On this week’s episode, we spoke with Hollie Chessman, PhD, Director of Research for the American Council on Education (ACE) about ACE’s Pulse Point Surveys, which offer a snapshot of college leaders’ insights and experiences related to different topics. Our conversation focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, presidents’ increasing concern for student mental health, and the strategies they are implementing to combat the crisis.
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A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine calls on colleges to take a campus-wide approach to addressing mental health and substance use issues, creating a campus culture that supports wellbeing. The reports offers recommendations for college leaders, including: Articulate the importance of creating a culture of well-being on campus; Provide and require faculty training on how to create an inclusive and healthy learning environment; Work to ensure students have access to high-quality mental health and substance use treatment services; and ensure leave of absence and re-enrollment policies and practices accommodate the needs of students experiencing mental health and substance use problems.
Unmasked student-run mental health app at Dartmouth College will now offer students virtual counseling sessions through a partnership with teletherapy platform Uwill. Founded a year ago, the Unmasked platform is an anonymous message board that facilitates peer support. Unmasked CEO Sanat Mohapatra ’20 said that they observed that students using the app were “both looking for peer support and professional mental health services.”
In a new national poll, three quarters of parents said that peers better understand teen challenges, compared to teachers or school counselors. A majority also think that peer support leaders at school would encourage more teens to talk with someone about their mental health problems. “Peers may provide valuable support for fellow teens struggling with emotional issues because they can relate to each other,” says Sarah Clark, M.P.H., Co-Director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at Michigan Medicine.
According to new research published by Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis, increases in hate crime reports at the state level is linked to increases in enrollment of Black, first-time college students at HBCUs by 20%.
Kirk Carapezza of WGBH reports on the disproportionate enrollment decline among men during the pandemic, which was more than seven times the decline among women, according to an analysis of figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. According to the NSCRC, men comprise just over 40% of enrollment in universities and colleges (fifty years ago, they comprised around 60%). This trend has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has encouraged young male high school seniors to enter straight into the workforce with jobs at grocery stores, Amazon, and delivery companies. “In a sense, we have lost a generation of men to COVID-19,” said Adrian Huerta, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California who studies college attendance among boys and men. The pandemic opened up jobs “It’s a national crisis,” said Luis Ponjuan, an associate professor of higher education administration at Texas A&M University.
The Hechinger Report explores the factors behind the declining community college enrollment. According to the article, community colleges tend to attract students who need greater guidance from administrators and faculty, at a time when many in those roles are stepping back in-person recruitment and services. The declining enrollment could exacerbate existing racial and socioeconomic gaps in higher education, the article states.
The Chronicle explores the idea of debt cancellation, which has grown in popularity as the debt burden has grown. A 2019 poll found that more than half of respondents support eliminating all existing student debt. While proponents of loan forgiveness argue that it will stimulate the economy and reduce the racial wealth gap, critics believe it is an imperfect tool for both issues. According to the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, loan forgiveness is a weak form of stimulus. And while a recent study examining how forgiveness would affect different racial groups found that canceling $50,000 in debt would wipe out debt for nearly 80 percent of Black and white households, it wouldn’t do much to close wealth gap, and could even cause it to grow slightly. “We have to be realistic about what debt relief can do,” said Raphaël Charron-Chénier, an assistant professor of justice and social inquiry at Arizona State University who co-wrote the study. “It can have a transformative impact for borrowers, but it is not necessarily the most effective way to shrink the racial wealth gap.”
As President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to ask Congress to forgive up to $10,000 of student-loan debt per borrower, the Chronicle explores who would benefit from this policy. One in 3 borrowers hold less than $10,000 in debt. The age group benefiting the most is borrowers age 24 or younger; they account for nearly half of those with less than $10,000 in debt. And borrowers 62 and older are the second-largest age group in this category.
The Hechinger Report explores whether income-driven repayment plans, which allow student borrowers to pay a small amount each month as a proportion of their earnings, pushes young borrowers of color deeper into debt. The idea behind the plans is to help students in early career whose salaries are relatively low with the assumption they will pay more as their earnings grow. According to the Center for American Progress, in 2017, one-third of Black borrowers in repayment with a bachelor’s degree were using these plans, a much higher rate than other borrowers. Marshall Steinbaum, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute, says that, “The premise of IDR is that individuals just need a few years of reduced payment until they can start paying more.” But, he says, “It’s not that people just lack the money today to repay the loans, it’s that they’ll never have enough money.”
This semester, Dartmouth College will prohibit smoking, vaping, and the use of other tobacco products on school property. College President Phil Hanlon wrote in an email to the college community that Dartmouth is implementing the policy to “provide a healthy environment.”
Last week, the Department of Education released more than $21 billion in coronavirus relief money to colleges. Each college must split their portion of the funding between institutional costs associated with the pandemic and direct aid for students.
President Joe Biden is asking the Education Department to extend the suspension of federal student loan payments through Sept. 30 on his first day in office. The moratorium is set to expire at the end of this month.