Making Sense of It All

🏛️ The bottom line on admissions lawsuits and executive orders; the Common App hits another record; how to weave together cultures on a campus to make change. These are excerpts from my newsletter, Next. To get the full version in the future, sign up here.

🚨 Calling all high school and independent counselors…

1. I’m working on a magazine feature that expands on a discussion in my new book about the “demographic cliff.”

• I’m interested in hearing from counselors if students and parents are asking about the cliff and what impact you might be seeing already—changes in how colleges recruit, more merit aid, higher admissions rates to colleges in certain regions, etc.
• If you have thoughts you want to share, reach out with a few bullet points. Then I’ll connect if I’m interested in talking further. 

2. If you’re headed to Columbus for the annual NACAC conference next month, I’ll be there, too, with my new book.

• I'm co-hosting a launch party for Dream School with Denison University on Friday evening in Columbus. 
• If you’re interested, please complete this form. Space is limited; formal invitations will follow in early September.  

Getting closer…to seeing Dream School on bookshelves in 25 days.  

🖨️ A month ago, I went to visit the printing plant my publisher uses to see the first pages of Dream School come off the press (more on that to come). 

🎙️ A few weeks ago, I was in a studio in DC to record the audio book. 

📮 And earlier this week, I was in New York spending part of the day with the fantastic marketing and publicity team at Scribner/Simon & Schuster to record some videos and pack up book boxes to ship off for some early recipients.

Thank you for being on this journey with me…don’t forget that there is still time for you or your friends to pre-order the book from anywhere and then complete this proof-of-purchase here to unlock special offers: 

• An 18-page guide that you'll get immediately by email and that we're giving away only during this pre-order period.
• Access to an exclusive webinar next month on spotting colleges that care about teaching.

⚡️ BREAKING: As college campuses come back to life and another class of high school seniors enter the final stages of the college application process, the Common App , which now has some 1,100 members, has released its take on the application cycle that just ended.  

Some of what I learned in reading the report:

📈 The numbers keep rising. The number of applications filed through the platform rose 8%, topping 10 million for the first time. As has been the case for a while, application inflation isn’t caused by more students, but students filing more applications—the number of apps per student was up 2%, to an average of around seven.  

🧗🏻♂️ The Demographic Cliff is here. At least for New England and a little for the Mid-Atlantic. The number of teenagers applying from Southwestern states surged 39% to 139,000, bypassing New England. The South grew 7% to 323,000, making it the largest source of applicants, topping the Mid-Atlantic. 

🤠 Everything is bigger in Texas. Applicants jumped 43% in the state, overtaking New York and California for the top spot.

📊 Demography is destiny. First-generation  (+14%) and underrepresented minority (+14%) applicants grew far faster than their peers.

🌎 International alarms. It’s not just fewer international students enrolling this fall; fewer applied through the Common App, slipping 1%, while domestic apps grew 6%

✏️ Testing rebound. Students reporting SAT/ACT scores jumped 12%, outpacing non-reporters for the first time since 2021–22.

🏟️ Rise of the publics. Big public universities continue to burst at the seams Applications to public colleges grew 13% vs. 3% for privates.

THE LEAD

The academic year ahead is one likely to be full of change as institutions confront headwinds on various political, demographic, and financial fronts. 

Every campus leader is trying to unite their campus around a change in culture, but what if that’s the wrong way to approach this moment? 

The secret to lasting change isn’t one dominant culture, as I explored with Lisa Camp , the former vice provost for strategic initiatives at Case Western, in Part Two of a five-part series of research briefs I’m writing, "Driving Culture Change in Higher Ed."

Rather, we found it’s the right mix of cultures working together toward common goals.

The institutions that move the fastest and sustain change the longest are those that build coalitions across cultural boundaries.

Among our findings:

• Coalitions accelerate results. When perspectives collide and combine, solvers of complex problems find more—and more innovative—solutions than they would within a single cultural framework. Research consistently bears this out.
• Intersections spark innovation. While building cross-cultural coalitions requires upfront investment, implementation accelerates dramatically once trust is established.
• Coalitions make change stick. Initiatives with broad ownership survive leadership transitions and adapt over time.
• Choose the right approach. Depending on your culture mix, you may need to accept existing cultures, forge fresh ones, or bust and build entirely new coalitions.

Bottom line: Coalitions aren’t a feel-good exercise; they’re a strategic necessity. Aligning diverse campus cultures around a common mission produces better solutions, faster implementation, and more sustainable outcomes.

👉 Read the second paper in the series, Building Your Coalition Culture. (with support from Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Making Sense of It All

Every day seems to bring more news on the college admissions front, so let’s take a breather to catch up and see what three recent storylines might mean.

