It may seem like only students should care what their community colleges or universities are up to.
But that’s not the case, said Kayleigh Skinner, Managing Editor for Race and Equity at Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization that partners with local newsrooms to deliver expert coverage of higher ed for communities, during a recent News Creator Corps webinar.
“I really want everyone to realize when we say higher ed, we’re not just talking about four year colleges,” Skinner said. “There’s community colleges, for profit institutions, degree programs, credential things, but at the end of the day, there are more than 20 million students in America who are going to American colleges and universities. You probably know someone who has gone.”
Whether you have a degree or not, you likely interact with the higher education system in some way, she said. Institutions of higher education receive a tremendous amount of money from taxpayers, many local businesses depend on their student populations, and oftentimes they conduct important research or engage in partnerships with local organizations.
“There’s an accountability aspect of this, of whether you go to college or not, some of the money that you spend is going to these institutions,” Skinner said. “And there’s a lot of them.”
There are roughly 4,000 institutions nationwide, which receive billions in funding altogether and serve more than 20 million students.
“So big picture, this is just something that really impacts every community in America, and whether you as a creator are writing about things that don’t feel super newsy or political, this just plays a role in who pays who, where you get a job, where you choose to live, who works where,” Skinner said. “And you know, the public’s ability to see and understand how these systems work is so important.”
If you’re a creator interested in getting started with content about higher education, here are a few easy ideas from Skinner to get started:
Financial aid: Let your audience know when the deadline is to submit your application and where you can go to apply. You can see how much aid a particular institution gives out and what kinds of people get it using resources like the National Center for Education Statistics’ College Navigator or the non-governmental database Common Dataset.
Local Businesses: What businesses are dependent on your local universities and how are they impacted with changes at the university or student population?
Events: Get on your local university’s media lists. They’ll send out events, many of which will be open to the public.
News Hooks: You can explore how a university is currently handling its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, how it supports students just entering the workforce post-graduation and how the university is responding to major events, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, that are affecting students.
You don’t need to recreate the wheel. A lot of news outlets focused on higher education are doing the work that you can share if it’s relevant to your audience.
- Inside Higher Ed offers a free daily newsletter with the latest news and opinion.
- The Hechinger Report has several newsletters, including one about higher ed news.
- Education Dive also offers a daily higher ed newsletter.
Open Campus Newsletters:
- Their main newsletter is The Dispatch. It focuses on the role of higher education in society.
- Mile Markers focuses on the role of college in rural America.
- College Inside focuses on the future of postsecondary education in prison.