Excerpt from the Winter 2025 Extension
These are certainly turbulent times for just about everything I care about, but my focus here will be on the future of higher education. Because I am cursed with always seeing the sunny side of things, I’ll start with the good news.
Spring is here. Trees are budding, birds are chirping, coats are going by the wayside, and days are longer. As much as I love winter, there is always that feeling of relief when spring comes along—we made it through another one!
And so did the university. Enrollment for spring semester was up over last spring, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness:
- College Credit Plus: 1,138 (3.93% increase)
- Undergraduate: 7,002 (7.61% increase)
- Graduate/professional: 3,047 (2.52% increase)
- Total: 11,187 (5.80% increase)
More good news: Wright State University was ranked as the top public university in Ohio for social mobility in the Wall Street Journal’s 2025 America’s Best Colleges rankings. The social mobility ranking, which acknowledges how much a university enhances students’ social mobility after graduation, considers the number of years it takes students to pay off the net tuition price, how much a university boosts its graduates’ salaries, the proportion of students at the university who receive Pell Grants and the graduation rates of those students. More than 40% of first-time undergraduate students at Wright State for the fall 2024 semester were Pell Grant recipients.
So that’s good news, right? Students get a great education while increasing their social mobility. However, Pell Grants (a type of federal aid available to low income families who demonstrate financial need on the FAFSA) could be impacted next year due to the downsizing of the U.S. Department of Education and a project budget shortfall. The budget shortfall is caused by an increase in student population and an increase in applicants in need. There are many paths to success, but if a student chooses higher education without the means to access it, shouldn’t they be supported?
Other news items of concern include:
- Federal and state efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campuses;
- The Trump administration’s move to cap indirect cost allotments that come with National Institutes of Health research funding
- The establishment of intellectual diversity centers and related efforts to eliminate perceived liberal bias at Ohio’s public universities; and
- Efforts to control student protests and rein in freedom of speech on college campuses, including in the classroom.
The rules by which we lived and worked at Wright State University (and all public institutions) are changing. How should we respond? If you have ideas about how to address these issues, let us know. If you send your thoughts to us at wsura@wright.edu, we will compile them and publish them on the WSU Retirees Association website and/or in the next issue of The Extension.
