6 higher education lawsuits to watch in 2022 (2023)

FAQs

What are the major legal issues in higher education? ›

A class action suit accuses Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Penn, Rice, Yale and others of inflating their prices for financial aid recipients.

In 1978, a second case challenging the constitutionality of affirmative action reached the Supreme Court. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke established the precedent that for 45 years has allowed colleges and universities to engage in race-based affirmative action.

The topics that do: student mental health, cited by 94 percent, and student well-being, by 91 percent. All other issues lagged well behind. This is from the first-ever Inside Higher Ed survey of student affairs leaders, conducted by Gallup.

College is expensive. Let's face it; with all the benefits colleges can provide, tuition is very costly. It is not unusual for students to enter “real life” with many thousands of dollars worth of debt, only to find their degree offers no guarantees of a lucrative career.

Between fall 2020 and fall 2022, the equivalent of roughly 24,000 currently enrolled undergraduates disappeared from the Cal State system. Part of the reason is that students on average are collectively taking fewer classes. In the last two years, students began taking . 4 fewer units a term.

The term “controversial issues” refers to “issues which arouse strong feelings and divide communities and society”. Teaching around controversial issues means discussing them in the classroom.

Sixteen top US universities, including Duke, Vanderbilt and Northwestern, are being sued by five former students claiming those schools may be involved in antitrust violations in the way those institutions worked together in determining financial aid awards for students, according to the lawsuit filed in a US District ...

What are the 16 universities being sued? ›

The suit names 16 defendants: Ivy League schools Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, as well as California Institute of Technology, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ...

A lawsuit filed in federal court on Sunday accused 16 of the nation's leading private universities and colleges of conspiring to reduce the financial aid they award to admitted students through a price-fixing cartel.

Bollinger, a case decided by the United States Supreme Court on June 23, 2003, upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School. The decision permitted the use of racial preference in student admissions to promote student diversity.

Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978) | PBS. In Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Court ruled unconstitutional a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process, but held that affirmative action programs could be constitutional in some circumstances.

Harvard University selects and promotes staff and faculty without discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, gender identity, religion, creed, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, military service, genetic information, or other protected ...

It's a math class. And if you guessed Algebra, you're right. The fact that so many students struggle with Algebra is a real problem because it's a class that has far-reaching impacts on their lives.

Social pressures and fear of failure are common stressors for teens who learn and think differently. Tell your child that feeling unsure or worried about the future is common. Ongoing stress can lead to anxiety or depression, so be aware of the signs.

Already, enrollment is down 9 percent from 2017, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, and many schools are in trouble: The National Center for Education Statistics reports that more than 500 colleges and universities closed from 2015-2020.

Why is college so expensive? ›

Over the last 30 years, tuition costs have soared for a variety of reasons. State funding cuts, expanding administrative staffs, and increased construction and facility costs all play a role. As a result, the average student debt among college graduates is now close to $28,000.

According to data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the wage premium for early-career college graduates was 52%, or $17,680. The unemployment rate for college grads was also far lower in the first quarter of 2023 at 2.1% versus 6.9% for young workers without a college degree.

Even if a degree is not needed in the beginning, it may be required in order for you to move higher up within your company or field. That being said, you can certainly be successful without a college degree — your skills and talents can get you hired.

While there is some anecdotal evidence that overqualified students get rejected, these students aren't usually turned down because of their better-than-average grades or test scores. Most likely, the overqualified student isn't the right fit for a school or they haven't shown enough interest to admission officers.

Many students leave college because they couldn't find a healthy school-work-life balance. The time spent on class lectures, projects, tests and studying prove to be too much. College is a multiyear commitment, and many students drop out because they just don't have that kind of time to complete their degrees.

The overall college enrollment rate of 18- to 24-year-olds (ages in which students traditionally enroll in college) was 38 percent in 2021. In this indicator, college enrollment rate is defined as the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled as undergraduate or graduate students in 2- or 4-year institutions.

Deficits in government funding for schools.

Funding is always an issue for schools and is, in fact, one of the biggest issues facing the American public education system today. For more than 90% of K-12 schools, funding comes from state and local governments, largely generated by sales and income taxes.

Lack of effective communication

As the wiser of the bunch, teachers need to build trust with their students and work on their communication skills every day. You are building an effective communication channel not only between yourself and your students but also their parents.

