Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Friday, June 21. Beckie Supiano, Megan Zahneis, and Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Understanding the continuing FAFSA crisis

The annual meeting of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, held in Milwaukee earlier this week, took on an urgent tone this year. The disastrous rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has put aid officers in a challenging spot.

They typically see themselves as both providers of college access and stewards of taxpayer money. Most students need to know their aid offers to enroll; most colleges rely on enrollment to pay the bills. Aid officers can give students estimated awards — but they need to plan for cases where students get less aid than they’d expected.

The FAFSA fiasco could erode the already-fragile trust many students and families — especially the most vulnerable ones — have in higher education. Our Eric Hoover, who has been reporting on the implications of the FAFSA rollout, shared these observations from the conference:

This isn’t a meeting you usually attend, but you felt it was important to go this year. Why?

I wanted to better understand the nuances of the continuing FAFSA crisis and its ripple effects. This large gathering, with folks from all kinds of colleges, provided a rare opportunity for me to shut up and listen to revealing conversations about the complexities of financial-aid work.

What were your impressions of the conference?

Many of the sessions had clear, focused, and concrete content. It was refreshingly practical, with a real urgency to the dialogue. Many people were more than willing to speak with me and answer my questions — even my dumb questions.

What was the mood like among attendees?

Financial-aid officers are fed up with the Education Department. They’re exasperated and exhausted. They’re deeply frustrated by the lingering problems with the federal-aid process. During one session, there were gasps and groans when a presenter read from the department’s announcement on Monday that colleges won’t be able to make corrections to students’ FAFSAs until the first half of August, around the time classes will be getting underway.

Still, I was struck by financial-aid officers’ resilience — and sense of humor. They joked about eight-day work weeks, sleepless nights, and canceled summer vacations. But these folks are problem-solvers; many said they were determined to keep pushing through this crisis.

The NASFAA conference allows financial-aid officers to hear directly from Education Department officials. What was that like this year?

Awkward, but not as awkward as expected. Financial-aid officers welcomed officials from the Federal Student Aid office graciously. They asked tough questions; some vented. But they listened. Later, some said that they were reassured by what they heard from the department; others said they have lost trust in the federal-aid process that won’t be easy to restore.

Read more on the FAFSA:

• Eric’s story from the conference.
• How some students are still stuck in FAFSA limbo.
• Why some aid officers have lost their faith in the federal-aid process.

Quick hits

• Cost prompts students to bow out: Nearly 90 percent of Americans who have stopped their degree or credential program before graduating cite cost as a top reason they’re not enrolled, according to a new survey. Also high on the list were flexibility concerns — work conflicts, time to degree, and a lack of remote-learning options. (Gallup)
• Death knell for troubled Ohio institution: Union Institute & University resigned its accreditation this week, the latest development in a monthslong saga that involved fall classes being called off and faculty and staff members not receiving paychecks. Union’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, had placed it on administrative probation for not making timely payments, and the institution is likely to close for good this month. (WKRC, The Chronicle)
• Citing bad press, Emerson plans layoffs: Facing an enrollment decline, Emerson College, in Boston, will lay off staff members and leave some vacant positions unfilled. Administrators are chalking up the dip in enrollment to “multiple factors,” among them “student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests,” the president wrote to faculty and staff members this week. (The Boston Globe)
• After protest backlash, UT-Austin comms staff get the ax: About 20 communications staff members at the University of Texas at Austin will be out of jobs come fall. They were told that decision was made so the institution could better address “reputational issues and crisis management.” The layoffs come after police officers arrested more than 120 people in April during pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. (Houston Chronicle, The Chronicle)
• Ten states block Title IX rules: The Biden administration’s regulations promising greater protections for LGBT students under the federal gender-equity law are blocked in 10 states. With legal challenges pending, one expert advises Title IX coordinators to “get everything ready and then stick it on a shelf” so that they’re in compliance with the law if injunctions are overturned. (The Chronicle)

You’re hired. But will the college hire your partner?

An institution is recruiting a promising young scholar for a faculty job. One problem: That dream candidate wants a faculty position for their partner. The partner hire is a recruitment imperative — and, studies show, a boon for retention and productivity.

How adept are R1 institutions at landing both halves of an academic couple? Two professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — themselves partners — wanted to find out. Their new scorecard ranks the nation’s top research universities based on their policies and practices for partner hires. Here are a few key findings:

• Public institutions were more likely than their private counterparts to hire partners for both faculty and nonfaculty positions (82 percent of public institutions and 41 percent of private ones were willing to create faculty jobs; for nonfaculty hiring, those percentages were 68 and 47 percent, respectively).
• An Advance grant from the National Science Foundation is good news for academic couples. It makes sense, given the grant’s focus on promoting gender equity in STEM. Eighty percent of the R1 institutions that have been awarded “Institutional Transformation” or “Adaptation” Advance grants had a mechanism for hiring partners for faculty jobs, compared to 62 percent of those who had not.
• There are regional differences. Universities in the Northeast were least likely to make any sort of partner-hire accommodations. The researchers say that could be because administrators there think the “relative density” of academic institutions in the region makes it easier for partners to find work at neighboring institutions.

For more, read our story from Megan Zahneis.

Weekend reads

• Will Republicans Save the Humanities? (The Review)
• Middle East Scholars Are Under Pressure (The Review)
• The Renaming of Universities and Campus Buildings Reflects Changing Attitudes and Values (The Conversation)
• The Gun Lobby’s Hidden Hand in the 2nd Amendment Battle (The New York Times)
• Why the Big 12 Should Consider Private Equity: Winning Football Can Counteract the Enrollment Apocalypse (Tucson.com)
• Universities Fear Endowment Tax Hike Amid Congressional Heat (Bloomberg Tax)

Comings and goings

• Leonard Adams, president of Knoxville College, will step down later this year.
• Pradeep Sharma, interim dean of the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston, has been named to the post permanently.
• Mary Lucal, chief human-resources officer and vice president for human resources at George Mason University, has been named vice president and chief human- resources officer at Wake Forest University.

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

Footnote

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the first official day of summer. Though for many of you it may feel like the season, or its signature heat waves, began long ago, it’s actually just getting started.

To officially kick off the season, Chronicle staff shared the books on their summer reading lists.

• Jillian Atelsek, copy editor, is reading Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, with her book group.
• Lee Gardner, senior writer, is reading Dodgers, by Bill Beverly, and author Aidan Levy’s biography of saxophonist Sonny Rollins.
• Tom Bartlett, senior editor, is cracking open a classic: The Log From the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck.
• Jennifer Ruark, deputy managing editor, is reading The Confidence-Man, by Herman Melville.
• Megan Zahneis, senior reporter, is reading Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, by Tommy Tomlinson.
• Sara Lipka is reading Slow Productivity, the latest book by Cal Newport, on the performative pressures of knowledge work.

📚 Email us the titles you’re reading and you may see your submission in a future newsletter: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.