🕰️ Early Decision

It’s the practice everyone loves to hate, except those selective colleges and universities that lean more into it every year. And once again, it’s under scrutiny. 

• An antitrust suit filed last week targets 32 selective colleges, the Common App, and others, alleging they colluded to inflate tuition by using binding early-decision admissions.
• Although these “binding” agreements aren’t legally enforceable, the plaintiffs say that because institutions share the names of early-decision admits with other colleges, they’re essentially colluding to be sure those students aren’t recruited or admitted elsewhere. 
• Most of all, the lawsuit centers around pricing, alleging that students can’t compare financial-aid offers during ED, thus the policies reduce price competition. 

Why it matters: ED has only become more popular over the last decade-plus. 

• A study by Education Reform Now found that 84 selective schools admitted one-third or more of their incoming class through early decision in 2022, with 55 of those colleges expanding the proportion in recent years. 
• The University of Michigan recently joined the ranks of ED schools, and as I’ve written before, I suspect it won’t be the last institution given the revenue pressures on colleges right now. If they can lock in students—and potentially with a less expensive financial-aid package—they will. 

Bottom line: This lawsuit is somewhat similar to another one from 2022, when a group sued more than a dozen private colleges alleging the lack of price competition among institutions sharing methodology for assessing financial need. Most of those colleges settled, and expect the same here if this case goes forward. Colleges, it seems, would rather pay out money, then change their practices. 

🔖 Admissions Data

President Trump ordered the Education Department last week to require all colleges in federal-aid programs to submit detailed, applicant-level admissions data, including the race, gender, SAT scores and grade point averages of students—both those who were accepted and those who were rejected.

What’s new: Such a provision was in a deal with Columbia and Brown to get back their federal research dollars. Now it will be expanded to everyone else. 

• Colleges already submit reams of data to the federal government as a condition of participating in financial-aid programs. Much of that data makes its way to the government’s College Navigator website, and is used as a basis for rankings and other college information sites.

Bottom line: The administration has pushed for such data because it believes that elite colleges and universities continue to use race as a factor in admissions even after the Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 2023. 

• But mandating such numbers might not tell us much if we can’t get the data in the first place. Last year, a lot fewer college applicants identified their race/ethnicity on applications.

🗓️ The Never-Ending Admissions Cycle

Back in 2019, NACAC, which represents admissions officers and high-school counselors, voted to scrap parts of its ethics code under threat from the Justice Department, which said it stifled competition. A section that discouraged colleges from recruiting students after May 1 was eliminated, leading one admissions dean to post on Twitter at the time: “Welcome to the Wild West." 

The big picture: The Covid pandemic hit the following spring, disrupting the first college admissions cycle after the rules were eliminated. The cycles that followed were never quite the same. So we never really got to see what might have been…maybe until this year. 

• In the weeks after May 1 this year, colleges that didn’t make their freshman class started throwing money at students who were already committed elsewhere. Syracuse University became the poster-child for this practice
• Selective universities have typically closed their wait-lists in June and told applicants to move on. But several institutions, including Columbia and Harvard kept theirs open this year. Late last month, Duke reopened its list less than two weeks before move-in day, enrolling about 50 additional students.

Bottom line: Years of shifting rules, pandemic disruptions, demographic headwinds, legal crackdowns, and volatile yield rates have left colleges operating in a constant state of uncertainty. That chaos is pushing even the most selective institutions to test boundaries, keep options open, and try anything to fill their classes. In today’s admissions market, the Wild West isn’t coming. It’s here.

SUPPLEMENTS

🌐 Fake College Websites. An investigation has uncovered nearly 40 fraudulent “college” websites designed to mimic legitimate institutions, with many created or augmented using generative AI. The sites share identical copy, imagery, and layouts, and often maintain active LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook profiles to appear credible and lure prospective students. (Inside Higher Ed) 

🔄 Roadblocks to Transfer. Despite community colleges being a key entry point to higher ed, only 2% of students who start there earn a STEM bachelor’s degree within six years. A Hechinger Report op-ed cites inconsistent transfer requirements, math anxiety, and inflexible course schedules as major barriers, and calls for clear, uniform pathways, stronger support, and statewide tools to simplify credit transfer. (Hechinger Report) 

🏛 Elite U. Leaders at Odds. There is a growing rift among top university presidents over how to respond to political attacks on higher ed, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Princeton’s Christopher Eisgruber leads a “resistance” camp, urging defense of academic freedom, while Vanderbilt’s Daniel Diermeier and Washington University’s Andrew Martin head a “reformist” coalition advocating institutional neutrality. The split has fueled behind-the-scenes tension, with some fearing it weakens higher ed’s united front on funding, regulation, and reputation. (The Atlantic; subscription required)

Until next time, Cheers — Jeff  

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