Student Union
College Revenues Shrinking During Coronavirus Pandemic
U.S. colleges and universities are bearing a greater financial impact from the coronavirus pandemic than anticipated, education officials say.
And they are asking for help.
The schools received $2.9 billion in federal support through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March, and another $2.9 trillion in assistance is proposed through the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.
But aid for the educational institutions was already lagging from reduced funding since the 1980s, accounting for tuition and fees tripling in the past four decades. Universities responded by increasing their costs.
“Over the past several decades, there has been a substantial shift in the overall funding of higher education from state assistance, in the forms of grants and subsidies, to increased tuition borne by students,” the U.S. Treasury Department reported in 2012.
When the pandemic hit -- sending students online, shutting down campuses and diminishing enrollments -- university coffers lost more than $120 billion, “especially in areas such as testing, contact tracing, quarantine, treatment and learning technology,” wrote Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council of Education, to the U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 25.
UConn request
The University of Connecticut (UConn) has used up $35 million it moved from the budgets of its Storrs and regional campuses, according to the school. It is asking for a state allocation of $28 million that, added to $13 million from its current fiscal year, would make up for shortfalls in funding.
“We know that we have already cut substantially over the past several years, and this $28 million additional round of cuts will cause pain at the university,” Scott Jordan, UConn’s chief financial officer and executive vice president for administration, said in a statement published by the university.
The University of Maryland (UMD) has also taken a hard hit as it faces a $292 million budget cut in the next fiscal year. Some employees will see a salary cut, but those who earn less than $150,000 annually will not face reductions, according to The Diamondback, the student newspaper.
School President Darryll Pines described the coronavirus’s impact on UMD’s budget as “by far the largest financial crisis in the history of the university” in a virtual town hall meeting to explain budget shortfalls.
UMD will also face 5% cuts for each academic department, and facility improvement projects will be postponed, Pines wrote in a campuswide email to students and staff. The welfare of the school community, he wrote, matters more than the budget cuts.
“Please know that you have leaders in this institution thinking about members of our entire community who may be the most impacted by even a small change in their paychecks,” he said.
Weighing costs, benefits
Dennis Scanlon, a professor of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University, analyzed how universities are handling the pandemic according to several factors: “mortality, morbidity, disruption to operations, and then reputational impact.”
“How severe and serious is it? What are the treatment needs? So, making sure that if you're going to potentially increase the risk in a population of disease spread, which certainly would happen from going from everybody staying kind of sheltered in place to opening up to some degree,” he said in an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care.
Scanlon said that while he believes the health of the university community is important, so is weighing costs and benefits.
“No matter how you slice it, there's uncertainty, and there are costs and benefit trade-offs. That sounds perhaps to some a little bit crass, but really trying to weigh the risk, what level of risk may be worth taking, and what are the costs to mitigate that risk,” he said.
Scanlon told AJMC that universities and colleges are awaiting more support.
“I think a great disappointment from my perspective is sort of the lack of speed of having more guidance, quite frankly, from federal and state level health officials about what to be done, and more specific guidance,” he said.
ACE’s Mitchell said he hopes higher education will receive needed funding to support education for jobs that could help a faster recovery from the pandemic.
“Our schools train the doctors, nurses and other front-line workers needed to address this unprecedented health crisis and perform the research necessary to produce the urgently needed vaccines and treatments. Finally, our schools educate 26 million students, preparing them to compete and succeed in an increasingly difficult economy, and fueling the path towards a recovery,” Mitchell said in a letter to Congress.
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- By Phil Mercer
Australia plans limits on international students
Australia says it will impose limits on the number of international students coming into the country to ease stress on housing and to reduce immigration.
The government in Canberra has said that international education programs, under which foreign students come to study in Australia, were fertile ground for immigration and visa fraud.
In 2023, official figures show that 787,000 international students studied in Australia, exceeding levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canberra government plans to cap the number of overseas students to ease stress on rental accommodation and to curb levels of immigration.
Senior government ministers have said caps for education would be part of a broader plan to manage migration, increase the availability of housing and to address skills shortages in the economy.
However, the university sector has insisted the proposals would damage Australia's global reputation as a welcoming, safe and world-class destination for students from other countries.
Education has been one of Australia’s most lucrative exports, but the left-leaning government in Canberra has said the international education sector, which includes many smaller private English language colleges, vocational and training institutions as well as larger universities, has been used as a way for unskilled migrants to stay in Australia.
