Articles Tagged: University of Northern Iowa

For the first time since launching in fall 2019, the University of Iowa’s new online Master of Business Administration degree has made the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings for “best online MBA programs.”

The University of Iowa is seeking help ensuring compliance with other states’ labor and payroll laws and practices for employees working outside Iowa — as the campus approves more remote-work arrangements amid COVID-propelled changes.

Heading into a spring semester plagued by soaring COVID cases – far above rates when students returned in the fall – a University of Northern Iowa professor again is being forced to do all his teaching online due to his insistence students in his classes wear face masks.

Following a vast and swift trend sweeping four-year colleges and universities nationally, the Iowa Board of Regents is moving to permanently eliminate the mandate that applicants to their public universities submit either SAT or ACT scores.

Iowa’s public universities for years have requested legislative funding increases — promising to commit the extra tens of millions they sought to student aid, mental health, and more recently hybrid learning in an age of COVID-19 — but the asks have fallen flat.

“I think there's going to be an effort to push for everything that's on the agenda,” University of Northern Iowa political scientist Chris Larimer said. “I think they're going to push on tax cuts, maybe more easing of gun restrictions and kind of waiting and seeing what they're going to do on abortion” in anticipation of a United States Supreme Court decision on a Mississippi abortion law.

Northwestern’s annual event will return in 2022

The University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa students will hold in-person graduation ceremonies this weekend.

Paying attention to the evolving world of college football, UNI head coach Mark Farley is in no rush to take as many recruits as usual in the early signing period.

Since the Board of Regents three weeks ago directed its public universities to make COVID “vaccination verification and accommodation systems available to all campus employees on a voluntary basis,” 3,426 workers have confirmed they’re vaccinated.

Though total enrollment across Iowa’s public universities has been sliding for the last five years — including big drops from COVID since 2019 — the University of Iowa is predicting a 4-percent one-year jump next fall and 6-percent bump by 2026, according to new data UI provided to lawmakers.

With Iowa eager to put COVID in the rear view mirror, Board of Regents President Mike Richards in May lifted the state of emergency he imposed in March 2020 and mandated Iowa’s public universities return to pre-pandemic operations.

COVID-19 altered how faculty members across Iowa’s public universities spent their work days in the last academic year – draining hours spent in a classroom and decreasing time on research and scholarship while spiking virtual instruction and online grading and preparation.

The ongoing enrollment losses Iowa’s public universities are experiencing mirror trends shaping the higher education landscape nationally – with the Board of Regent campuses since fall 2019 losing 7 percent of their total enrollment, compared with a 6.5 percent two-year drop at the national level.

The University of Iowa’s dining operation this fall is about 900 workers shy of being fully staffed — putting it at only 42 percent of its goal.