What are the top colleges to avoid? ›

The University of Southern California is being sued over an online degree program that former students allege is an overpriced “diploma mill.”

It details how elite colleges illegally collude to monopolize the higher education industry and squeeze students, parents, and the public. Between 1994 and 2021, the University of Pennsylvania's endowment increased from $1.5 billion to $20.5 billion, growing by 1301%.

However, the plaintiffs argue that nine of the sixteen colleges are not actually need-blind and that they favor the wealthy in their admissions process, including Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt.

1. Vassar College. A private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, Vassar awards financial aid to more than 60% of its students and promises to meet 100% of need-based aid for all admitted students. In the 2020-21 year, financial assistance was offered to students with family incomes of up to $270,000.

The other institutions named are Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University and ...

On June 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court (“Court”), in a 4-3 decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (“Fisher”), held that the race-conscious admissions program used by the University of Texas at Austin (“UT”) was lawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Gratz v. Bollinger was especially significant because it concluded that the University of Michigan's racial preference policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it mechanically awarded bonus points to applicants solely because of their race.

What happened in Gratz v Bollinger? ›

Bollinger is a United States Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6-3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the university's point system was too mechanistic and therefore unconstitutional.

Bakke (1978), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4) that quotas may not be used to reserve places for minority applicants if white applicants are denied a chance to compete for those places. Although the court outlawed quota programs, it allowed colleges to use race as a factor in making admissions decisions.

It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine were impermissible.

There was no single majority opinion. Four of the justices contended that any racial quota system supported by government violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., agreed, casting the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke.

MIT's Affirmative Action includes: monitoring of employment-related actions to prevent discrimination from occurring or to detect it and eliminate it.

According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges.

A decision banning affirmative action would force elite colleges and universities to revamp their policies and search for new ways to ensure diversity in their student populations. Many schools have said other measures would not be as effective, resulting in fewer minority students on campuses.

Most legal issues related to academic advising fall under four areas: The contractual relationship between student and institution; ▪ Guidelines governing privacy of student records; ▪ The concept of privileged communications; and ▪ Academic due process and the need for grievance procedures.

Some of the challenges presented for undocumented students are the lack of financial aid, resources, and citizenship information, and institutional regulations that discourage and constrain them from pursuing higher education.

Equity Gap

Equity gaps refer to disparities in educational outcomes and student success metrics across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, physical or mental abilities, and other demographic traits and intersectionalities.

What are the sources of law in higher education? ›

Copying from another student during an examination or allowing another to copy your work. Unauthorized collaboration on a take home assignment or examination. Using notes during a closed book examination. Taking an examination for another student, or asking or allowing another student to take an examination for you.

Academic Misconduct can be either intentional or unintentional. In addition to intentional or unintentional, an incident could also be categorized as cheating, plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of information, inappropriate or unauthorized collaboration, and research misconduct (or sometimes a combination).

College Admission Policies

Undocumented students may incorrectly assume that they cannot legally attend college in the United States. However, there is no federal or state law that prohibits the admission of undocumented immigrants to U.S. colleges, public or private.

Undocumented – Undocumented refers to students who are not U.S. citizens or Permanent Residents of the United States, who do not hold a visa to reside in the U.S. and who have not applied for legal residency in the U.S. In many, but not all, cases the term non-citizen refers to undocumented students.

The Taishoff Center defines inclusion as the incorporation of students with disabilities into general academic courses on campus, across disciplines and departments with non-disabled peers.

Educational inequality is the unequal distribution of academic resources, including but not limited to school funding, qualified and experienced teachers, books, and technologies, to socially excluded communities. These communities tend to be historically disadvantaged and oppressed.

A solid majority of California's future college-age population will come from demographic groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education-including Latinos, African Americans, and those who are low income or the first in their families to go to college.

What are the five 5 sources of law? ›

The primary sources of law in the United States are the United States Constitution, state constitutions, federal and state statutes, common law, case law, and administrative law.

The four primary sources are constitutions, statutes, cases, and regulations. These laws and rules are issued by official bodies from the three branches of government.

Although we typically think of the government as a whole, that makes the laws that govern our schools, there are actually four sources of law that affect public education; constitutional laws, statutory laws, administrative laws and judical laws.