(NEW YORK) — College enrollment in the United States fell for the third consecutive year, deepening the woes endured by universities nationwide since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a report released on Thursday showed.
However, the pace of the decline in enrollment slowed this autumn, suggesting that the pandemic-induced student exodus has begun to wane, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Student enrollment dropped 1.1% this fall, compared with a combined 5.5% decline in 2020 and 2021.
In a key point of concern, the rate of decline in enrollment among freshmen exceeded that of students overall, with implications for universities that could last over the next several years.
The decline in freshmen enrollment befell every category of four-year institutions, whether public or private, for-profit or non-profit, the data showed.
“After two straight years of historically large losses, it is particularly troubling that numbers are still falling, especially among freshmen,” Doug Shapiro, the executive director at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, said in a statement.
“Although the decline has slowed and there are some bright spots, a path back to pre-pandemic enrollment levels is growing further out of reach,” he added.
The decline in enrollment extended beyond undergraduate students, as graduate school enrollment fell 1%, reversing a 2.7% gain last fall. Graduate student enrollment fell in 26 states, according to the report.
While the report delivered sobering news for many institutions of higher education, it offered a sign of optimism for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Enrollment at HBCUs grew 2.5% this fall, bouncing back from a decline of 1.7% last year, the data showed. The rise in enrollment owed to a 6.6% increase in freshmen enrolling at HBCUs.
In a sign of shifting educational norms amid the pandemic, undergraduate students enrolled exclusively online grew by 2.5% this autumn.
(STOCKTON, Calif.) — Police, community members and families of victims of the suspected Stockton, California, serial killer congregated at Stockton City Hall Wednesday night for a vigil to remember the six lives lost.
The six slayings — all fatal shootings of men — spanned from April 2021 to September 2022, according to police. Five of the killings were in Stockton; one was in Oakland, about 70 miles away. All of the shootings were at night or in the early morning.
“My brother was my everything. I’m going to never hear his laughter,” Pia Lopez, sister of the final victim, 54-year-old Lorenzo Lopez Sr., said at the vigil.
The musician — who was shot in the early hours of Sept. 27 — leaves behind six children.
Stockton police chief Stanley McFadden was among those at Wednesday’s vigil.
“Everyone came together to get this person off the street,” the chief said.
In an emotional moment, Lorenzo Lopez Sr.’s mother thanked the chief.
“I want to thank him so much, because he lifted my spirits and he held me up when I felt like I was falling down and falling apart,” she said.
“It hurts deep inside and it never goes away,” she added. “But we got justice.”
The suspected serial killer, 43-year-old Wesley Brownlee, was arrested this weekend while he was allegedly on the prowl for another victim, according to police. Brownlee was apprehended while wearing dark clothing and a mask around his neck, according to McFadden. Brownlee was also armed with a gun, police said.
“He was on a mission to kill. He was out hunting,” McFadden said in a statement. “We are sure we stopped another killing.”
Brownlee appeared in court Tuesday and was charged with three counts of murder, with more charges expected, San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar said. He has not entered a plea.
(LONDON) — It took Liz Truss 12 years in Parliament to reach the pinnacle of British political power. Now, after just 44 days leading the country, she has assumed the title of shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom.
Not since George Canning — who served almost three times as long as Truss at 119 days — in 1827 has a British prime minister served such a short period of time. He died of tuberculosis while in office.
The blistering speed of the collapse of Truss’ period in governance is unparalleled in modern times.
Having been elected by Conservative Party members — and not the country as a whole — Truss came into power after Boris Johnson was all but forced to step down as prime minister having lost the mandate to govern from his own party after a scandal-plagued three years and 44 days in office — three years more to the day than Truss actually lasted.
Truss came in with a clear plan but squandered her own mandate to govern in just 44 days. She made a U-turn on almost every single key policy she had run on during the leadership election this summer.
The U.K. is now expected to name its third prime minister in just under two months by the end of next week.
Only eight prime ministers in the country’s history have even served less than a full calendar year, but most will not recognize their names.
Viscount Goderich served only 144 days in office in 1827, Bonar Law served 211 days in 1922, and Sir Alec Douglas-Home — the most recent former prime minister to serve less than a year — was in power for 363 days in 1963.
Even though Truss may now have the ignominious title of shortest-ever serving prime minister, the Conservative Party still commands a strong majority in the House of Commons and the next public vote is not due until 2024.
(WASHINGTON) — A new super PAC backed by former President Donald Trump is injecting money into key 2022 races, investing $4 million in a new round of ad spending in battleground states, according to new financial data.
