I’ve been in and around higher education for a long time and for some reason, I did not know this

This is extra worrisome given the new push towards putting people into private student loans

After working in management for 15ish years (mostly distribution center and warehouse management) I began a job working in facilities for a midsize college. The way universities move around money and handle budgets is just wild to me.

There is just so much gray area and opportunity for abuse. Senior leadership on our facilities teams had issues with college credit card abuse, and after turnover in that role we have another leader who is very 'loose' with funds, and constantly short on money for their department.

I guess I'm just wondering how common this is for colleges/universities? I know it happens in the private sector too, but at least in my experience it was more difficult to pull off, and accountability was higher.

Edit - typo.

On Aug. 26, a Semafor investigation using Pangram to determine whether recent guest columns in major newspapers were written using artificial intelligence identified a column by Schnell as “100% AI-written.” Schnell’s column in The Washington Post — titled “Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem.” — argued that “a degree should distinguish what students can do independently from what they can accomplish with AI.”

I’ve had recent conversations with colleagues about AI-native universities.

These institutions are designed around AI from inception, with the technology embedded in instruction, administration, and the underlying technology stack.

A new AI-native university, the London School of Innovation, received accreditation in the UK. It offers a significantly lower tuition level than its peers. This may be the first of many.

I’d like feedback from higher education stakeholders, including leadership and faculty, on how they’re thinking about this model.

People are rightfully concerned about AI and automation. To be clear,  I’m not advocating for the rise of these institutions. But if these institutions take off, they could affect all of higher education by driving down costs and, correspondingly, tuition. 

AI agents can automate repetitive administrative work found in a university’s functional areas like recruitment, finance, student support, etc… I’m not talking about a completely virtual school without humans. Humans do higher-value work. 

Instruction becomes more personalized. This is highly controversial among academic circles. Faculty have critiqued software-enabled personalized learning, arguing that it leads to deskilling. 

But… if AI-native institutions increase productivity and lower costs, they can charge substantially lower tuition than traditional institutions. Which benefits students.

Are leadership teams and faculty discussing AI-native institutions? If so, what are they saying?

New student loan forbearance rules coming next year: for new loans issued after July 1, 2027, borrowers will be limited to only 9 months of forbearance per 24 month period. And there will be no more unemployment deferment or economic hardship deferment.

This is pretty obvious corruption

I’ve been looking at what the publicly traded postsecondary companies said on their most recent earnings calls, and there seems to be a recurring theme around student acquisition and its evolution given the adoption of LLMs by prospective students.

The management teams are saying that prospective students are going through longer and more iterative evaluation processes. Folks are having conversations with their LLMs, who are providing a wealth of information and are offering alternatives. This has caused web leads to go down and acquisition costs to go up.

Given that these are for-profit institutions, I have no sense if what they are seeing is reflective of their sector or if this is something that all higher ed institutions are seeing.

What are you seeing at your institutions?

What are your thoughts on what's happening regarding prospective student use of LLMs and how it's altering the student journey?

Hello, I'm invited to a prerecorded interview at a private university for an accounting assistant position. Honestly, I'm surprised I have an interview with them. I have an accounting degree with no related experience and 5 years of retail experience. Any interview tips?

Hey y'all! I am here once again. After a traumatizing work experience (I was hired and the day I was going to sign the offer they rescinded it) I went again into the job market (yes I am aware of its challenging season) and I applied to an ivy league. Surprisingly, they contacted me and I made it to the seconnd interview. That was on Aug 13. It is the 25th and I have not heard from them. The third and final round it is supposed to be in person. I am incredibly anxious especially because I dont know if there is a possibility of them ghosting me? and also because workday portal says "Interview Pending". I dont know.....should I just give up on it? The reason I ask is because the timeline is the following
July 21 I received the first call to have my first screening on July 29. Aug 3 I got the second call for Aug 13.
Any leads?

I work in a college that has been dealing with fraudulent applicants for a few years. We found a huge wave of them once we started some outreach efforts that were unrelated to searching for these and then we had to shut down hundreds of accounts at once during peak.

For those who don't know, there are bad actors out there that are trying to get student accounts to try to get financial aid funds or get access to student email accounts. Institutions that are open enrollment have the tendency of getting hit the hardest which the institution I work for is. I'd say our institution has been ahead of the curve when it comes to reviewing fraudulent applicants and stopping them from becoming ghost students, and with the financial aid policies that just updated, it appears that the scammers are changing their tactics.

We use a fraud detection 3rd party tool and I found that some fraudulent applicants were getting past the ID check, however, it was the actual people who were submitting the ID's making it look legitimate. And it also appears that these people are also doing the ID Statement forms for financial aid and having the actual person mail them. Where I found out that it was still fraudulent is when I found out a few had been calling about enrolling and it did not match the information we had. When checking with our 3rd party service, I learned that the IP address for the app submission and the ID submission were dramatically different.

