Navigating Career Transitions — from er.educause.edu by Jay James, Mike Richichi, Sarah Buszka, and Wes Johnson
In this episode, we hear from professionals at different stages of their career journeys as they reflect on risk, resilience, and growth. They share advice on stepping into leadership roles, recognizing when it may be time for a change, and overcoming imposter syndrome.
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May Brought Deep Cuts at Multiple Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Josh Moody
Colleges laid off well over 800 employees last month due to a mix of enrollment challenges and state funding issues. Ivy Tech saw the deepest cuts with more than 200 jobs axed.
With the academic year coming to an end, multiple universities announced deep cuts in May, shedding dozens of jobs amid financial pressures often linked to enrollment shortfalls.
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But the cuts below, for the most part, are not directly tied to the rapid-fire actions of the Trump administration but rather stem from other financial pressures weighing on the sector. Many of the institutions listed are contending with declining enrollment and, for public universities, shrinking state support, which has necessitated fiscal changes.
From DSC:
I survived several job reductions at one of my former workplaces. But I didn’t survive the one that laid off 12 staff members after the Spring 2017 Semester. So, more and more, faculty and staff have been starting to dread the end of the academic year — as they may not survive another round of cuts.
Michiganders in these 25 cities have the most student loan debt, ranking says — from mlive.com by Jackie Smith; this is a gifted article
Millions of former students and college graduates across the U.S. are weighed down with student loan debt, but with exactly how much may depend on where you live.
An analysis from WalletHub was released earlier this month, listing high averages student loan debts of residents in more than 2,500 American cities, including 83 in Michigan.
Student loans are the second highest form of household debt after mortgages, according to WalletHub, totaling more than $1.6 tillion, or averaging $38,000 per borrower.
The above article links to:
Cities with the Most & Least Student Debt (2025) — from wallethub.com by Adam McCann
High balances combined with a payoff timeline that lasts into middle age force many graduates to significantly delay or forgo other financial goals such as saving for retirement or buying a home. Paying back student loans has also become even more difficult due to high inflation putting a strain on Americans’ finances.
While we have a big student-loan crisis as a country, student-loan debts are more unsustainable in some places than others. To determine where borrowers are burdened the most, WalletHub compared the median student-loan balance against the median earnings of adults ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree in more than 2,500 U.S. cities.
If you are considering borrowing money for college or you’re in danger of defaulting, we advise using a student loan calculator to determine an affordable payment amount and realistic payoff timeline.
Again, this graphic from 2009 comes to mind:
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Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials say college was a waste of money—AI has already made degrees obsolete — from fortune.com by Preston Fore
College is often advertised as the best four years of one’s life, but many Americans now have regrets.
More than a third of all graduates now say their degree was a “waste of money,” according to a new survey by Indeed. This frustration is especially pronounced among Gen Z, with 51% expressing remorse—compared to 41% of millennials and just 20% of baby boomers.
Overall, a growing share of college-educated workers are questioning the return on investment (ROI) of their degree, Kyle M.K., a career trend expert at Indeed, told Fortune. It’s something that’s not all too surprising considering that the average cost of a bachelor’s degree has doubled in the last two decades to over $38,000, and total student loan debt has ballooned to nearly $2 trillion.
“Another 38% feel student loans have limited their career growth more than their diploma has accelerated it,” M.K. said.
“AI won’t invalidate a solid education, but it will reward those who keep upgrading their toolkit.”
Average Cost of College & Tuition — from educationdata.org
Last Updated: March 8, 2025
Report Highlights. The average cost of college* in the United States is $38,270 per student per year, including books, supplies, and daily living expenses.
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From DSC:
Reminds me of a graphic that Yohan Na and I created back in 2009:
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MOOC-Style Skills Training — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
WGU and tech companies use Open edX for flexible online learning. Could community colleges be next?
Open Source for Affordable Online Reach
The online titan Western Governors University is experimenting with an open-source learning platform. So are Verizon and the Indian government. And the platform’s leaders want to help community colleges take the plunge on competency-based education.
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The Open edX platform inherently supports self-paced learning and offers several features that make it a good fit for competency-based education and skills-forward learning, says Stephanie Khurana, Axim’s CEO.
