Major college football now operates like a professional sports business, with roster budgets reaching $50 million while universities disclose little about how the money is raised or spent. NIL did not create this system—it exposed how far college athletics has moved from amateur competition and how urgently universities need greater financial transparency. Continue reading The Billion-Dollar Game Colleges Won’t Explain
By Watson Scott Swail, President/CEO & Senior Research Scholar, Educational Policy Institute AI deserves serious safeguards—but fear, corporate self-interest, and geopolitical competition make a simple slowdown far harder than it sounds. There is no shortage of anxiety about artificial intelligence. Industry leaders, former employees, lawmakers, and researchers are warning that AI is advancing faster than our ability to understand or govern it. Some are calling for stronger … Continue reading The AI Scare: Real Danger, Strategic Hype, or Both?
By Watson Scott Swail, President/CEO & Senior Research Scholar, Educational Policy Institute In the mid-1990s, I created the Swail Geometric Framework to help higher education practitioners better understand the primary factors that contribute to student attrition and the strategies they can use to address them. Since then, dozens—if not hundreds—of universities have used the model successfully. First published in the ASHE-ERIC/Jossey-Bass volume “Retaining Minority Students in Higher … Continue reading The Geometry of Student Success
For decades, international students have been a cornerstone of American higher education, helping universities fill classrooms, sustain graduate programs, conduct cutting-edge research, and generate billions of dollars in tuition revenue. Today, however, a combination of restrictive immigration policies, declining student mobility, and growing uncertainty about studying in the United States is creating one of the most significant challenges the sector has faced in years. The cost of these losses will be in the tens of millions for individual institutions and hundreds of billions for the US economy as a whole. Continue reading America’s International Student Reckoning: New Visa Restrictions and Enrollment Declines Threaten Higher Education
Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine will testify to secure an additional $87 billion for the Iraq conflict, which has cost the U.S. $1.79 trillion. This spending raises concerns about opportunity costs, as similar funds could significantly boost domestic programs like education, healthcare, and nutrition assistance. The war’s continued financial burden remains a pressing issue. Continue reading The War Budget and the Choices We Refuse to Make, or… What $1.79 Trillion Could Have Bought
