higher ed

Higher education enrollment dropped 1.1% between fall 2021 and 2022, a slight reprieve from historic COVID-induced drop-offs, as revealed by new preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Since fall 2020, enrollment has decreased by a combined 3.2% for graduate and undergraduate enrollment, representing a drop of approximately 1.5 million students since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) — a nonprofit working to grow Georgia’s economy through supporting research at state universities — recently announced that its portfolio of companies had raised more than over $2 billion in venture capital. These startups also had a high survival rate — 88% were still in business four years after launch, outpacing the national average of 44%. Along with this announcement, GRA released 2021 data on their economic impact on the state, demonstrating growth from the previous year.

In an effort to help to determine the economic impact of higher education institutions and hospitals within their regions and how reliant these regions are on these “anchor institutions” to drive their economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia developed an Anchor Economy Initiative. It recently published an

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $540 million in awards for research into clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing at 54 universities and 11 national laboratories.

States with top-ranking university AI research programs garner a greater number of Phase II AI-related SBIR awards, according to a working paper from the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Researchers there investigated state variations in the distribution of Phase II SBIR research projects focused on artificial intelligence (AI). The authors of the paper hypothesized that the state-by-state variations are related to the presence of a research university with a “Top 10” AI program in each state.

With President Biden’s signing the CHIPS and Science Act on Aug. 9, states and universities are already making plans to build on the funding opportunities present in the legislation.

The recently published, 2022 edition of New America’s annual survey on American perceptions of higher education, Varying Degrees, includes findings that should be of interest – and potential concern – for the TBED community. The report includes updated findings on American perceptions of the value, funding, accountability, and admissions for higher education and perceptions of current financial security. It also reveals significant differences in perceptions of higher education based on respondents’ political affiliations.

Although Americans perceptions on the economy dipped late last year, their financial well-being increased and hit its highest level since 2013, when the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System survey began. The results of the latest wide-ranging survey, reported in the Economic Well-Being of U.S.

Spring college enrollment figures released last week by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (Clearinghouse) showed a continued decline with postsecondary enrollment falling to 16.2 million, a 4.1 percent decline from the previous spring. Combined with the 3.5 percent drop in enrollment last spring, the Clearinghouse reported that the undergraduate student body is now 9.4 percent, or nearly 1.4 million students, smaller than before the pandemic.

After declines in 2016 and 2017, the number of graduate students and postdoctoral appointees at the nation’s institutions of higher education increased nationally from 2018 to 2020, according to National Science Foundation (NSF) data from its Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) survey. However, this SSTI analysis shows considerable variation among the states over the five-year period from 2016 to 2020.