Michael Wesley, the deputy vice chancellor at the University of Melbourne, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Tuesday that he hopes the government will target unscrupulous education providers.
“We welcome the crackdown on non-genuine education providers, which provide a backdoor into permanent residency for people who are not genuine students," Wesley said. "We are confident that all of our international students are genuine students and, so, we would hope that the impact of these visa caps will be at the non-genuine end of the education sector.”
Rental accommodation in many of Australia’s larger cities is often expensive and in short supply.
Analysts have said that surging prices are the result of years of underinvestment in affordable housing.
Education institutions would be required to build accommodations for their students if they wanted to exceed limits of the caps. Specific quotas for international students have not yet been made public.
The government in Canberra said it will change Australia’s Education Services for Overseas Students Act to give the education minister the authority to set limits on student enrolments for each education establishment, including specific courses or locations.
The majority of overseas students in Australia come from five countries: China, India, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam, according to government data. They contribute billions of dollars to the Australian economy.
Canada limits international student visas
Saying the country has seen a massive spike in temporary immigrants – such as foreign workers – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced caps on international student visas.
Canada hosted more than 1 million international students in 2023, according to the Washington Post. That’s the same number as the United States, a country eight times its size. (April 2023)
Protests dwindle to tiny numbers, subtle defiant acts at US college graduations
A tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement in North Carolina Sunday, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting "free Palestine" amid a mix of boos and cheers.
Some waved the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag. Seinfeld, whose decade-long namesake show became one of the most popular in U.S. television history and who continues to draw legions of fans to his Netflix specials and TV appearances such as "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," was there to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.
"After spending four years at what is considered one of the finest institutions of higher education in the world, they apparently feel that perhaps some light entertainment will get you all to the final realization, 'You know, I think I've really had enough of this place,'" Seinfeld said.
The stand-up turned actor and recent star, director and co-writer of the movie "Unfrosted," has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza to dismantle Hamas after the organization attacked the country and killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The ensuing war has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Students at campuses across the U.S. responded this spring by setting up encampments and calling for their schools to cut ties with Israel and businesses that support it. Students and others on campuses whom law enforcement authorities have identified as outside agitators have taken part in the protests from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA.
At the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waved flags and chanted during commencement and were escorted to the back of the stadium, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There were no major counterprotests, but some attendees voiced frustration.
"I feel like they're ruining it for those of us who paid for tickets and came to show our pride for our graduates," said Annie Ramos, whose daughter is a student. "There's a time and a place, and this is not it."
The small student protest Sunday at Duke's graduation in Durham, North Carolina, was emblematic of campus events across the U.S. Sunday after weeks of student protests roiled U.S. campuses in recent weeks and resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests at 57 colleges and universities.
This weekend's commencement events remained largely peaceful.
At Emerson College in Boston, some students took off their graduation robes and left them on stage. Others emblazoned "free Palestine" on their mortar boards. One woman, staring at a camera broadcasting a livestream to the public, unzipped her robe to show a kaffiyeh, the black and white checkered scarf commonly worn by Palestinians, and flashed a watermelon painted on her hand. Both are symbols of solidarity with those living in the occupied territories.
Others displayed messages for a camera situated on stage, but the livestream quickly shifted to a different view, preventing them from being seen for long. Chants during some of the speeches were difficult to decipher.
Protests at Columbia University, where student uprisings inspired others at campuses across the country, led the school to cancel its main graduation ceremony in favor of smaller gatherings.
The University of Southern California told its valedictorian, who publicly backed Palestinians, that she could not deliver her keynote speech at its graduation ceremony because of security concerns. It later canceled its main graduation ceremony.
At Depaul University in Chicago, graduation is more than a month away. But as the academic year closes, school leaders said they had reached an "impasse" with the school's pro-Palestinian protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear.
The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, which is calling on the university to divest from economic interests tied to Israel, set up the encampment nearly two weeks ago. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday.
- By VOA News
Students weigh in on how colleges can prepare undergrads for work
Inside Higher Ed surveyed undergraduates on the best way to prepare for the workforce.
One group of students in Oregon built a for-profit snowboarding business as part of their degree. Colleen Flaherty reports. (April 2024)
- By VOA News
Many African students are experiencing US visa rejections
In 2022, 71% of student visa applications from Western Africa were rejected.
Visa agents are not happy – and are finding ways to help applicants with paperwork and the interview. Maina Wururu reports for The PIE News. (April 2024)
