The Hechinger Report weekly newsletter

View in browser Weekly Update A newsletter from The Hechinger Report Sponsored by: Heads up! Hechinger’s NewsMatch campaign begins this Friday. For the remainder of the year, you’ll be hearing more from us about what we accomplished in 2026 (and the impact we helped bring about) and why we need your support. Gifts of $25, $50 or any amount power the reporting you receive in your inbox week after week. Want to skip the campaign emails? Donate any amount today, and we’ll automatically opt you out of all future appeals for this drive. Thank you for understanding our position and for supporting us! In this week's edition: Colleges are striving to transform an admissions process that has often been intimidating, secretive and stressful into an experience that’s open, easier and downright friendly. Bills targeting tenure at public colleges have been introduced this year by Republican lawmakers in about a half-dozen states. Plus, two recent studies offer a striking and enlightening contrast on artificial intelligence in education. Prospective students and their families join a campus tour at Skidmore College. Credit: Oliver Parini for The Hechinger Report As courting students gets tougher, colleges vie to make the admissions process friendlier “Overwhelming.” That’s how 17-year-old high school senior Alex Zaret described the college admissions process during a tour this fall of Skidmore College — the fourth campus Zaret had visited, with another half a dozen to go. “It is kind of a full-time job,” Zaret’s father, Owen, said. He wasn’t joking. With research to do, visits to make and applications and financial forms to fill out, “it’s a lot, and it’s a lot on top of two full-time-employed parents and a very engaged high school student,” Owen Zaret said. But even in the year or so that the family has been doing this, the Zarets have detected a subtle shift. “It used to be more an ivory tower approach,” Zaret said, which signaled, “ ‘You’re lucky if you come here.’ And now, I think, for a variety of reasons, that’s changed. It’s more like, ‘We want you to be here.’ ” As they compete to attract a dwindling supply of students, colleges are striving to transform an admissions process that has often been intimidating, secretive and stressful into an experience that’s open, easier and downright friendly. “It’s one of those things that’s in everybody’s interest,” said Marc Conner, the president of Skidmore, which has been making a particular push to do this. After all, he said, “we depend on students coming to our campuses and, when they do come, getting them to enroll.” This week's newsletter is sponsored by: What do attendance, engagement, behavior, and achievement have in common? Research points to strong relationships. Explore how Sanford Harmony helps schools put relationship science into practice to: Improve attendance and engagement Strengthen behavior and belonging Support academic achievement Build a consistent approach across classrooms Put research into practice. Some red states want to ban tenure. Rural colleges could pay the price At East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, two of four professor positions – in history and criminal justice – remain unfilled after fewer people than usual applied and numerous candidates withdrew their interest. A second-choice candidate was hired in the computer science department after the most qualified said “no” to a job offer. The hiring trouble at this regional public university stems from Gov. Kevin Stitt’s efforts to limit traditional job protections for faculty, argue other leaders in Oklahoma, who say that’s making it harder for schools in remote locations to attract academic talent. “The governor, in messages he has delivered to us, says he disagrees with academic freedom and thinks professors at the end of their careers aren’t doing much,” said ECU President Wendell Godwin. “But we have a process for getting rid of professors who are not effective, whether the