“Flexible modalities and a focus on competence instead of time spent learning improves access and affordability for learners who balance work and life responsibilities alongside their education,” she says.
“Plus, being open source means institutions and organizations can collaborate to build and share CBE-specific tools and features,” she says, “which could lower costs and speed up innovation across the field.”
Axim thinks Open edX’s ability to scale affordably can support community colleges in reaching working learners across an underserved market.
Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning Orb Is Now Coming to the US — from wired.com by Lauren Goode
At a buzzy event in San Francisco, World announced a series of Apple-like stores, a partnership with dating giant Match Group, and a new mini gadget to scan your eyeballs.
The device-and-app combo scans people’s irises, creates a unique user ID, stores that information on the blockchain, and uses it as a form of identity verification. If enough people adopt the app globally, the thinking goes, it could ostensibly thwart scammers.
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The bizarre identity verification process requires that users get their eyeballs scanned, so Tools for Humanity is expanding its physical footprint to make that a possibility.
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But World is also a for-profit cryptocurrency company that wants to build a borderless, “globally inclusive” financial network. And its approach has been criticized by privacy advocates and regulators. In its early days, World was explicitly marketing its services to countries with a high percentage of unbanked or underbanked citizens, and offering free crypto as an incentive for people to sign up and have their irises scanned.
From DSC:
If people and governments could be trusted with the level of power a global ID network/service could bring, this could be a great technology. But I could easily see it being abused. Heck, even our own President doesn’t listen to the Judicial Branch of our government! He’s in contempt of court, essentially. But he doesn’t seem to care.
2025 EDUCAUSE Teaching and Learning Workforce in Higher Education — from library.educause.edu
This report is the first in a series that examines three distinct workforce domains in higher education in 2025 (teaching and learning, cybersecurity and privacy, and IT leadership) to determine the priorities and challenges facing the profession. The findings in this report, taken from a survey of teaching and learning professionals in higher education, highlight their perspectives on a range of topics:
Who does need college anymore? About that book title … — from Education Design Lab
As you may know, Lab founder Kathleen deLaski just published a book with a provocative title: Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Won’t Matter.
Kathleen is asked about the title in every media interview, before and since the Feb. 25 book release. “It has generated a lot of questions,” she said in our recent book chat. “I tell people to focus on the word, ‘who.’ Who needs college anymore? That’s in keeping with the design thinking frame, where you look at the needs of individuals and what needs are not being met.”
In the same conversation, Kathleen reminded us that only 38% of American adults have a four-year degree. “We never talk about the path to the American dream for the rest of folks,” she said. “We currently are not supporting the other really interesting pathways to financial sustainability — apprenticeships, short-term credentials. And that’s really why I wrote the book, to push the conversation around the 62% of who we call New Majority Learners at the Lab, the people for whom college was not designed.” Watch the full clip
She distills the point into one sentence in this SmartBrief essay: “The new paradigm is a ‘yes and’ paradigm that embraces college and/or other pathways instead of college or bust.”
What can colleges do moving forward?
In this excellent Q&A with Inside Higher Ed, Kathleen shares her No. 1 suggestion: “College needs to be designed as a stepladder approach, where people can come in and out of it as they need, and at the very least, they can build earnings power along the way to help afford a degree program.”
In her Hechinger Report essay, Kathleen lists four more steps colleges can take to meet the demand for more choices, including “affordability must rule.”
From white-collar apprenticeships and micro-credential programs at local community colleges to online bootcamps, self-instruction using YouTube, and more—students are forging alternative paths to GREAT high-paying jobs. (source)
How can college leaders navigate mergers and closures in 2025? — from highereddive.com by Ricardo Azziz
A consolidation expert urges officials to face the facts, explore their strategic options and be willing to accept external help.
This work leads me to desire three wishes for higher education leaders in 2025, namely that they:
Northland College to close after turnaround falls short — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
Despite recent restructuring efforts, the Wisconsin nonprofit’s board chair said it couldn’t weather “economic and demographic storms” hitting the sector.
12 Trump moves in 4 weeks: What college leaders need to know— from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
The new administration has implemented several policies that have sparked outcry from university researchers and student advcocates.
