Turns out that it very likely is the case that AEM has taken the IPEDS contract away from RTI, which has had it for 20 years. RTI's contract is supposed to run through April 2027, but AEM's contract starts in 10 days. I'm working on figuring this mess out.

Sad that I can't go to this talk about dynastic wealth today. I wonder how much of a role higher education & legacy preferences play in the cultivation of a sense of "deservingness."

And then there is the question of passing scores and the fact that no scores from senior year (presumably a heavy year for testing) would be considered in admissions.

Good question. Turns out 92.6% of students take <8 exams over 4 years. That does leave ~243K seniors in 2025 with 8+, which is more than I expected. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of subjects for the supertesters. I'm guessing that most would have APUSH, Lit, &/or Lang in there.

What do we make of this? Because experts were not involved and there sure wasn't a TRP. I am confused.

Also, this Berkeley English PhD wishes them the best!

I would guess that the honors college is tracking what's happened at highly selectives everywhere. They're attracting students who've grown up in a society that increasingly tells them ambition should be at the core of their character and STEM/Econ are seen as the majors promising the largest ROI.

Lang is more about rhetoric. Lit is, well, lit.

It's a little thing, but taking an AB and BC calc class would be weird, given what those classes cover. Taking that many AP science class before taking the regular version may be possible but it's also very difficult. This might be helpful.

Very much agree that relatively small # of schools and a small, wealthy sliver of the populace are overrepresented at highly rejective public and (especially!) private IHEs. I just don't think that the AP program is part of the issue when it comes to the decline of humanities. That's a distraction.

Why the Death of a Unicorn (Hampshire College) Tells Us Nothing About the State of American Colleges The closing of a tiny, unique college is sad enough on its own; it would be sadder yet if it led students away from other liberal arts colleges that provide a genuinely different approach.

“The closing of a tiny, unique college is sad enough on its own; it would be sadder yet if it led students away from other liberal arts colleges that provide a genuinely different approach.” @jamessmurphy.bsky.social #highered

Except 6 or 7 of the 10 most commonly offered AP courses in high schools aren't STEM (a place like UCLA might not count stat as STEM).

The notion that lots of students are "easily" doing 2 AP sciences each year is silly. The # of HS's that make that possible is small, as is the # of students.

Sorry, no. Like most highly selective institutions, UCLA uses a holistic approach to admissions, i.e., no admissions formula.

The notion that people are applying to STEM to increase their chances of admission is another no. At almost all public R1s, the hardest programs to be admitted to are STEM.

Except that articles uses one example of a researcher who has been repeatedly called out for shoddy research and is called out *in the article* and then tars an entire field.

So maybe articles in The Argument are scandalously bad?

a woman says may the times that you live in be extremly dull ALT: a woman says may the times that you live in be extremly dull

It says something about this moment that it seemed entirely plausible that they would do something like that.

Looks like the IPEDS contract is still with RTI. This amount makes a lot more sense given the scale of the work. This contract runs through April 14, 2027.

This is a thoughtful essay by @jamessmurphy.bsky.social on what Hampshire College's closure means (and doesn't mean) for American higher education.

www.msn.com/en-us/money/...

Thanks, Robert. That means a lot.

EXCLUSIVE: Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they say is erratic behavior and excessive drinking, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. More than two dozen people she spoke with described his management failures and conduct that could harm national security. theatln.tc/SS6krazR

Never invade Russia in winter. Never take Amtrak south of DC.

I look forward to "How a Female Anglerfish Lives on $200,000 a Year at the Bottom of the Ocean."

I have a new article out in The Review of Higher Education examining the economic returns to newly established master's degree programs. Overall, these new programs generate similar or somewhat better outcomes than existing programs, showing they're not just potential cash cows for universities.

The College Affordability Crisis is Real, but the Media is Looking at the Wrong Schools Sturges Hall (Photo by Keith Walters ’11) Opinion By Costas Solomou, Vice President, Enrollment Management Published by the Office of Enrollment Management When Yale University released its Committee ...

Skip the article about/from the employees of the Yale corporation and read this from SUNY Geneseo

www.geneseo.edu/enrollment-m...

Exactly one year ago today:

The wildest thing about Yale faculty's ideas around admissions reform, which are basically milquetoast or wrongheaded, is that they will be too radical for any of them to be adopted by the administration.

a man with a beard and the words " you shall not pass " on the bottom ALT: a man with a beard and the words " you shall not pass " on the bottom

There should be a challenge for any editor/journalist who thinks the world needs another story about the "flood of closing colleges": name the 9 sectors in IPEDS and the number of IHEs in the US.

You get to discuss the demographic cliff only if you can name the 10th sector.

Is that a Princeton dot edu page?

I wonder if the students who transferred from New College to Hampshire graduated already.

Hampshire College is closing. The struggling liberal arts college had been on the ropes for months (if not years), now it's official.

In Admissions Data Legal Fight, Colleges Want Protection Institutions have said in court filings they aren’t confident in the data they submitted to the Education Department, and they worry they’ll face fines and other investigations.

I spoke to @kathrynpalmer.bsky.social at @insidehighered.com about how the expanding mess of the ACTS survey might end up putting colleges and universities in a better place when the almost inevitable lawsuits begin.
www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Another day, another ACTS deadline: a bunch more private colleges got their deadline extended today to April 24 while a federal judge considers their request to enjoin survey.

I would expect them to get the relief they're seeking next week.