This isn't getting nearly enough attention. It's becoming a problem in other states, too.

Tennessee Lookout@tennesseelookout.com · 12h ago

Tennessee Lottery proceeds that fund many of the state’s college and technical education scholarships are projected to fall short of covering those programs’ costs each year through 2030, according to a report released Tuesday.

Important and interesting work on the the lived experiences of people carrying student debt, with a very informative interactive tool examining debt levels and a range of life factors.

Daniel A Collier, PhD@dcollier74.bsky.social · 14h ago

Student debt is a life-structuring system. After surveying 1,600+ borrowers and conducting in-depth interviews, I built an interactive site showing how debt reshapes careers, families, mental health, trust, and adulthood. Take a look more-than-a-monthly-payment.daniel-anthony-colli.chatgpt.site

Student debt is a life-structuring system. After surveying 1,600+ borrowers and conducting in-depth interviews, I built an interactive site showing how debt reshapes careers, families, mental health, trust, and adulthood. Take a look more-than-a-monthly-payment.daniel-anthony-colli.chatgpt.site

More Than a Monthly Payment

A mixed-methods portrait of student debt.

more-than-a-monthly-payment.daniel-anthony-colli.chatgpt.site

Daniel A Collier, PhD@dcollier74.bsky.social · yesterday

Student debt is more than a monthly payment. My new public research site brings together 1,810 survey records and 67 interviews on financial security, well-being, college value, and repayment. more-than-a-monthly-payment.daniel-anthony-colli.chatgpt.site #StudentDebt

Because higher education has *never* been about leveling playing fields: Texas promised community colleges that they'd be rewarded for success with low-income students. Campuses stepped up and met benchmarks, but funding will now drop at some campuses. Reporting from @texastribune.org

Penalties for Succeeding with Low-Income Students

In 2023, Texas changed how community colleges would be funded. Instead of the state sending money for the number of students enrolled, campuses would instead get paid for success with students: House...

ghost.edandclass.com

"gutting of ED — including staffers who troubleshooted borrowers’ complaints, held loan servicers accountable or helped people whose loans should have been forgiven — also likely contributed to students’ challenges in repaying their loans" Govt capacity matters! www.dallasnews.com/news/educati...

Texas borrowers are falling behind on student loans. New data shows how much

Defaults across the U.S. reached record counts as borrowers have struggled to keep up after a yearslong payment pause.

dallasnews.com

Civil rights advocates say the change, which deals with disparate impact, removes a crucial tool for discovering possible violations of federal law. Conservatives argue statistics alone cannot prove a policy is discriminatory.

The Trump administration just made a big change to civil rights investigations into schools

Civil rights advocates say the change, which deals with disparate impact, removes a crucial tool for discovering possible violations of federal law. Conservatives argue statistics alone cannot prove a policy is discriminatory.

bit.ly

What if campus supports for first-gen college students weren't mainly about learning to fit in and to catch up? What if first-gen students also learned about campus power networks sustaining exclusion and unequal opportunity? Sparked by @jordanhdavis.bsky.social ghost.edandclass.com/power-mapping/

Learning Power

When I was an undergraduate, I did volunteer work with a remarkable 2nd grade teacher in an elementary school in a working-class neighborhood. The year before, the children had noticed that traffic o...

ghost.edandclass.com

"‘That community is going to be gone’: Students, faculty react as NU ends Posse Scholars program" from the Daily Northwestern dailynorthwestern.com/2026/07/20/t...

New Lumina-Gallup survey: only 38% of Americans have confidence in higher education, down from 57% in 2015. Top gripes: campus politics (31%), cost (30%), workforce prep (25%). And 46% think AI will make degrees less important. #HigherEd #CollegeCosts thecollegeinvestor.com/84482/gallup...

Confidence In Higher Education Drops To 38%, Down From 57% In 2015, Gallup Finds

Americans' confidence in higher education fell to 38% in 2026, per Lumina-Gallup. Cost, campus politics, and AI's threat to degrees drive doubts.

thecollegeinvestor.com

Weary of all the recent political discourse *on behalf* of low-income and working-class voters, I returned to @daniellaurison.bsky.social work *with* non-voting poor and working-class voters and wondered about nurturing first-gen students' political agency. ghost.edandclass.com/poor-and-wor...

Listening to Poor and Working-Class [Non]Voters

I've spent a lot of time in the past few weeks listening to political discourse about social class. There has been yet another news cycle of wealthy [male] consultants recruiting someone that they bel...

ghost.edandclass.com

Colleagues and I have have a new Article Collection coming in Cogent Education, "Reforming the Math Hierarchy: Policy, Practice, and the Politics of Equity in Access and Pathways." The deadline to submit is April 2 2027. Find out more here: invt.io/1fxburt504u

invt.io

I reviewed Bianca Baldridge’s great book #LaboringInTheShadows for @socialforcesfan.bsky.social academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

Review of “Laboring in the Shadows: Precarity and Promise in Black Youth Work”

ianca Baldridge’s new book describes the hopes, dreams, and fears of Black youth workers, whose dedication is challenged by tough working conditions. Baldr

academic.oup.com

From @josephinelee.bsky.social: The number of Texas public schools facing closure more than doubled from 2024 to 2025, from 22 to 50. And in the first six months of 2026, Texas school districts have voted to close even more schools—at least 55.

School Closures Are Escalating Across Texas. 'It's Not a Local Failure.'