The series of seven- to eight-figure ad placements from super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. on Wednesday in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada is a last-minute boost from Trump’s team ahead of the November election. It follows months of criticism from Trump skeptics within the GOP that the former president is not spending enough to support 2022 GOP candidates, despite his massive fundraising power.
Wednesday’s placements are the second round of ad spending by the new PAC, which was launched in late September and kicked off its first round of placements in the same Senate races earlier this month.
According to ad tracking firm Ad Impact, Make America Great Again Inc.’s biggest investment in the latest ad placement was a $1 million ad buy in the race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate race, followed by $770,000 in spending on the rivalry between Democrat John Fetterman and Trump-endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
The latest spending also includes a $725,000 investment in the Arizona Senate race, $681,000 in the Georgia Senate race and $653,000 in the Nevada Senate race, according to Ad Impact.
With the new spending on Wednesday, the super PAC’s total ad spending through mid-October amounts to roughly $8.6 million, according to the ad data and past disclosure filings submitted to the Federal Election Commission.
In all, Make America Great Again Inc. has spent $2.4 million in the Ohio Senate race, $1.8 million in the Arizona Senate race, roughly $1.6 million each in the Georgia and Pennsylvania Senate races, and $1.3 million in the Nevada Senate race.
But the Trump super PAC’s spending so far remains a small drop in a bucket compared to the 2022 races’ massive ad placements made by the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund and the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC.
Make America Great Again Inc. has yet to disclose how much money it’s raised so it’s unclear how more it could end up spending over the final weeks of the campaign, but the launching of the new super PAC — which by law can make unlimited independent expenditures in support of candidates — now allows Trump and his team to make sizable investments to directly back GOP candidates he has touted.
In contrast, Trump’s existing leadership PAC, Save America, can donate to other PACs and super PACs — but can only make limited direct contributions to candidates. It’s made a series of $5,000 donations to candidates over the last two years — as well as giving upwards of $6 million to various super PACs and outside groups — but critics have pointed out that’s only a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars Save America’s joint fundraising operation has raised over that period.
Instead, much of Save America PAC’s money has gone to consulting and fundraising — as well as to covering legal fees associated with the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 and the fraud cases against Trump’s namesake company in New York.
And Save America’s fundraising has increased over the last few months, with the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee raising $24 million in the third quarter of this year, compared to $17 million in the second quarter, according to its latest FEC filing.
(LONDON) — U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation on Thursday.
Truss, who only became prime minister on Sept. 6, will be the shortest serving prime minister in modern political history.
“I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said.
Her resignation follows weeks of political and economic crisis, after the government introduced a new “mini-budget” which was roundly criticized.
The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, has called for a general election. The Conservative Party, then under the leadership of Boris Johnson, won a large majority in the last general election in 2019.
Whoever is chosen as Truss’ successor from the Conservative Party ranks will become the fifth prime minister since the U.K. voted to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum of 2016 in an unprecedented period of turbulence in British political history.
From outside the steps of Number 10 Downing Street, Truss said a leadership election would take place over the next seven days.
(NEW YORK) — Marcelo Candia spends all day teaching a classroom full of 4-year-old children in northern Virginia — then walks across the street to work in a grocery store bakery for four more hours.
It’s the reality faced by so many workers in the child care industry, where low pay and other factors have created a labor crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I love what I do,” Candia, a father who is also working toward an associate’s degree, told ABC News. “I come here with a lot of energy. I go out of the school when I’m finished my period here with a boost of energy.”
As the U.S. job market continues to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, the child care industry has lagged behind.
The sector has lost about 9.7% of its workforce compared to pre-pandemic levels, or about 102,400 employees between February 2020 and last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
‘This is unheard of’
Leslie Spina, who runs five early childhood education centers in Philadelphia, told ABC News she continues to face staffing shortages.”
“We’re about 22% short-staffed right now,” Spina, the executive director of Kinder Academy, said. “This is unheard of.”
At Candia’s center, ACCA Child Development Center in Annandale, Virginia, the shortage of workers has meant fewer kids can receive care.
“I have a couple of classrooms that are not staffed,” Isabel Ballivian, the executive director of ACCA Child Development Center, told ABC News. “Therefore, we don’t have children there.”
Low wages drive staffing shortage, experts say
The most significant factor driving the staffing crisis is low pay for child care workers, according to experts.
A child care worker in the United States made an average of just $13.31 per hour, or $27,680 per year, in 2021, according to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“It’s physically mentally, emotionally hard work, and it’s one of the lowest paid jobs in every single state in the country,” said Lea Austin, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Many day care teachers want to stay in the industry but cannot afford to provide for their own families, educators and center directors told ABC News.
