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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Section: Opinion

Oregon is Finally Counting Student Parents. Other States Should Follow.

The only way many colleges have a sense of how many student parents attend is based on FAFSA, the financial aid form students fill out that asks whether they have any dependents. But some students don’t file a FAFSA or report their children as dependents, for a variety of reasons, resulting in an underestimate of the student parent population. Thus, even NCES data may underestimate the number of student parents, and is unlikely to capture many who are “acting as a parent” but are not the biological parents of the children that they care for.

June 7, 2021

Anti-Racism & Humanistic Inquiry

By the fall of 2020, this nation had experienced uncertainty paralleling its most unsettling historical moments. We were collectively holding our breath while attempting to reconcile the harsh realities of our country’s racial injustices as they played out in social movements and civic moments, and through the racialization of the pandemic virus. There were no assurances of a vaccine, no healing from our summer of discontent, and the anxiety of an unpredictable election and its ultimately contested outcome only amplified the wail of an increasingly divided nation.

June 4, 2021

Cathy Marie Ouellette

NABJ Black Male Media Project Needed to Battle Negative Narratives

On Saturday, June 5, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) will engage in its annual Black Male Media Project through their chapters across the country. The initiative was launched in 2017 to “help change the narrative around the lives and images of black men in the news and in society”. The project is especially needed at this moment in time when the Biden Administration is on the brink of moving major pieces of legislation through Congress that can help to address the needs of Black males and communities of color at large.

June 3, 2021

Celebrating the Filipino American Students Who Fought the SAT/ACT to Make Higher Ed More Diverse

Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Island Heritage Month is over. But we must not forget to celebrate the emergence of some important history makers in May.

June 2, 2021

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Up in Smoke: The Vaping Epidemic

The importance of lung health is more significant this year than ever before. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and flu season is enough to convince anyone to take an extra dose of vitamin C. However, one widely neglected component of lung health is the impact of vaping. Teens and young adults may be wearing masks and social distancing, but when they choose to use e-cigarettes, Juuls, or other vaping devices, they put their lung health at risk.

June 1, 2021

Leadership & Policy

Nurturing the Next Generation of Historically Black College and University Leaders

I never accepted the presidency of the largest or most prestigious university, nor the one that paid the highest salary. Instead, I accepted the position where I felt there was the best alignment between the institution’s mission and my ability to make a substantive and sustainable difference.

June 1, 2021

Community Colleges

Roueche Center Forum: The Human Side of Transformational Change

Historically, U.S. community college leaders have faced calls for reform. Specifically, higher education researchers and reform leaders have urged community colleges to commit to renewing themselves for student and workforce success while considering the immediate and future demands of the country.

May 28, 2021

If We Want Equitable Representation, We Need More Diverse Congressional Interns Like Me

It was always my dream to be a Congressional intern. Last summer, despite the pandemic, I was able to intern with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. The experience was eye opening, as I was one of the few Latinas in the program.

May 27, 2021

Rap Music Didn’t Cause Inner-City Violence…Poverty & Broken Homes Did

Hip-hop often faces a substantial amount of blame for the inner-city violence that occurs in communities across the country. This ideology has been perpetuated by politicians, media personalities, journalists and scholars alike. The genre has been heavily scrutinized for its influence and impact on Black youth for decades. The polarizing genre’s criticism dates back to the “Gangsta Rap” protests headed by National Political Congress of Black Women chair C. Delores Tucker, and the mass protests against rap group N.W.A.

May 26, 2021

Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Can Be a Railroad for Best Practices

As the country marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd by former police officer Derek Chauvin, questions about where the movement for social justice will go from here continue to abound. Legislative progress in directly addressing the plight of Black men like Floyd, has been an uphill battle. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives but has not yet been voted on in the Senate.

May 25, 2021

It Takes a Team, Not Superheroes, to Support College Success

Too often we celebrate an incredible high school teacher or school counselor when what we really need to do is take a broader approach to helping students apply and go to college, especially during a pandemic.

May 25, 2021

Lest We Be Fooled, As We Reflect on the One-Year Anniversary of George Floyd’s Murder

As critical scholars and DEI strategists, the one-year anniversary of the egregious and pernicious lynching of George Perry Floyd, Jr., committed directly by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, but indirectly, by centuries of systemic racism that has historically targeted Black bodies and communities of color, is an opportunity for us to take a bold stance within this op-ed.

May 24, 2021

How Can We Increase Diversity in STEM? Support Students

As college students graduating in a world defined by climate crisis and public health emergencies, we strongly believe that supporting talented young people from underrepresented groups in STEM (like us) is essential for our generation to tackle the challenges ahead.

May 21, 2021

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Zoom Gave My Teaching New Life

When all our interactions suddenly shifted from in-person to virtual in Spring 2020, I suspected it would stress-test our comfort with being seen and seeing others in a new way, but something else happened that I hadn’t anticipated: This experience over the last year-plus has made me a better, more confident teacher.

May 20, 2021

Extending Respect and Resources to International Students

The higher education sector in the United States benefited for years from the financial pockets of the international community with minimal accountability and consideration for those students, making terminology such as ‘cash cows’ notoriously synonymous with international student enrollments. Historical demand for a U.S. education rose from ideals of versions of the American dream, decades of soft-diplomacy, and as the current academic and economic hegemony. However, last spring proved that the demand can quickly dissipate.

May 18, 2021

Connecting Today’s Course Activities to Tomorrow’s Career Possibilities is Key to Student Re-Engagement

To say that education and learning has been significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic would be an understatement. Students have had to adjust to a new form of being educated while instructors were learning new methods on the fly. It was a patchwork process at best, but it caused a reexamination of existing practices.

May 17, 2021

New Poll Data Puts Biden At Odds with Most Americans on Student Loan Forgiveness

President Joe Biden’s ambitious new plan to expand access to higher education has a key missing piece: it leaves millions struggling with student loan debt to carry that burden alone. As a president who frequently speaks of his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Biden is stuck on incorrect assumptions about loan forgiveness and class—a blind spot in his education policy that is both unpopular and misinformed.

May 17, 2021

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What Could University Statements Convey as a Response to Incidents of Racial/Ethnic Violence?

What exactly do campus constituencies need at crucial moments when incidents of racism occur? Campus constituencies need a combination of compassion and action to address structural racism. Actions need to be sustained; they cannot occur in fits and starts. That is university leaders need to be proactive in fighting racism and not reactive to specific occurrences of racial or ethnic racism.

May 14, 2021

Dr. Mangala Subramaniam