After a new union at Miami University was certified by the state in June 2023, its members are still waiting for an initial contract.

The Faculty Alliance of Miami represents tenured and tenure-track faculty and librarians at the university in Oxford. Today marks 463 days the union has been without a contract. Negotiators said they are focused primarily on job security, academic freedom for librarians and fair compensation.

Rachel Makarowski, special collections librarian and a negotiation team member for the union, said the annual cost-of-living raises the university is offering "would make living in Oxford untenable."

"We are really feeling that kind of tight pressure on our wallets," Makarowski acknowledged. "As well as the fact that they're devaluing us and our labor that is what makes the university work."

A university representative said it has been working "in good faith" and has made 11 tentative agreements with the union. Makarowski countered the university has been using stall tactics to delay finalizing an agreement.

Miami University is the largest employer in Butler County. Oxford is a town of about 22,000, where Makarowski pointed out its union members make up a significant group of residents.

"The faculty and the librarians at a university are really going to be influential on the local economy, on the local programming, et cetera," Makarowski explained. "All of us will really feel when we get a good contract but they'll also feel it if we get a bad contract."

On the most recent bargaining days, according to the union's website, the union has reached tentative agreements around grievance and arbitration, discipline and discharge, the promotion process and enhanced funds for publication and other costs for scholarly work.


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Students at eight Arkansas community colleges can benefit from new micro-courses to prepare for the workforce.

The schools are collaborating with the Education Design Lab to create a curriculum of credentialing classes, or micro-pathways, which when combined, prepare a student for a job at or above the local median wage.

Lucas Paxton, director of digital learning at Northwest Arkansas Community College, said they are getting input from employers and community leaders to ensure students have the skills needed for available positions.

"We're seeing a transition to less need for the bachelor's degree, less need for the associate degree," Paxton observed. "They want that targeted training that's specific to the job that they have available. And so, these micro-credentials will give a quicker, less expensive pathway to those jobs."

He pointed out students can complete the credentials in less than a year, saving them time and money.

Other colleges participating in the collaboration include South Arkansas College, Arkansas State University in Newport and University of Arkansas Rich Mountain. Credits for credentials earned at one college can be transferred to other schools in the group.

Paxton emphasized the program enhances the relationship between schools.

"I would like to see us collaborate a lot more," Paxton added. "I think that will just benefit all of our students because they can go to different institutions with these micro-credentials, and they'll be immediately recognized."

Credit for earned credentials can also go toward an associate degree. Other schools participating include Arkansas State University Three Rivers, Arkansas Tech University-Ozark Campus, East Arkansas Community College and North Arkansas College.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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The first semester for Minnesota college students is winding down.

Supporters of the state's new free tuition program - which assists low-income households - say for those who haven't taken advantage, now's a good time to consider eligibility going into 2025.

Preliminary data from the state show this new program, which covers full tuition expenses for households earning less than $80,000 a year, awarded roughly 17,000 scholarships this fall.

Mike Dean, executive director of the group North Star Prosperity, said he feels those numbers are a "game changer" in removing accessibility barriers when it comes to higher education.

"We know that getting that post-secondary education or credential," said Dean, "is really the surest path to joining the middle class right now. "

Eligible households still have to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, as part of the process.

The latest application round, which usually begins in early October for the next academic year, began taking shape in late November.

Federal officials pushed things back after a tumultuous rollout of a streamlined system last winter that resulted in delays.

Minnesota's program covers the tuition tab for eligible students after they've exhausted any other state and federal grants and scholarships.

States such as Minnesota have seen enrollment gradually decline for undergrad students, and Dean said opening up the doors to more people - who otherwise wouldn't have been able to finish or pursue a higher-ed path - helps address workforce shortages.

"Research shows that by 2031," said Dean, "72% of all jobs will require some sort of education or training beyond high school."

He was referring to a recent study from the Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

Program supporters stress that the Minnesota initiative can also help those interested in technical schools and gain valuable training for jobs some employers are having a hard time filling.

By Jon Marcus for The Hechinger Report.
Broadcast version by Zamone Perez for Maryland News Connection reporting for The Hechinger Report-Public News Service Collaboration

Nathan Smith has already sent three kids to college. But he's never seen anything like the volume of recruiting materials pouring in since his fourth child reached her senior year in high school this fall.

"If you put the other three together and multiplied it by four, that's how much mail she's gotten," said Smith, who takes a professional interest in this as chair of the Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents.

"What I see is that they're fishing," he said of the institutions that are appealing to his daughter to apply. "They can't catch the fish they want with just one pole. They've got to put in 10 poles. I think they're casting the net further and wider."

As enrollment in colleges and universities continues to decline - down by more than 2 million students, or 10 percent, in the 10 years ending 2022 - they're not only casting wider nets. Something else dramatic is happening to the college application process, for the first time in decades:

It's becoming easier to get in.

