The on-again, off-again status of President Joe Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness took center stage throughout much of 2022, but there was plenty of other news on the higher education front that was – for the first time in two years – no longer dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The continuing enrollment slide, another year of mega gifts and billion-dollar capital campaigns, a growing rebellion against college rankings, and the Supreme Court’s consideration of the legality of race-conscious college admissions were other stories receiving extensive attention throughout the year.
Biden’s Loan Forgiveness Plan
This year saw Biden announce his long-awaited student loan forgiveness plan. which, among other reforms, called for cancelling up to $10,000 in debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year and up to $20,000 for those receiving Pell Grants. Biden’s proposal gained support among higher ed advocates as various calls for “free college” seemed to lose steam.
But even as students began applying for loan forgiveness, the plan faced intense political opposition by Republicans and was subjected to legal attacks, causing it to be paused by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, as it considered a lawsuit brought by six states against the plan.
In November, a U.S. District Court judge in Texas ruled the plan unlawful and vacated the debt relief program. The Biden administration almost immediately appealed that decision (and lost the appeal in the 5th circuit), just weeks before student loan payments were scheduled to resume in January, and after tens of millions of Americans had applied and been approved for loan relief.
President Biden responded by extending the pause on loan repayments while the White House appealed the Eighth Circuit case to the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments in February. The moratorium on payments scheduled to expire on January 1, 2023 now will be extended until 60 days after the lawsuit is resolved, or – if the lawsuit hasn’t been resolved by June 30 – payments are scheduled to resume 60 days after that.
Continuing Enrollment Declines
Hopes that the easing of the pandemic would end the national slide in college enrollment did not pan out. Nationally, undergraduate enrollment fell by 1.1% in fall 2022 compared to 2021, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
If there was anything encouraging about those numbers, it was that the rate of the overall decline has slowed by about half since last year when it dropped 2.1% and a third since fall 2020’s 3.4% loss. However, since 2019, total higher education enrollment has now fallen by almost 7.5%, with the two-year sector suffering the steepest drop.
One of the few bright spots was at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), where undergraduate enrollment grew 2.5% this fall, offsetting a decline of 1.7% in fall 2021. This growth was driven by a 6.6% increase in freshmen enrolling at HBCUs.
College leaders had expected that the fall semester might finally see some lost enrollment ground begin to be regained. Instead, concerns over college costs and student loan debt coupled with a strong labor market and a growing skepticism over the value of college continued to suppress enrollments. Upcoming demographic shifts resulting in fewer traditional age college students loom on the horizon, making it likely that enrollment will continue to wane.
Campuses Return to The Pre-Pandemic Old Normal
After two years of almost constant adjustments to combat the threats of the Covid-19 pandemic, most institutions returned to normal campus operations in 2022. The majority of classes were once again being conducted in-person or via hybrid delivery. On-campus activities were resumed. Debates over mask mandates and vaccination requirements receded into the background. Quarantines were ended, and graduation ceremonies returned to the main stage.
Although the pandemic continues to pose risks, 2022 will be remembered as the year when its disruptions began to diminish as high vaccination rates and other public health measures significantly lowered both the incidence and the severity of Covid-19 illness.
Presidential Turnover
Every year sees a number of university presidents and chancellors call it quits, but 2022 stood out for the number of high-profile institutions that began, continued or concluded searches to replace an outgoing leader.
The list was long, including such prestigious institutions as Harvard, Columbia, New York University, Catholic University, NorthwesternNWE -1% University, Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, Smith College, Bowdoin College, the University of Wisconsin, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and MIT.
Covid-19 was likely a factor in the timing of some resignations, with a few presidents delaying their departure to see their institutions through the worst of the pandemic, while others may have moved up their retirements because of pandemic fatigue. Political controversies, campus controversies, or personal scandals precipitated other decisions to step away from the job.
But even before Covid-19 ripped through college campuses, the average length of the American college presidency was on the way down. In 2011, presidents had been in the role for an average of 8.5 years, according to the American Council on Education. In 2016, the average sitting president had served just 6.5 years.
The University of Florida attracted national scrutiny for its choice of Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse to be its 13th president, succeeding W. Kent Fuchs. The University’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to hire Sasse, the lone publicly identified finalist for the job, despite student protests, allegations of political interference, and a faculty senate vote of no-confidence in his selection.
Mega Gifts and Capital Campaigns
Despite a bearish stock market and other economic headwinds, 2022 was a good year for mega-gifts. Private donations of $100 million or greater were received by more than a dozen institutions, led by $1.1 billion gift from Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Doerr and his wife Ann to Stanford University. McPherson College, a small private college in Kansas, received $500 million from an anonymous donor.