“If I wanted to have kids, if I wanted to get married and kind of go to that next part of my life, it’s just not really possible,” Nicole Lazarte, who leads an infant classroom at ACCA Child Development Center, said. “I could do it, and I’ve seen people do it, but I see them struggle.”
Instead, educators often turn to higher-paying, less stressful jobs in retail and restaurants.
“We’re not paying what Target pays,” Spina said. “We’re not paying what Chick-fil-A pays — because we can’t afford to.”
Many teachers are also drawn to publicly funded K-12 schools, which typically offer better wages, vacation time and other benefits. Center directors say that can lead to a brain drain at day cares as more experienced workers leave.
Reliance on tuition from parents prevents wage increases
Unlike public K-12 schools, which are funded by taxpayer dollars, early childhood centers primarily rely on tuition charged to parents to fund their budgets.
They do also often receive some public assistance, but the amount they get varies widely across states and jurisdictions.
But it’s not nearly enough for so many centers, many of which closed during the pandemic as enrollment lagged.
“We are not going to solve this problem without public intervention and public funding,” Austin said. “It really is the equivalent of trying to fund a public school system through parent fees.”
Ballivian, who runs ACCA Child Development Center, said that raising tuition simply is not an option, with many working-class parents struggling to make ends meet themselves.
“The large majority of the children that we serve come from families that have low income and that are relatively new to the community,” Ballivian told ABC News. “It is imperative that these kids have access to quality care and education, because it’s the one thing that is changing the trajectories of their lives.”
Some daycare centers have fought to retain workers by increasing pay and benefits, but limited financial resources makes doing so difficult.
The center receives some funding from the county and state — and got federal dollars during the pandemic — but, Ballivian said, is still facing an approximately $200,000 deficit for the current fiscal year “because we decided to increase the salaries.”
“There are times when you wake up and think, is it worth it? Should I continue to do this?” she said. “But I know that I am making a difference in the lives of others.”
DC tries supplementing teachers’ incomes
Some jurisdictions, like Washington, D.C., have tried to channel more money to early childhood centers — and teachers.
The D.C. government, which provides various grants to centers themselves, also launched an innovative program this year that supplements educators’ salaries — with payments totaling up to $14,000 per year.
Payments to teachers are part of an array of funding the city spends on early child care, according to Sara Mead, the city’s deputy superintendent of early learning. Residents benefit from free, universal pre-kindergarten; centers receive grants to raise their quality of care; and low-income families receive subsidies to cover child care costs.
Latoria Meyers, who teaches infants and toddlers at Kidspace Child and Family Development Center in Washington, said the additional money from the city has helped her “tremendously.”
“I’m a single mom, so it helped me kind of get back on a financial balance, as far as, like, paying some things off, actually taking my son on a trip finally — his first plane ride,” Meyers told ABC News.
The center where she works provides free child care to families who have experienced homelessness, trauma and abuse. It relies largely on private donations, as well as funding from the city.
Sandra Jackson, the president and CEO of House of Ruth, the organization that runs the center, told ABC News that paying relatively more has helped retain quality workers.
“It’s a no brainer,” Jackson said. “The child care workers, teachers, anyone that comes in contact with children is just as important as our doctors, our lawyers, our Supreme Court justices.”
Parents feel squeeze
Amid the staffing shortages, parents have felt the squeeze as options for care become more limited.
Courtney Tay, a pre-kindergarten teacher in Springfield, Missouri, has spent months searching for a day care space for a daughter she is expecting in December.
“For most of the centers, they don’t have any availability until summer or fall of 2023,” she said. “I’m looking for care when she is three months old, and they’re not going to have any available until she’s about eight or nine months old.”
Tay plans to rely on her mother for help until then.
“I’ve been really surprised by how difficult it is to find a place for her,” Tay said.
Federal reform needed to end crisis, experts say
Experts say reform is needed at the federal level to transform the early childhood education system, attracting workers and making care affordable and accessible.
“The reality is state and local governments can’t do this on our own,” Mead, of the D.C. government, told ABC News. “There are fiscal constraints that we operate under that are different from those of the federal government and so to get really large infusions of funds, it will be necessary to tap the power of federal funds.”
President Joe Biden pushed Congress to approve major investments in child care, including funding for free, universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-old children nationwide.
But after Republicans in Congress blocked that plan, Biden faced additional resistance from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and dropped the investments from a later iteration of a domestic spending plan Congress did pass.
