Podcast: College Uncovered

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  S3 Ep 7 Abortion on the ballot … and in the mail

  Greater Boston – a region famous for its sheer number of colleges – is also home to an underground network that helps women receive abortion pills. Every week, a group including many Boston-area college and medical students meets to put together abortion pill care packages to send to women who need them.

  Listen S3 Ep 7 Abortion on the ballot … and in the mail
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  S3 Eps 8 What Comes Next On Campus?

  Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump railed against colleges and universities for being too expensive, too partisan and too “woke.”Trump’s anti-elite, anti-immigration tone channeled the frustrations of many working-class Americans — and led him to a decisive win at the polls. So, with Trump returning to the White House for a second term, how much of his higher education message is rhetoric and how much is potential policy? And what comes next for students and colleges? As they wrap up this election year season, Kirk and Jon explore how college may change under a new Trump administration and ask a simple question: what comes next on campus? We hear from Michael Brickman, who worked as a senior advisor in the U.S. Education Department during Trump’s first term, and Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the nation’s biggest association of colleges and universities. Then, Jennifer Thornton with the Business Higher Education Forum and Maria Flynn with Jobs For the Future explain why on-the-job training through apprenticeships is one policy likely to move forward quickly in a second Trump administration.We also hear from students who backed Trump and those who fear his return to the Oval Office, including Jenson Wu with The Trevor Project, who tells us a second Trump term could have a significant impact on LGBTQ college students.

  Listen • 37:12 S3 Eps 8 What Comes Next On Campus?
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  S3 Eps 6 - The politics of the college presidency

  College presidents serve for less than six years on average. For women and people of color, that tenure is even shorter – a full year shorter. So what’s going on? College presidents are under fire for what they say about issues like systemic racism, abortion access and war in the Middle East, as well as what they do — or don't do — about campus protests. So why would anyone want to be a college president? And, as a student, does it even matter who your president is? What questions should students and their families be asking of a colleges’ top brass? We talk to former Colorado College president Song Richardson, who left her dream job because she wanted to speak freely about hot-button issues, and the current and former presidents of Macalester College, Suzanne Rivera and Brian Rosenberg, to learn more about what's driving people away from jobs at the top of the academic ladder.

  Listen • 26:16 S3 Eps 6 - The politics of the college presidency
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  S3 Eps 5 - DEI Backlash

  Colleges that embraced diversity, equity and inclusion initiative (DEI) in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police are now fearing litigation and quietly eliminating their DEI programs. North Carolina is one of the latest to do so. At least 20 states have Republican proposals aimed at limiting DEI programs at public universities. State schools in Wisconsin and Alabama are preemptively banning DEI after threats by lawmakers to withhold money and raises.Even colleges in left-leaning states are no longer asking applicants to provide diversity statements for new faculty positions.So how is DEI defined and what’s lost when it goes away? How has a “DEI bureaucracy” gone out of control? Will colleges increasingly eliminate scholarships designed for historically marginalized students?Special guest host and GBH Investigative Reporter Phillip Martin joins this week’s podcast to talk about what’s behind the changes.

  Listen • 34:57 S3 Eps 5 - DEI Backlash
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  S3 Eps 4 - The Rural Higher Education Blues

  Delta State University in rural Mississippi eliminated it’s highly regarded music department. It’ also cut English, math, chemistry, and about a third of the courses that it used to teach.And Delta State’s far from alone. Arkansas State, the University of North Carolina – Greensboro, Youngstown State in Ohio, West Virginia University have all made significant course cutbacks.That’s a problem. People in rural America already have far less access to colleges and universities than people in cities and suburbs. Nearly 13 million people in the US already live in higher education desserts, places well beyond commuting distance to a college.But now many of the schools that exist to serve rural students are cutting programs and majors.We talk about this trend, and how it exacerbates the already wide economic, social and political divisions between many rural and urban Americans.

  Listen • 23:54 S3 Eps 4 - The Rural Higher Education Blues