international students was nearly 1 million, according to the Institute of International Education, but many student visas were denied.
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Getting private scholarships for college doesn’t necessarily mean a reduced bill

Aug 2, 2023
Sometimes schools will take private scholarship money and subtract that from its institutional grant. It’s known as scholarship displacement, and a handful of states are passing laws to end it.
Sometimes schools will take private scholarship money and subtract that from its institutional grant, a practice known as scholarship displacement.
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Perks of being a legacy student can go beyond the admissions office

Jul 31, 2023
While some colleges are dropping their legacy admissions policy, there are less formal benefits for those with family connections.
Occidental College, a Los Angeles private school, is among the latest institutions to end legacy admissions.
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