Without change, the industry will continue to face job shortages and high rates of staffing turnover, according to Austin, who has studied the U.S. early childhood care system’s workforce extensively.
“If we can’t figure out how to have reform of our early childhood education system that is driven by public dollars,” Austin said, “we’re not going to recover from this crisis.”
(NEW YORK) — As Princeton University intensifies its search for Misrach Ewunetie, the undergraduate student who’s been missing for almost a week, her brother says that time is “of the essence.”
“We can take any help we can find. And we just want the law to be faster because time is of the essence,” Universe Ewunetie said on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Thursday.
Misrach Ewunetie, 20, was last seen at about 3 a.m. on Friday, the school said. She was last seen near Scully Hall on the school’s New Jersey campus, according to an alert sent to the Princeton community on Monday.
Universe said his sister’s phone last pinged a location near an off-campus residence about a 30-minute walk from her dorm after 3 a.m. on Friday. His sister being at a location like that so late was out of character, Universe said.
“It’s pretty far away,” he said. “And Princeton is a big campus and it’s very insular. Right. So it’s very odd that her phone would be off campus like everything is on campus.”
The university sent an email to students on Wednesday, urging anyone with info to come forward. There’s an increased police presence on campus, the school said.
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pushing back on a claim made by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who said on his show this week that a CDC decision was likely coming to force kids to get COVID-19 vaccines in order to attend school.
But that’s not actually within the CDC’s authority, as the CDC pointed out in a rare tweet on Wednesday correcting Carlson, who has a history of criticizing COVID vaccine policy or sharing incorrect information about the shots.
His segment was also fact-checked by Twitter, which threw a disclaimer below the video.
Carlson claimed that at an upcoming meeting of the CDC’s advisory committee, the agency was “expected to” update the list of routine childhood immunizations and include the COVID-19 vaccine, which would soon mean that kids “will not be able to attend school without taking the COVID shot.”
But the CDC clarified that its meeting, scheduled for Thursday, is an annual gathering to adjust and update the slate of vaccines doctors should recommend to their patients, from adults down to children, and that the list of vaccines does not dictate what requirements schools put into place.
“Thursday, CDC’s independent advisory committee (ACIP) will vote on an updated childhood immunization schedule. States establish vaccine requirements for school children, not [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] or CDC,” the agency wrote in response to Carlson’s segment.
Ultimately, the decision of whether schools require the COVID vaccine cannot be decided at the federal level by the CDC. It’s made at the local level.
“State laws establish vaccination requirements for school children. These laws often apply not only to children attending public schools but also to those attending private schools and day care facilities,” the CDC writes on its website.
“All states provide medical exemptions, and some state laws also offer exemptions for religious and/or philosophical reasons,” the agency writes.
However, if the CDC does update its list of suggested vaccinations to include the COVID vaccine, which is available to anyone 6 months or older, that will open the door for states to begin making those calls, too.
And while there could be grace periods for when the vaccine requirements begin or an increase in exemptions, it’s likely that the COVID vaccine will be required in more schools during the upcoming 2023 school year.
A CDC advisory committee meeting on Wednesday separately decided to add the COVID vaccine to the Vaccines for Children program, a government-funded initiative that allows children to get a host of recommended inoculations for free if they aren’t insured or can’t afford to pay.
“Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all ages and populations remains critically important,” the CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver said at the meeting. “This includes now, while the vaccines are being supplied by the federal government, and in the future, when we one day move to a commercial program.”
Federal government officials have said that the current vaccine campaign, to get updated booster shots this fall and winter, could be the last vaccine campaign the government funds. The private insurance market is expected to take on more and more of the process beginning in 2023, much in the way patients go through their health care providers for other vaccines and treatments.
Adding the COVID vaccines to the Vaccines for Children program will “allow children that don’t have insurance to gain access to this vaccine” even after the vaccines are absorbed by the commercial market, said Dr. José Romero, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases within the CDC.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Wednesday a mandatory safety standard for testing and labeling clothing storage units in an effort to curb deaths and injuries caused by wobbly furniture tipping over.
The new standard is a significant upgrade to the existing policy and includes minimum stability requirements, a mandatory display of important safety information, as well as reporting on the performance and technical data on the product’s stability. The CPSC defines clothing storage units as products such as chests, bureaus, dressers, armoires, wardrobes, chests of drawers and door chests, among others.
“Each year, children are killed or injured in dresser tip-over incidents. The standard set today will ensure that dressers are safer and fewer children are at risk,” CPSC Chairman Alex Hoehn-Saric said in a statement. “I want to thank the members of Parents Against Tipovers and other consumer advocates who have spent years pushing the agency to set a strong standard that will protect children going forward.”
