Bills banning colleges from spending funds on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are flooding state legislatures across the country. While touting these bills, lawmakers often say their primary objective is to protect state taxpayers.

But who are these taxpayers? What do lawmakers really mean when they invoke them? Does the public understand what “taxpayer” means, or has their understanding been warped by misuse of the term?

Photo: Jeff Haynes

Community colleges represent an affordable and accessible pathway to higher education for millions of today's students. Yet, graduation rates at community colleges remain low.

Offering targeted support services could have a big impact on getting more students to and through their studies. That’s one of the takeaways from a new long-term analysis of three Ohio community colleges and their programs to help students stay on track and earn a degree as efficiently as possible.

In recent years, there’s been a shift in many students’ attitudes toward drinking. Instead of seeing alcohol as a fact of college life, more students are questioning its presence in their lives. 

That’s great news for administrators who have long worked toward this end. But now they must figure out how to help students lead fulfilling social lives without alcohol—a substance which, like it or not, is entangled with many colleges’ bottom lines.