Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, November 16. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: rick.seltzer@chronicle.com.

The new FAFSA is effectively delayed again

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid has hit a big bump in the road, our Eric Hoover reports.

The redesigned form is now supposed to squeak in just under a deadline set by Congress. Students will be able to start filling it out by Dec. 31, the U.S. Department of Education said on Wednesday. Many view that as confirmation the new form won’t be open until that date, the latest allowed by law.

But colleges won’t receive the information students enter until later, possibly not before the end of January. That delay has financial-aid officers concerned, because they can’t start drawing up offers and building fall classes in earnest without that info from applicants and returning students.

• The context: The new FAFSA was previously set to go live sometime in December, months after the standard October date. Even before Wednesday’s update, colleges were bracing for a stressful, compressed admissions cycle in which there would be significantly less time both for students to fill out the form and for colleges to prepare aid awards.

“Any significant delays in delivering applicant data to schools would fall short of the spirit of the law,” Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement.

Students are now unlikely to receive financial-aid offers until mid- to late February at the earliest, the National College Attainment Network estimates. Once the Education Department provides the form data to colleges, their financial-aid offices are likely to need several more weeks to send offers to students, according to NASFAA.

Concerns run high about low-income students and those on the fence about attending college. They require time and often guidance to fill out the form, and they need financial-aid offers in hand before they can decide where to enroll — or whether they can afford to go at all.

• The latest delay could cause confusion and drive down FAFSA completion rates, NCAN worries. College-enrollment rates could very well follow, especially among historically underrepresented groups.

Positive spin alert: The Education Department proclaimed that the new FAFSA and accompanying changes to the financial-aid system “will help 610,000 new students from low-income backgrounds” receive Pell Grants. The number of students receiving the maximum Pell Grant is projected to increase by 1.5 million, to 5.2 million, the department said.

The bigger picture: The new FAFSA’s debut had already been delayed, setting financial-aid officers on edge. The simpler form promises real benefits once it’s actually here, but the latest delay and intensifying headache is perhaps not surprising for an Education Department with a track record of bungling major initiatives.

Read Eric’s full story here.

Stat of the day

17 percent

That’s how much enrollment in foreign-language courses plunged between the fall of 2016 and the fall of 2021, when it was 1.18 million, a number not seen since 1998.

It’s the largest drop in six decades of Modern Languages Association tracking. Foreign-language enrollment is now down by nearly 30 percent since peaking in 2009. Community colleges have seen deeper declines than four-year institutions, raising concerns about access for low-income and underrepresented students.

Quotable: “These drops are no longer a fluke,” said Christian Rubio, chair of modern languages at Bentley University, in Massachusetts. “I am alarmed.”

Our Karin Fischer has the full story.

Quick hits

• George Washington U. suspends pro-Palestinian group: Students for Justice in Palestine can’t organize activities on campus for 90 days or post any messages on university property through May 20, 2024. The group violated university policy when it projected messages onto a library building last month and didn’t obey orders to stop, the university said in a statement. This is at least the second suspended SJP campus chapter, after Columbia University’s last week. (The Washington Post, Columbia University)
• U. of Florida on hook for free-speech lawsuit’s legal fees: A federal judge says the flagship must pay more than $372,000 to lawyers representing professors who sued after the university blocked them from testifying as expert witnesses in court. The case was ultimately dismissed after the university changed its policies, but not before the professors won a preliminary injunction finding their First Amendment rights were violated. (Orlando Weekly)
• Union Institute and University evicted: The online institution has been kicked out of its location in Walnut Hills, Ohio, and it called off a second round of fall classes amid a financial crunch. An administrator emailed students three days before classes were scheduled to start on Nov. 6 to say they would resume in January. The U.S. Department of Education says Union owes students $750,000 in financial aid and has not paid employees. (WKRC, The Chronicle)
• Sports-medicine director sentenced for sexual abuse: Scott Shaw, who was San José State University’s director of sports medicine, was sentenced to 24 months in prison, a year of supervised release, a $15,000 fine, and restitution. He admitted under a plea agreement to touching female athletes’ breasts and buttocks without consent or medical reason between 2017 and 2020, prosecutors said. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• Woman dies after Louisiana Tech U. stabbing: Annie Richardson died Tuesday after being stabbed at the sports and wellness center, the university announced. She was a local artist. Two others were hospitalized and a fourth victim declined treatment following the attack, which officials say was random. A 23-year-old student was arrested and faces charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder. (Louisiana Tech, Associated Press)

Report: College is only going to get more important

We’ve seen no shortage of headlines about employers cutting bachelor’s-degree requirements for jobs and critics arguing that workers need alternatives to four years of college. But a new report suggests the reports of the credential’s death are greatly exaggerated.

A college education is on track to become more important in the job market, not less, according to an analysis released today by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. It projects that, by 2031:

• 72 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education or training.
• 16 million net new jobs will have been added since 2021, driving the total number of U.S. jobs to 171 million.
• Two-thirds of annual job openings will require at least some college. That’s 12.5 million of an expected 18.5 million openings per year.

More of tomorrow’s workplaces will need educated employees. Industries that require higher levels of education are growing faster, the report says. And workplace tasks are getting more complex, so existing occupations demand more education.

Artificial intelligence is a wild card. It’s impossible to say for sure what jobs it will replace and how it will rewrite education requirements in different professions.

• Quotable: “The best way for workers to protect their livelihoods is to always continue learning new skills and adapting to higher expectations,” Martin Van Der Werf, the center’s director of editorial and education policy, said in a statement.

The bigger picture: Adapting to higher expectations is good advice for the higher-ed sector, too. So-called reskilling or upskilling is an opportunity for colleges to enroll more students, but the system must do a better job meeting the needs of adults, as well as traditional-age students from populations that have been poorly served in the past.

Comings and goings

• Jennifer Johnson, dean of the Lewis & Clark College Law School, will step down in August 2024 after 10 years in the role.
• Scott Snyder, dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Idaho State University, has been named vice president for research and economic development at the University of North Dakota.
• Jagath Kaluarachchi, dean of the College of Engineering at Utah State University, will step down in June 2024.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

Readers will surely remember last month’s big news that the University of Wisconsin system rebranded itself as the “Universities of Wisconsin.” Now the governing body for public universities in Iowa has unveiled its own name change, prompted by a state reorganization plan.

Goodbye, “Board of Regents, State of Iowa.” Hello, “Iowa Board of Regents.” A new logo is also here, as the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

The changes “reflect the board’s mission to produce and disseminate knowledge, prepare students to make positive contributions to society, and to serve the state of Iowa to expand opportunities,” a news release said.

All accomplished by editing out two words and a comma! Brevity is the soul of wit.