Colleges and universities, on average, are admitting a larger proportion of their applicants than they did 20 years ago, new research by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute finds.

The median acceptance rate at bachelor's degree-granting universities and colleges was 7.6 percentage points higher in 2022 than it was in 2012, AEI found. Those are the most recent available admission figures reported to the federal government, and do not include institutions with open admission, which take 100 percent of applicants.

This comes after a period of steadily increasing competition to get into college since around the turn of the millennium, which aggravated fears among students and their families that they'd be rejected by the institutions of their choice. Widely reported impossibly low single-digit acceptance rates at the nation's most highly selective universities and colleges only made that apprehension worse.

Not surprisingly, 45 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds think it's harder to get into college than it was for their parents' generation, a survey by the Pew Research Center found.

In fact, 87 percent of nonprofit four-year colleges in 2022 took half or more of the students who applied to them, up from 80 percent in 2012, the AEI study found.

"It's really a small proportion that are accepting only single-digit proportions of their applicants," said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at AEI, who conducted the research. "You're going to get in somewhere, and you're going to get into somewhere decent."

Separate data from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, shows that 78 percent of first-year applicants to public and 70 percent to private colleges and universities get in. That's up from 68 percent and 65 percent, respectively, since 2014.

Being accepted to college "is easier than people think," said Melissa Clinedinst, NACAC's director of research initiatives and partnerships. "That's the message we've been trying to get out for years."

It's basic math. Enrollment has been going down for more than 10 years. Freshman enrollment this fall dropped by another 5 percent. And federal data show the number of high school graduates going directly to college has fallen from a high of 70 percent in 2015 to 62 percent in 2022, the most recent year for which the figure is available.

As fewer people apply, colleges are forced to accept a larger proportion of them. And with a projected decline in the number of 18-year-olds, Cooper said, it's likely that getting into college will continue to get easier.

The chances of getting into Fordham University rose from 43 percent to 54 percent between 2012 and 2022, federal data analyzed by The Hechinger Report found; into George Washington University, from 33 percent to 49 percent; into Hofstra, from 59 percent to 69 percent; into Indiana University Bloomington, from 74 percent to 82 percent; into Marquette, from 55 percent to 87 percent; and into Michigan State, from 71 percent to 88 percent.

Fordham spokesman Bob Howe said that university's acceptance rate went up, in part, because high school seniors are applying to more colleges, which "has required us to temporarily shift our acceptance rate."

At Indiana University Bloomington, spokesman Mark Bode said the higher acceptance rate was due partly to an increase in the size of entering classes. Bode provided data showing that standardized test scores and high school grade-point averages of admitted students have also gone up.

The other institutions did not respond to requests for comment.

The news for students isn't all good. To lock in the dwindling pool of customers, some universities and colleges are expanding their use of so-called early decision, which generally requires successful applicants to accept an offer of admission far earlier than the usual May 1 deadline.

That not only leaves fewer seats available through the general admission process, data from the Common Application shows; it also largely excludes low-income and first-generation students, who may not be aware of the option or can't afford to agree to an offer before learning how much institutional financial aid they'll get.

"There's just not a world where they can apply early decision to that institution without knowing whether or not they can afford it," said Karla Robles-Reyes, chief program officer at OneGoal, a nonprofit that provides advising and support to low-income students.

Many top schools take at least half of their students through early decision, including the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Duke and Vanderbilt universities, according to Education Reform Now, which advocates for students from lower-income families.

Eighty-four selective universities and colleges admit a third or more of their students through early decision, and 55 of those have in the last few years increased the proportion who get in this way, Education Reform Now reports.

At Tulane, the proportion of applicants admitted through early decision rose from 28 percent in 2018 to 68 percent in 2022; at Grinnell, from 44 percent to 69 percent; and at Middlebury, from 58 percent to 69 percent, according to data each institution is required to disclose.

The perception that admission is hypercompetitive has historically worked in colleges' favor. Many hype their selectivity and benefit from the idea that they're exclusive. This also fuels an industry of private college counselors, tutors and test prep companies.

"Colleges do want to cultivate this idea that they're prestigious and selective, and you should want to pay a lot of money for them," said Cooper, of AEI."They like the idea of being a sought-after good."

That can discourage some young people from applying.

"We worry in general about the perception that college is harder to get into than it actually is, and that it might limit students' aspirations," said NACAC's Clinedinst.

Yet only 33 colleges or universities nationwide took 10 percent or fewer of the people who applied, according to NACAC.

At a few of those, the competition has gotten even tougher. Brown University accepted 5 percent of applicants in 2022, down from 17 percent in 2002, the AEI study found.

But most other institutions are getting easier to get into, not harder, Cooper found.

"If students internalize this message, that could reduce some of their anxiety," he said.


Jon Marcus wrote this article for The Hechinger Report.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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