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The higher education industry had a lot more going on outside the classrooms than inside. Here's a look at the biggest stories of 2024.
The past year in higher education in the Boston area had a lot less to do with classrooms and curricula, and a lot more to do with protests and new presidents.
It was a tumultuous year for many local campuses, including Harvard, MIT and Emerson College, where students protested the war between Israel and Hamas. Arrests made headlines. It was even rockier at Harvard, where Claudine Gay stepped down as president only days into the new year amid criticism of how the school responded to incidents of hate speech.
Some local campuses are ending the year with an entirely different challenge: urging international students to arrive back on campus before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20.
Here’s a look at this year’s top local college stories:
Campuses across the country were the site of protests over war in Gaza, evoking similar reactions as more they did than five decades ago, during the Vietnam War. High-profile local campuses including Harvard, MIT and Northeastern University were the site of encampments, as were smaller schools such as Emerson College. College administrations were forced to try finding a middle ground between allowing free speech while also taking a stand against some incidents of hateful conduct.
While MIT emerged largely unscathed — President Sally Kornbluth was the only one of the three college presidents in a December 2023 Congressional hearing to keep her job — Harvard’s reputation appeared to take a hit. Harvard’s student applications this fall dropped 5% from a year prior and 12% from 2022.
Gay, who had been Harvard’s president for only six months, resigned Jan. 2, about a month after the aforementioned Congressional hearing, in which critics said she and two other college presidents didn’t condemn antisemitic speech forcefully enough.
Gay has been replaced by Alan Garber, who had been Harvard’s provost. He was initially installed as an interim leader, but Harvard said this summer Garber will stay on through the 2026-’27 school year.
Brandeis University’s president, Ronald Liebowitz, abruptly resigned this fall two days after a no-confidence vote from the school’s faculty. Arthur Levine is his interim successor.
Other schools also have new leaders, including Boston University, where Melissa Gilliam’s time as president began this summer; Emmanuel College, where Beth Ross began her first full school year this fall; and Roxbury Community College, where Jonathan K. Jefferson takes over as the state’s smallest community college has reversed a long decline in student enrollment.
Roxbury Community College wasn’t the only two-year campus where enrollment was declining. Amid higher student costs and a tight job market, far fewer students were turning to schools for associate degrees.
But a new program is already showing early signs of changing that. A state initiative waives costs for anyone without a bachelor’s degree, and enrollment estimates for this fall projected a 14% rise in students attending.
Three Massachusetts professors shared Nobel prizes this fall: MIT professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, and UMass Chan Medical School professor Victor Ambros.
New Nobel laureates Acemoglu and Johnson shared an award with a University of Chicago professor for their research on systems of governance and economics. Ambros shared his award with Gary Ruvkun of Massachusetts General Hospital for their discovery of microRNA.
As some local campuses prepared for winter break, they left international students with a caution: they should arrive back on campus for the spring semester before Donald Trump is sworn in as president on Jan. 20.
Without mentioning Trump, Harvard urged students worried about potential new immigration policies to arrive back on campus earlier. Its undergraduate dorms reopen for the spring semester on Jan. 17.
UMass Amherst was even more direct. The campus’s Office of Global Affairs recommended that all international students and others under UMass immigration sponsorship “strongly consider” returning prior to the inauguration if they’re out of the country over the break. It was also allowing international undergraduates to return to campus housing early if needed.
UMass said it was making the recommendation out of an abundance of caution, with a new presidential administration able to enact new policies on a first day in office and based on travel bans put in place during Trump’s first term in office.
The risks for international students is likely to be only the first of a series of new challenges for colleges under Trump, who has also sharply criticized their liberal bent and multibillion-dollar endowments.
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