Higher Ed News by the Numbers 1.4.2019

Weekly roundup of this week's news in higher education, organized by the numbers making the headlines.

$5.5 million settlement: Temple University in Philadelphia will pay $5.5 million to settle class action lawsuits resulting from misreported data that inflated their rankings in U.S. News & World Report. The lawsuits were brought by current Temple students as well as students at other schools who were misled by the University’s high rankings in several business programs, including its #1-ranked online MBA. Temple misreported the percentage of students who had submitted GMAT scores, inflated the reported GPAs of enrolling students, artificially lowered its acceptance rate, misstated the average amount of debt taken on by its students, and miscalculated its student-to-faculty ratio. (Inside Higher Ed)

$500 grants: This past fall, Hurricane Florence flooded major sections of the North Carolina coast, including Wilmington, the home of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. UNCW was closed for four weeks and sustained $150 million in damage. But the University also recognized that the broader Wilmington community needed help, so it offered faculty $500 grants to develop experiential learning programs that took UNCW students out of the classroom and into the local community. Nursing students learned how to serve in disaster scenarios, Ocean Sciences students learned how to assess coastal damage on site, and students in the World Languages departments worked with non-native English speakers. In total, UNCW awarded $21,000 to 42 professors for these experiential learning programs. (Chronicle of Higher Education)

$1.7 billion: in the past three years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded $1.7 billion in loans and grants (mostly loans) to struggling rural colleges and universities. In many cases, the schools receiving these loans are private colleges seeking to improve facilities. This raises a few questions: what should be the government’s role in supporting private colleges and universities? Is education – even private education – enough of a public benefit that the government should support it? And if the USDA chooses not to award a loan to a certain school, do they doom it to fail? These questions bring to mind the financial crisis of 2008 when the government bailed out several banks but left Lehman Brothers to crater. One of the things I like about the Inside Higher Ed piece is the focus on these colleges as employers and not just education providers. In some cases, these schools are the largest employer in a community. If they close, the community suffers. It’s a complicated issue and one we won’t solve soon, but it raises important questions about the role of government in private college affairs and when it is acceptable to let a school fail. (Inside Higher Ed)

$400,000 turned down: California recently passed a free tuition program for students attending community colleges in the state. The catch, according to the schools, is that they must participate in federal loan programs. This is a turnoff for many community colleges because participating in federal loan programs requires that the college meet certain criteria. The key criterion that’s causing concern is the federal government’s requirement that no more than 30% of a school’s students default on their loans. If the default rate exceeds that level, the school is cutoff from all federal financial aid. And that’s a loss any school would be concerned about. As a result, the San Bernardino community college district, comprising 24,000 students at 7 institutions, has declined to accept free tuition aid from the state, which amounts to approximately $400,000 per year. (Inside Higher Ed)

$500 million for 10%: The Pac-12 athletic conference, which comprises schools like USC, Stanford, and the University of Oregon, has struggled recently. Its member schools receive significantly less money from their arrangements with the conference than other “Power Five” conferences such as the SEC and the Big Ten. According to documents obtained by The Oregonian, the conference is open to a cash infusion from an outside investor such as a private equity firm. For a cool half a billion dollars, you could own 10% equity in the conference. (The Oregonian)