Internal and external forces affecting higher education — from disruptions like COVID to evolving workforce demands, student needs, demographics, and public perceptions — are evident in recent enrollment counts, which are down again this fall for many of Iowa’s private colleges and universities.
Although Cornell College raised its tuition this year to $51,970, none of its students pay the full sticker price – and Cornell is making its generous financial aid practices more clear through a new “Tuition Zero” initiative.
On a typical day, Cornell College’s cafeteria is stocked with meals that are 20 to 30 percent locally sourced. But Tuesday, all the food served to Cornell students — breakfast, lunch and dinner — came from within 150 miles of the Mount Vernon campus.
One of four Cornell College instructors stabbed Monday in the northeast Chinese city of Jilin, where they were teaching, is on his way home.
An Associated Press photographer captured a moment between two Iowa natives — 103-year-old Fred Taylor, who commanded a P51 Mustang during World War II, and 19-year-old Sawyer Slezak, a 2023 Prairie High School graduate and cadet third class at the U.S. Air Force Academy — when the two of them were in France last week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
The instructors — including a brother of Rep. Adam Zabner, D-Iowa City — were with a faculty member of the partner institution when the attack occurred, according to Cornell, which has been in contact with the instructors and is helping them.
Having already admitted students for the next academic year, UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital about a month ago surprised current and incoming students by announcing plans to close its 73-year-old Medical Laboratory Scientist program.
None of the 380 high schools in Iowa are reporting any “completed” FAFSA applications this year simply because they can’t, thanks to rampant delays and what some have called a “smorgasbord of errors” and glitches.
Photographer cited after climbing Mount Vernon water tower in 1983 to take pictures
Unlike Iowa’s public universities that reported larger student bodies this fall than last, many of Iowa’s private colleges saw enrollment drop this semester. And even those bucking the decline have smaller student bodies today than they did years ago before the pandemic struck.
Cornell history student uses metal detector, research, to unearth city and college’s history
Students who are older, already in the workforce, raising families or from families without a history of college or the resources to finance it are becoming increasingly important across higher education.
As he prepares to retire at the end of the month after nearly 30 years of service to the community, Les Garner, Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation president and CEO, considers his ultimate impact to be “the extent to which I have enabled those people to be better at what they do.”
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