Other institutions receiving gifts of $100 million or more were Samford University, MIT, University of Oregon, Emory University, Boston University, University of Florida, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Loyola (Chicago) University, Northwestern University, University of California at San Diego and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Several universities – like the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina – brought record-breaking capital campaigns to their close, while other schools – such as the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas, the University of Nebraska, and Oregons State University – ramped up new fund-raising initiatives with goals of $1 billion or more.
College Endowments
In a sharp turnaround from a record year in 2021, many elite universities reported their endowments lost value in fiscal year 2022. For example, Harvard University’s endowment dropped $2.3 billion. That was a 1.8% loss on its endowment investments, the first negative year for Harvard since 2016 and a steep decline from the 33.6% returns the university enjoyed in the prior year.
Among Harvard’s Ivy League peers, endowment losses ranged from 1% to almost 8%. They were far from alone. Duke University’s endowment posted a -1.5% fiscal year 2022 return. MIT’s portfolio experienced a 5.3% loss, and Bowdoin College lost 7.1%.
While the downturns did not come as a surprise, given a year buffeted by several economic difficulties, including supply chain woes, the war in Ukraine, substantial inflation, and tightening U.S. monetary policy; the losses will constrain university budgets especially at private institutions, which rely on endowment income for much of their operating funds.
Controversy Over U.S. News College Rankings
College rankings continued to capture headlines, but this year much of the focus shifted to renewed concerns about both the accuracy and the negative side effects of such surveys.
In September, Columbia University acknowledged it had submitted inaccurate data to U. S. News & World Report for the 2022 edition of its Best Colleges (published September 2021). The revelation came following the university’s investigation of concerns raised by Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at the university, in a lengthy critique of Columbia’s data. For its part, U.S. News Report said it was “unranking” Columbia in its 2022 Best Colleges edition.
Then, in what may turn out to be a bigger blow to the U.S. News rankings, a group of elite law schools, led by Yale University, decided in November that they would no longer participate in the publication’s law-school rankings because of concerns over what they viewed as a flawed methodology that discourages graduates from pursuing public-interest careers, puts too much emphasis on test scores, and discourages law schools from doing what’s best for legal education.
It’s not yet clear whether the law school rebellion will grow into a larger boycott of U.S. News rankings, but it constitutes the largest push-back against the rankings to date.
The Supreme Court’s Review of Affirmative Action
Although a decision is not expected until sometime in 2023, the Supreme Court ‘s consideration of the legality of affirmative action in colleges admissions is already causing concern across the higher education landscape with many college leaders defending the need to allow race to be considered as an admissions factor in the interests of achieving student diversity.
The Court’s opinion in a combined case challenging race-conscious admission policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina could bring an end to colleges’ use of affirmative action, which could, in turn, result in decreased representation of Black and Latino students along with increases in the number of whites and Asians.
Most experts are predicting the Court’s conservative supermajority will decide to end affirmative action as a means of increasing student diversity. If questioning during oral arguments is any indicator, that seems like a safe prediction.“I’ve heard the word diversity quite a few times, and I don’t have a clue what it means,” Justice Clarence Thomas said. “It seems to mean everything for everyone.”
The New Normal of Test-Optional Admissions
As the year drew to a close, a new survey revealed that more than 80% of U.S. bachelor-degree granting institutions won’t require students applying for fall 2023 admission to submit ACT or SAT exam scores.
Many of the schools converting to test-optional admissions procedures initially did so to accommodate applicants during the worst of the pandemic, but the shift away from requiring standardized test scores has now become the prevailing policy across the nation even as threats from Covid-19 diminish.
At least 1,835 U.S. colleges and universities are now employing either ACT/SAT-optional or test-blind/score-free policies, according to an updated list released by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), a leading opponent to high-stakes standardized testing.
Increased State Funding For Higher Education
In fiscal year 2022, state funding of higher education reached $105.4 billion, an 8.3% increase over 2021 and the first time that state support for higher education has topped $100 billion. The increase came as a number of states reversed funding cuts made in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic-induced economic turndown.
Although many states had temporarily replaced state higher education support with the federal stimulus that came in three rounds of Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) grants, totaling about $76 billion. Those grants have now ended making the recovery of state support all the more important, particularly for public institutions.
Improved revenues also saw many states increase their higher education appropriations for the 2022-23 fiscal year that began July 1. In several cases those increases came with an agreement by a state’s public institutions to not increase undergraduate tuition or to hold any increases to a minimum.
