In this week's roundup:
Education plans for a disproportionate number of Black and Latinx students were changed by the pandemic, colleges and universities create new ways to rename campus buildings and an online institution devotes scholarships to Ukrainian refugees.
March 17-23
- A study from the University of California, Los Angeles reveals a disproportionate amount of Black and Latinx students canceled or changed their higher education plans during the pandemic before vaccines became available. UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative found that 11% of Latinx and 10% of Black students canceled their higher education plans for Fall 2021.
- Over the past two years, colleges and universities have undertaken the goal of renaming or contextualizing buildings on their campuses, often because the namesake has been found guilty of participating in unethical practices or beliefs, such as the enslaving of Blacks. Some of those institutions have a new view on how to proceed.
- University of the People, an online institution that provides refugees and others with an accessible option for receiving higher education, is offering new scholarships for Ukrainians, including an Ukrainian student who recently fled from Ukraine to Spain to continue her education.
- Yale University will pay $1.29 million to settle a lawsuit involving a wellness program with a $25 opt-out fee which violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information and Non-Discrimination Act. Yale will still offer the wellness program without the opt-out fee.
- A report from the Student Borrower Protection Center quantified that 321,000 community college students accumulated $107 million in debt collectively. Unpaid debts and fees are often what stands between students and earning their degrees.
- The University of Illinois has fired a tenured associate professor after being accused of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior with students. John A. Schewe, a criminology professor who has researched rape prevention, was first accused in 2019 by a graduate student.
- A professor at San Francisco State University accused the university of not providing the necessary resources she was promised to build an Arab studies program. Rabab Abdulhadi sued the university over this issue, alleging that SFSU was in breach of contract.
- Administrators and staff in international education sectors have been, perhaps unsurprisingly, uprooted during the pandemic. After the initial rush to make sure all students who had been abroad would be able to make their way home, followed by the back and forth of international students coming to campus for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years, these employees “are still reeling from the pandemic.”
