Good morning, and welcome to Friday, April 11. Today’s Briefing was written by Laura Krantz, with contributions from Rick Seltzer. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

More athletes than fans

As small, private colleges fight for students, many have turned to sports to give them a leg up. More than 80 percent of such colleges increased their numbers of athletes between 2012 and 2022. But there’s a problem: Plenty of those institutions still face declining enrollment, our Eric Kelderman reports.

Lourdes University tripled its student-athlete population over a decade, but overall enrollment still declined significantly. Despite growing from 139 varsity athletes in 2012 to 448 in 2022, Lourdes saw its full-time undergraduate enrollment drop from 1,285 to just 691 during the same period.

• Athletes now make up nearly two-thirds of Lourdes’s undergraduate student body, up from just 11 percent in 2012.
• The university offers 11 sports for men, 10 for women, and three co-ed sports.
• Nine university teams have appeared in national championships since 2010.

The athletic-recruitment strategy comes with financial costs that many small colleges can’t sustain. At Lourdes, coaches had been offering generous athletic scholarships on top of the university’s normal merit aid to attract top performers.

• Athletes at Lourdes received an average tuition discount of 74 percent, compared to 34 percent for nonathletes.
• On one team, the tuition-discount rate reached 89 percent.
• The college now limits scholarships and sets net-tuition goals for coaches.

But athletics can bring other downsides and hidden costs. Lourdes is among 27 colleges where expenses outpaced revenues in at least eight of the years between 2014 and 2023.

The heavy focus on athletics also creates logistical challenges and may deter nonathletes from enrolling. Colleges must adjust facilities, schedules, and resources to accommodate growing athletic programs.

• Lourdes shares fields with a local high school and has just one indoor court shared by multiple teams.
• The university extended its dining-hall hours to accommodate practice schedules.
• Academic programs like nursing have clinical rotations that often conflict with athletic schedules.

Students who aren’t athletes often feel disengaged from campus life at athletics-heavy institutions. As resources shift toward sports, other extracurricular activities and academic programs may suffer.

• Lourdes’s student government struggled with low participation.
• The university eliminated its music department and offerings like choir and pep band due to budget constraints.
• “When I was a first-year student at Lourdes, I kind of felt a little bit disconnected,” said Jimmy Kolopajlo, the student-government president.

Research suggests an athletics-focused enrollment strategy may have limited effectiveness. Studies show mixed or negative results from athletic investments at small colleges.

• A 2023 Urban Institute report found that Division III colleges that didn’t increase athletic investment were more likely to see enrollment growth than those that did.
• At Division III colleges, adding football teams produced no statistically significant enrollment growth.
• Athletic programs may even change the gender balance on campus, with some showing a decline in women enrolling.

The bigger question: Can small colleges find a sustainable balance between athletic recruitment and broader appeal? As demographics shift and financial pressures mount, institutions like Lourdes are unable to cut sports without losing crucial enrollment. Yet they’re struggling to create campus environments that attract and retain nonathletes — raising fundamental questions about their mission and resource allocation.

Quick hits

• Judge asks for evidence justifying deportation of Columbia protest leader: An immigration judge in Louisiana asked the government for evidence to support its attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia University, saying she would terminate its case if it does not provide proof this week that the legal permanent resident should be expelled for his role in campus protests. (Associated Press)
• Harvard dean says no plans to cut diversity programming: Thomas Dunne, dean of students at Harvard College, said he does not expect the college’s diversity offices to be affected by President Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Dunne said the programs can continue because they are open to all students. The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard cut DEI programs in order to continue to receive nearly $9 billion in federal funding. (The Harvard Crimson)
• Visas revoked across U. of Wisconsin, U. of Michigan systems: The visas of more than 24 Wisconsin affiliates have been terminated, including 13 students and alumni at the Madison flagship, system officials announced this week. The University of Michigan announced that 22 people, 12 students and 10 graduates, also had their visas revoked. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, University of Michigan)
• San Diego State U. to add AI-enabled surveillance: University police say 1,300 upgraded campus cameras will recognize features, read license plates, track walking patterns across campus, and develop “face watchlists.” Police say the $1.3-million upgrade will keep students safer, but opponents say the cameras could be vulnerable to misuse and discrimination, and could discourage people from being politically active on campus. (The Daily Aztec)
• Bill would curb governor’s role in presidential picks: Legislation introduced in the Florida House of Representatives seeks to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration from being involved in presidential searches at public colleges. The bill would prohibit the governor from discussing presidential vacancies and remove a requirement that the state university board confirm a university’s selection. DeSantis, a Republican, said the bill would “pave the way for re-wokification” of universities. (Miami Herald)

Quote of the day

“Let’s shake it up. Let’s do something different.”

— U. S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, speaking Tuesday at the ASU+GSV conference in San Diego about her dismantling of the Education Department.

McMahon said she supports ongoing national student testing and government support of education research, but did not offer specifics.

Pressed by an interviewer on why diversity, equity, and inclusion programs should be eliminated, she did not respond directly, instead saying that “discrimination is the bad thing. We should not have discrimination anywhere.”

Stat of the day

34

That’s the number of college-led reporting efforts covering statehouses across the country, according to a new tally from the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News.

Eleven of the college-led statehouse reporting programs are new since 2023, the last time the Center for Community News counted.

• “Under the direction of professional journalism educators and editors, college students now provide a meaningful portion of statehouse, elections and democracy reporting in news outlets across dozens of states,” says a report the center released on Wednesday.

What’s behind the trend? Colleges, nonprofits, philanthropists, and legacy news outlets are getting better at coordinating. And local newsrooms keep seeing their resources dry up.

Weekend reads

• The Education Dept. Wants to End DEI. Does It Have the Staff? (The Chronicle)
• Hannah Arendt, Michael Denneny, and the Politics of Protest (The Chronicle Review)
• Are You Ready for the AI University? (The Chronicle Review)
• La Lázaro: A Library Trapped in a Never-Ending Reconstruction (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo/Open Campus)
• Higher Ed Is the New Big Oil (Education Next)
• Why Is Trump Sending Immigrant University Scholars to Louisiana and Texas? (NPR)
• The Political Stakes of Who Sits on University Boards (Brookings)
• More Teens Are Starting Nonprofits. Are They Genuine — or a College Admissions Hack? (The Oregonian)

Transitions

• Bharat N. Anand, vice provost for advances in learning at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, has been named dean of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.
• Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology since 2014, plans to retire in June 2026.
• Chris Clemens, provost and chief academic officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, plans to step down and return to the faculty as a professor of physics and astronomy in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com. You can also find Transitions online here.

Footnote

You may have herd … er, heard … of hungry goats clearing overgrown campus land. Teams have been dispatched to the likes of William & Mary, the University of Richmond, and the Johns Hopkins University, as the Daily Briefing has previously noted.

But one institution can nonetheless bleat about a particularly long history of the ruminates rummaging around. Towson University, just outside of Baltimore, has been dispatching goats to graze on invasive plants for a decade.

Glen Arboretum is 10 acres of wooded land used for classes, socializing, and research. The goats munch on invasive species that threaten to choke out the space, The Baltimore Banner reports. Privet hedge, honeysuckle, and Asian bittersweet all recently fell before the goats’ mighty molars.

“Without our goats, none of us would be standing in this beautiful woods right now, because there wouldn’t be any trees left,” Roni Casilly, head goat herder at the farm that provides the goats, told the Banner.

What a great intervention for when invasive species start butting heads with native plants.