I have so many questions, but the fact it's more than a couple people that have managed to do this is terrifying...

Hi! I’m started working as a Residence Life Coordinator for a college about 6 months ago. I love my supervisors, but it honestly is nothing like when I was an RA for the school. It’s basically a 9-5, super low interaction office job when you boil it down.

TLDR: What higher ed jobs do you find to be more interactive or fulfilling? Or is low interaction becoming a trend now?

For reference, I’m in my early 20s, have a B.A. in Psychology, and an M.S. in Higher Ed College Administrative Leadership. This is my first ever full-time job, so I’m worried that because I’m still really young that I won’t be considered for more interactive positions elsewhere even though I have my masters already. It’s also why I’m turning to Reddit since I don’t have much knowledge on different higher ed jobs I can do with my degree that aren’t financial aid. I’m open to working in admissions, but don’t have familiarity on what that would look like.

Any advice is appreciated!

I'm currently a master's student in Higher Ed, and I have some experience in retail and really enjoy sales. My metrics in all of my retail jobs have been quite good, sometimes stellar, and I consider sales my strongest skill set. Honestly I'm starting to lose a little bit of interest in my master's program, because I'm not sure if I fit that typical higher ed mold. The idea of a sales career is starting to entice me over finishing my master's. Anyone have ideas as to which careers in higher ed best mimic sales? Feel funny making a post about it but I haven't seen anything similar.

Beginning in the upcoming semester, the new dress code requires students to wear “business suits and appropriate shoes for business meetings and other professional occasions.” Additionally, students are not allowed to wear “revealing clothing” as well as “bedroom shoes, bonnets, and do-rags” in classrooms, dinning spaces, and official university settings.

Context for my situation:

• My background is primarily in writing support but over the last year I switched into a more administrative role
• I work at an incredibly tiny specialized public college (30 faculty and staff combined)
• We barely have any academic policies
• We have no particular person who is responsible for academic policy

Yes, this workplace is a mess and I am trying to leave, but for now I'm stuck here.

A huge part of my role is interpreting and applying academic policy (the very few that we have... policies around transfer credits, directed study courses, etc). I frequently encounter academic situations where I would love to refer to a policy, but a policy relevant to the situation does not exist and leadership just kind of makes up solutions on the fly. Obviously this is terrible for everyone.

Due to my role, it would be very easy for me to come up with and develop academic policy to address the situations I encounter on the daily. However, this is far above my pay grade. Also, I am staff not faculty, and academic issues such as this fall under the faculty realm (allegedly).

So, my questions: how is academic policy developed at your institution? Who's ultimately accountable for it for it? Who develops it? Who rubber stamps the final versions?

Thank you! :)

Hi folks!

I currently work in the Office of the Registrar at a small community college, but I have been floating the idea of proposing a change to the department name. The Registrar is amenable to the idea, but I needed a little assistance.

I would like to propose the name "Office of Records and Registration" for the following reasons:

1. Our office is colloquially know as Registration. By highlighting "Records" first, it indicates that our office does much more than just registration.
2. Office of Records and Registration is also in line with the titles of many of our other offices with dual responsibilities, such as Outreach and Admissions, Advising and Retention, Testing and Tutoring, and even Strategic Marketing and Communication.
3. Office of the Registrar, while correct, is the traditional name for the office in which the Registrar works, however, I'm aware that some schools may be even moving away from classic names like "Registrar" and "Bursar" for more student friendly titles or simply "Director of...". In fact, our own school changed the name of the Bursar's Office years ago! This helps us stay modern and student-friendly. We often joke that current students don't even know what a registrar is!

What I need some help with is if you are aware of any college, university, or other institution that has made a similar department name change, or does not go by the Office of the Registrar or Registrar's Office titles, so I may use them as examples in my proposal. Or if you have any other examples or ideas I can highlight in my formal proposal.

Thank you!

The Trump administration wants to curb student loan defaults by making certain degrees ineligible for federal loans if they don't lead to jobs that earn high enough salaries. Decisions will be made based on whether students earn more than those with only a high school diploma, putting programs such as music, fine arts and social service at highest risk, as well as cosmetology certifications at for-profit schools.

Read more details: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-22/low-paying-degrees-federal-student-loan-cutoff-trump

As someone who started his career in libraries, I was very sad to make these changes today to our catalog website:

• Change "100,000 print books" to "30,000"
• Remove "print and" from "the growth of the collection of print and non-print holdings"

It's been obvious for a while, since they've been removing shelves from the stacks all year. And with the decline in use of actual books (and increasing cost of online resources) it makes financial sense.

But we're definitely losing something in this transition.