Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday, December 2. Rick Seltzer and Beckie Supiano wrote today’s Briefing. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

📝 What’s in today’s Briefing? Was student penalized for writing about her religious beliefs? Auditor criticizes Eastern Gateway’s practices. More high-profile immigration actions. But first, new polling shows a stunning answer to a key question …

Is a college degree worth it?

Alarm bells for higher ed: A wide majority of Americans now think paying for a four-year degree isn’t worthwhile, found a new NBC News poll:

• Just a third said college is worth the cost, and 63 percent said it isn’t.
• That’s a 20-point erosion from 2013, when 53 percent of respondents said a degree was worth the cost and only 40 percent said it wasn’t.
• Declines cut across politics. Republicans cooled most: 55 percent said degrees were worth the cost in 2013, versus only 22 percent today. But the share of Democrats who said the same also fell sharply in that time, from 61 percent to 47 percent.

More alarm bells: Even those who earned degrees aren’t happy with the cost, according to a separate poll released by Politico:

• Only 39 percent of college graduates said it’s worth the money. An equal 39 percent said it costs too much.
• Nongraduates were more likely to pan college costs. Just 18 percent of nongraduates saw college as worth the money, compared to 46 percent who said it cost too much.

But wait, college offers a return on investment, as higher ed’s leaders love to argue. Earnings tend to rise and unemployment rates tend to fall with each increasing level of education — concerns about an artificial-intelligence revolution and the current weak job market notwithstanding.

And the prices most students actually pay haven’t spiked. After accounting for inflation and financial aid, net tuition and fees were flat or declining across the sector for years, at least before an uptick this fall, according to the College Board.

It’s the cost, stupid. That’s the overwhelming message from both surveys. Flat tuition and payoff down the line don’t equal affordability today. Respondents in the Politico poll were much more likely to say college costs too much than they were to say it doesn’t provide enough benefits.

The bigger picture: The new findings might seem to clash with polling that found public confidence in higher ed increasing earlier this year. But they fit into a picture of a public that’s broadly unhappy with the cost of living, and that wants college to be faster and cheaper. The Trump administration’s efforts to reshape higher ed polled poorly save for one … a tuition freeze.

Quick hits

• Texas Tech restricts race and gender instruction: Brandon Creighton, the system’s new chancellor, in a Monday memo prohibited content that says one race or sex is “inherently superior to another” and barred professors from pressuring students to affirm “race or sex-based prejudice.” Faculty members will also need to submit for review any content related to sexual orientation, gender identity, or race. The directive comes after the system earlier this fall tried to stop professors from teaching that there are more than two genders, and after its sister Texas A&M University system approved similar rules last month.
• University of Oklahoma student claims grade violates free speech: A graduate-student instructor has been placed on leave amid an investigation after a conservative student complained a psychology paper she wrote on gender was inappropriately graded as a zero because she invoked her religious beliefs. The case has sparked significant debate in the latest example of scrutiny over how gender issues are taught in public-college classrooms.
• AAUP launches PAC: Starting the political action committee is the faculty group’s latest effort to push back on the Trump administration’s efforts to remake higher education.
• Center for American Progress calls for depoliticizing boards: Arguing that colleges’ independence is threatened “when governors and state legislators prioritize wealth, political connections, and ideology,” the liberal think tank recommended that states use independent bodies to oversee board appointments and that boards only have limited authority over matters of teaching and research.
• Ohio State poised to end eight majors: A board committee approved plans to phase out 366 courses in order to comply with Senate Bill 1, which requires universities to cancel courses with fewer than 15 students and deactivate programs that graduate fewer than five students per year. The full board is expected to sign off on the changes when it meets this week.
• Clergy-abuse investigation stalled at Seton Hall: Joseph Nyre, the university’s former president, was blocked for a second time from answering questions in an investigation of how the current president, Msgr. Joseph Reilly, responded to abuse allegations when he was a seminary leader. Reilly was not accused of abuse himself.

Quote of the day

“This goes beyond sloppiness and honest mistakes.”

— Ohio state auditor Keith Faber, describing $17 million in questionable spending at now-closed Eastern Gateway Community College. That sum is the entirety of the college’s federal financial-aid allocation.

Recent immigration actions

• ICE detains Ferris State faculty member: The Trump administration described Sumith Gunasekera, who is originally from Sri Lanka and had been working at American campuses since 2009, as an undocumented immigrant. The professor was taken into custody on November 12, but the Department of Homeland Security announced it nearly two weeks later, describing legal issues, including criminal charges in Canada in 1998 it says “made him ineligible for legal status in the United States.” Ferris State said it only recently learned of the allegations and placed Gunasekera on leave.
• Babson College student deported: Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a first-year student traveling from Massachusetts to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, was arrested by federal immigration officials before boarding her flight. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Lopez Belloza to Honduras approximately 48 hours after her arrest, despite a stay issued by a federal judge. Her family left Honduras seeking asylum when she was seven.

The background: The cases above are the second and third high-profile immigration incidents in a week after the Trump administration detained a University of Oklahoma professor from Iran who was flying across the country to an academic conference. That professor, Vahid Abedini, was released after three days.

Footnote

The term “rage bait” was first detected online in a 2002 Usenet posting about impatience on the road. It referenced those obnoxious drivers who flash their lights in a request to pass — agitating on purpose to get something they want.

Twenty-three years later, rage bait has been applied to a very different kind of traffic: online clicks and engagement. It’s become shorthand for content that hooks your attention by being deliberately divisive, frustrating, or offensive.

Rage bait was just named the Oxford Word of the Year, a designation that does not, in fact, have to be a single word. Lexicographers select a phrase that represents a “single unit of meaning” and reflects our “conversations and preoccupations over the past year.” Use of rage bait has tripled in the last 12 months as we increasingly talk about the fraught practices of the online attention economy, according to Oxford University Press.

The term makes a fitting follow-up to the press’s 2024 selection, “brain rot.” The latter describes the intellectual condition caused by consuming too much trivial material, especially online.

🗣️ Submit your runner-up for word of the year. Rage bait beat out “aura farming” and “biohack” in Oxford University Press’s competition. Now tell us what word or phrase you think reflects the last year in higher ed. Include a brief explanation of why, plus your name and title, and we’ll consider it for a future Footnote. Email dailybriefing@chronicle.com. But please, no rage bait.