State funding and policy have fallen short, advocates say, and the consequences are not confined to your backyard.

texasobserver.org

Check out @meprillaman.bsky.social's timely and comprehensive article in Smithsonian Magazine on the SAT admissions exam. Very informative within ongoing deliberations about fair and equitable college access. ghost.edandclass.com/sat/

Whether the SAT

For a fair and comprehensive overview of the SAT admissions exam, take a look at Smithsonian Magazine's recent article on the 100-year history, the current state of research, and the cyclical policy d...

ghost.edandclass.com

Affinity housing is legal. Student success initiatives are legal. Ensuring students are able to vote is legal. The Education Dept. exceeding its authority to further define professional degrees and limit access to education is not.

Mike Gavin@michaelhgavin.bsky.social · last mo.

As usual, higher education leaders shouldn't change operations. The rhetoric in this letter is meant to incite fear based on false accusations. If only there was a place in America where deep study of race and institutions would reveal best practices. 🙃 www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

When I'm in charge, first-year college orientation will include a session on the unequal childhoods represented in the room with gentle nudges to rethink "merit". I'd include @ophastings.bsky.social research on growing gaps in parental spending on their kids. ghost.edandclass.com/more-unequal...

Even More Unequal Childhoods

If I were in charge, I'd have a session during first-year orientation in which I challenged all the students to ponder this graph of parental investment expenditures per child by income level: In tha...

ghost.edandclass.com

I share some policy views with many progressives running for office. But one thing I’m worried about is a near-total absence of innovation ideas for K-12. Folks who’ve made, eg, Medicare for All a litmus test on health have been shockingly defensive of an education status quo.

Even more unequal childhoods: "This rising share implies something beyond greater resources to spend. As the returns to education have risen and labor markets have become more winner-take-all, parents face stronger incentives to invest in securing advantages for their children."

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"The top decile spent roughly 3 times as much per child as the bottom quartile in the early 1980s but more than 13 times as much by 2024." osf.io/preprints/so...

"The top decile spent roughly 3 times as much per child as the bottom quartile in the early 1980s but more than 13 times as much by 2024." osf.io/preprints/so...

The dismantling of the Department of Education continues apace.

RFK Jr. will oversee disability education policy

The dismantling of the Department of Education continues apace.

motherjones.com

In campus support programs, first-gen students often hear that their most relevant difference from peers is that they can't call their parents for advice on college. Who decided not to talk also about inequality in K-12 schools? Why aren't faculty teaching them? ghost.edandclass.com/selective-om...

Selective Omissions in What Campuses Tell First-Gen Students About Themselves

I listen closely to campus messaging for what first-generation college students learn about themselves via available support programming. These programs do, of course, offer explanations for why stude...

ghost.edandclass.com

The latest: The White House/OMB is still blocking $2 billion in Congressionally approved education funds. More than $1 billion could expire in four months. www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

White House Blocks $2 Billion for Education: See All the Affected Programs

We're tracking federal education funding that Trump's federal budget office has stalled.

edweek.org

After seeing @maxkennerly.bsky.socials post last week, I dug into that study of college admissions readers more often rejecting low-income kids suspected of AI use in essays than they reject wealthier kids who use AI, because there is no tech fix for inequality. ghost.edandclass.com/penalizing-m...

Penalizing (Mostly) Low-Income Applicants for AI Use on College Admissions Essays

I was just mindlessly scrolling in line at the hardware store when I learned about admissions readers penalizing low-income students more often for using AI/Large Language Models (LLMs) when they writ...

ghost.edandclass.com

Biggest impact of AI on college admissions is helping poor kids write like rich kids with consultants. But there's a catch: the elite schools already stereotyped them as bad writers, so poor kids get rejected for suspected AI use while rich kids get admitted. arxiv.org/abs/2602.17791

Not surprising, but dismaying all the same.

Max Kennerly@maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Biggest impact of AI on college admissions is helping poor kids write like rich kids with consultants. But there's a catch: the elite schools already stereotyped them as bad writers, so poor kids get rejected for suspected AI use while rich kids get admitted. arxiv.org/abs/2602.17791

About congressionally appropriated funds, 'Spokespeople for the Education Department have repeatedly said the agency is reviewing every dollar it spends rather than giving out funds 'on autopilot.'"

Mark Lieberman@marklieberman.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New: The White House is blocking more than $2 billion Congress appropriated in February for K-12 and higher education. Here's a list of all 34 affected programs: www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

New: The White House is blocking more than $2 billion Congress appropriated in February for K-12 and higher education. Here's a list of all 34 affected programs: www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

White House Blocks $2 Billion for Education: See All the Affected Programs

We're tracking federal education funding that Trump's federal budget office has stalled.

edweek.org

With record high FAFSA completion rates elsewhere, @juliabarajas.bsky.social reports that thousands fewer CA students in mixed-status families have submitted the federal forms in fear of exposing undocumented parents: "Fear is reshaping college-going behavior." ghost.edandclass.com/fearing-fafs...

Fearing FAFSA: Will Applying Harm My Parent?

Among the good news that application rates are up now that the FAFSA revisions are complete is the sobering news that completion rates among students in mixed-status families dropped by more than 3000...

ghost.edandclass.com

Appreciate this new explainer @nytimes.com linking to my book The Privateers and to my 2023 piece @TIME on vouchers. On the fed scholarship. It may be a sea change—could reshape fed ed spending. Note: kids who stay in public school will also be able to use. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/h...

School Choice Is Creating Two Separate School Systems

nytimes.com

When I was sending teams of undergraduates out to find resources for students in crisis who lived on either side of a nearby urban/suburban school district boundary, I wish I'd had @newamerica.org's case studies of district boundary setting for them to read. ghost.edandclass.com/walling-off-...

Walling Off School Districts for Privileged Kids

There is a school district in Arizona that served only 9 students last year. There are only three houses in the district that can be taxed to fund these schools. But an energy pipeline running through...

ghost.edandclass.com