BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK
COLLEGE BOARD WILL KEEP AP CURRICULA
Florida recently asked the College Board to update its AP curricula to modify any courses that conflict with Florida’s law which restricts teaching sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. Last week, the College Board responded to the request with a letter stating that it would not be making the changes.
Florida’s request didn’t specifically mention AP Psychology, but this is likely the course that would be impacted by the rule. The College Board argues that without discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in AP Psychology, the course would no longer have all of the content necessary for students to receive college credit.
The College Board’s refusal comes in the wake of Florida’s ban on the AP African American Studies course. The Board did make changes to that course, and received a lot of backlash from professors of African American studies. We will be watching to see if AP Psychology is banned for Florida students!
COLLEGE DEI PROGRAMS DISAPPEAR
On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott prohibited diversity, equality, and inclusion offices in Texas public colleges. The law will affect UT Austin as well as other colleges in the UT system. The law allows students and faculty to sue the college if DEI trainings of any kind are mandated. Florida has already instituted a similar ban, stopping state funding for DEI programs - Governor Abbott is expected to sign a similar funding-related bill in Texas.
But Florida and Texas aren’t the only states where DEI offices will see changes. North and South Carolina introduced bills to track DEI spending at public colleges, while in Ohio, a bill to abolish diversity training in public colleges is currently in the legislative process.
DREXEL AND SALUS UNIVERSITIES MERGE
Mergers between larger colleges and struggling smaller schools have been more common since COVID-19 depleted college enrollment, and the latest schools to merge are Drexel and Salus Universities. The merger, which will take place next summer, will provide Drexel with the health sciences resources of Salus, including labs and clinical facilities. New programs at Drexel will include optometry, audiology, occupational therapy, and more.
WAKE FOREST’S FIRST COLLEGE WORLD SERIES SINCE 1955
The Demon Deacons are headed to the College World Series for the first time since their 1955 championship win. 68 years ago, the biggest controversy around their appearance was the team taking the field on the Sabbath - thankfully, this time around Sunday will be an off day for the tournament!
THE YOUNGEST COLLEGE GRADUATES
Every year around this time, we see a rash of stories about interesting college graduates - the youngest, the oldest, the entire family graduating at once that we wrote about a few weeks ago! This year brought us a 12-year-old with an associate’s degree from Los Angeles City College - she started when she was 9 - and a 14-year-old with an engineering degree from Santa Clara University and a job at SpaceX!
We found these two stories particularly interesting because of the contrast between the parents’ choices for their young students. 12-year-old Fiona Currie’s parents are sending her to high school, despite her 4.0 college GPA, saying that they want her to have the social experience of being in high school with students her age. 14-year-old Kairan Quazi, on the other hand, applied to 98 jobs and chose SpaceX from his three offers.
Your student may not be a college graduate as a preteen, but these are things that many parents think about when debating whether to send a student to college early or help them pursue an associate’s degree while in high school. Our perspective? It is generally better to keep a student with their peers, like Fiona’s parents did - but the choice is different for different families!
FCPS INTRODUCES COURSERA CAREER ACADEMY PILOT
Coursera and FCPS are offering an awesome pilot program for Fairfax County students! Up to 1,000 students will be able to access Coursera’s Career Academy, with the ability to learn from experts at companies like Microsoft and Google and access almost 30 professional certificates. This is a great opportunity for students to explore different careers! You should be able to fill out the interest form here to gain access, but as of the time we are posting, it’s not loading for us. We assume that it will work for those with FCPS email accounts!
BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
We’ve got some interesting questions for you to consider this week!
Where did most Fortune 500 CEOs attend college? If you guessed “nowhere,” you’d be right! Successful CEOs go to a huge variety of schools - this year, only 11 or 12 of the top 100 CEOs attended an Ivy League university for undergrad. Of the top 20, 14 of them went to public colleges and only one - Amazon’s Andy Jassy - graduated from the Ivy League. But 5 of the top 20 CEOs didn’t go to college at all! Looks like resourcefulness, determination, and networking skills are much more important for aspiring business leaders than the brand name of their college.
Should colleges take political stances? Princeton professor Robert P. George says no. George argues that when Princeton’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies released a statement condemning last summer’s Dobbs decision, the program made a mistake. Official political statements from universities, he said, can make some students feel excluded.
Do American universities have something to learn from Oxbridge? As we wait for the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision and colleges’ responses, this article from the Financial Times has a suggestion - American schools could learn something from the UK’s Oxford and Cambridge. The article outlines what elite UK schools have done to make their classes more diverse, and considers whether these changes would be applicable to schools in the United States.
What does the average University of Minnesota student look like? We’ll give you a hint - they appear to be standing in the snow. When AI was asked to generate “average” students at 18 different colleges, it turns out they all dress in their schools’ colors - and aptly, UT Austin students wear tank tops while Minnesota students are bundled up! Check out all of the fun photos on Buzzfeed.
OFFICE HAPPENINGS
I (Colleen) am out of the office this week, but Shannon and our admin team are holding down the fort - please reach out to them at admin@dccollegecounseling.com with any questions.
Have a great week!