The federal standard is a win for parents and families of victims of furniture accidents, who have lobbied for enhanced safety guidelines for years. The STURDY ACT, or Stop Tip-Overs of Unstable Risky Dressers on Youth Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and referred to committee in the Senate in 2019 — though never brought up for a vote on the Senate floor — proposed that the CPSC issue a mandatory furniture safety standard, including mandating strong warning requirements and labels.
According to a CPSC news release on Wednesday, an average of 5,300 injuries result from dressers and clothing unit storages tipping over each year, and “young children are most at risk of injury or death from tip over incidents.”
Over the course of nearly two decades, from 2000-2018, the CPSC reported 556 tip-over-related fatalities. Of those reported deaths, 83% involved children from 1 month to 14 years old.
The CPSC also noted in its news release this week that it was “aware of 234 fatalities resulting from clothing storage unit tip overs from January 2000 through April 2022, including 199 child fatalities.”
In 2015, the CPSC launched “Anchor It!” a campaign that works to raise awareness of tip-over dangers.
“Every 24 minutes in the U.S. a child goes to the emergency room because of a tip-over incident involving furniture or a TV,” said CPSC Commissioners Marietta Robinson and Joseph Mohorovic in a statement announcing the campaign’s launch. “[Anchor It!] is a call to action for parents and caregivers to ‘get on top of it, before they do.’ If we can prevent one more death, it will be worth it.”
CPSC tips to remember:
Use sturdy furniture designed to hold TVs, such as television stands or media centers.
Mount flat-screen TVs to the wall or furniture to prevent them from falling over.
Secure TVs even if they are not wall-mounted with an anti-tip device.
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to secure TVs properly.
Secure top-heavy furniture with anti-tip devices, whether it’s old or new.
Remove items that might tempt kids to climb, such as toys and remote controls, from the top of TV and furniture.
(NEW YORK) — As rising gas prices strain the budgets of many Americans, President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday moves that aim to address the oil supply shortage behind the cost spike.
Most notably, the announcement includes the release of 15 million barrels of oil from the nation’s stockpile — known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — in December.
The release accounts for the final 15 million barrels of oil from the 180 million that Biden vowed to release over six months.
The move renews questions about why the U.S. stockpiles oil, how much oil the reserve has left and if more oil on the market can bring down gas prices.
Here’s everything you need to know about the SPR:
What is the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Established after the Arab Oil Embargo triggered an energy crisis in the early 1970s, the SPR provides an emergency source of oil that protects the U.S. against a sudden supply crunch.
The reserve, which can reach as many as 714 million barrels, is stored in large, high-security underground salt caverns along the gulf coastlines of Louisiana and Texas. As of Oct. 7, the reserve stood at 408 million barrels or 57% of overall capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The president retains wide discretion to release oil from the reserve in what he deems an emergency. In such cases, the U.S. sells the oil on the open market, which in theory should bring oil prices down by increasing supply.
How often has the U.S. released oil from the reserve?
Before the Biden administration, the U.S. released oil from the reserve under emergency conditions three times since it was founded in 1975.
Most recently, in 2011, then-President Barack Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels alongside additional commitments from allies amid supply disruptions in Libya and elsewhere.
The U.S. released oil reserves in 2005 following the devastation of oil refineries wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Plus, in 1991, the U.S. released oil from the reserve at the beginning of the Gulf War in an effort to assuage concern over oil supply shock from the onset of the conflict.
How much oil has Biden released from the reserve and why?
In March, the Biden administration announced a commitment to release about 1 million barrels per day from the reserve over the ensuing six months — a move that aimed to alleviate some of the oil supply shortage caused by the Russia-Ukraine war as well as supply chain bottlenecks.
The total release of oil from the Biden administration will reach 180 million barrels by December.
For context, the U.S. consumed about 20 million barrels per day last year, EIA data showed. In other words, the amount released by the Biden administration equates to roughly nine days worth of U.S. oil consumption.
Has oil released from the reserve brought down gas prices?
Analysts say recent releases from the oil reserve have reduced gas prices. But other factors have also contributed to the decline in gas prices from a peak in June, including a drop-off in demand after a summer travel surge.
A report from the Treasury Department in June found that releases from the strategic reserve had accounted for a reduction in gas prices of $0.33 per gallon.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimates an even larger impact on gas prices.
Releases from the strategic petroleum reserve have “reduced oil prices by an estimated close to $10 per barrel, which translates into a saving of about 40 cents per gallon,” Zandi told ABC News.
