Higher Ed Journalism Is a Dumpster Fire

Journalists love to spin high ed news into bad news. Because of this, higher ed reporting is rarely straightforward and balanced. Instead, it’s often written in a way that’s misleading, or it’s artfully (and intentionally) framed to be (BOO!) scary.

You’d think The Hechinger Report[1] — which “uses research, data and stories from classrooms and campuses to show the public how education can be improved and why it matters” — would be above this. The way I see it, they’re not. Recently, The Hechinger Report published this “story”:

Tracking College closures: More colleges are shutting down as enrollment drops

The title screams double doom for higher education:

1. “more colleges are shutting down”
2. “as enrollment drops.”

But how true is this?

NOT the Whole Story (Just the Bad Story)

You can pretty much get to the truth (or what’s missing from the truth) by looking at the article’s first three paragraphs:

Paragraph #1

College enrollment has been declining for more than a decade,[2] and that means that many institutions are struggling to pay their bills. A growing number of them are making the difficult decision to close.