In Brief: More Small Colleges Expected to Close; Young Donors Have Different View of Philanthropy

Under financial pressure, at least 20 U.S. colleges closed in 2024, with more expected to shut down after the current academic year, CNBC reports. More than 40 colleges have closed since 2020, according to Best Colleges, an education adviser.

As the cost of higher education soars, some students are opting for less expensive public schools or trade programs and apprenticeships. Meanwhile, the country’s most elite universities are thriving. 

Tuition, room and board and related fees for four-year private colleges averaged $56,190 in the 2023-24 school year. At four-year, in-state public colleges, the annual cost was $24,030, according to the College Board, which tracks college prices.

Children from families in the top 1% of net worth are more than twice as likely to attend Ivy League schools as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT or ACT scores, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Private colleges that are less prestigious but equally expensive are struggling to attract applicants.

Young Donors Have Different View of Philanthropy, Survey Finds

A Bank of America survey finds that wealthy millennials and members of Generation Z who give to charity see themselves more as activists than donors. Young donors also expect to receive public attention for their giving.

According to NBC News, wealthy donors under the age of 43 are more likely to volunteer, fundraise and act as mentors for charitable causes than to just give money. Those 44 and older are more than twice as likely to feel obligated to give, while donors under 43 are more likely to say their social circles motivate their philanthropy. 

Young donors are twice as likely to support charities related to homelessness, social justice, climate change and the advancement of women and girls. Those over 44 are far more likely to support religious organizations, the arts and military charities, the research found.

Older donors often give anonymously. Younger donors are far more likely to measure their philanthropic success by how much public recognition they receive.

New Index Will Use AI to Monitor, Score, Diversity in Ads

A new initiative called the Representation Index will use artificial intelligence to monitor and score brands for the diversity in their advertising. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the index is being introduced by Female Quotient, a group that promotes gender equality, and XR Extreme Reach, a technology platform for marketers. 

Its creators say the index will use AI to analyze the people who appear in ads, based on their age, body type, skin tone, gender expression and accessibility. The index will then assign a score between zero and 100, with higher scores deemed more inclusive.

Said Jo Kinsella, XR Extreme Reach’s president and chief operating officer, with AI “you can auto-generate an ad [and] say, ‘Make this man a woman with this skin tone and this body type.’” 

The index arrives after Molson Coors and Harley-Davidson recently announced they would stop providing data to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ-advocacy group that scores companies based on their workplace policies. 

On TikTok, U.S. Adults Want Entertainment, Not Politics, Research Finds

Pew Research Center finds that American adults who use TikTok follow far more accounts on the video-based social media app that post content about pop culture and entertainment than accounts that post news or political content. 

TikTok accounts that offer pop culture and entertainment content represent about half of all accounts that U.S. adults follow on the platform. American adults who use TikTok follow very few politicians or traditional media outlets on the app.

Earlier this year, another Pew survey found that 95% of U.S. adults on TikTok said they use the social media app because its content is entertaining. Some 41% said they use TikTok to find news, while 36% use the app to stay current with politics. Common topics that TikTok users look for include humor, personal vlogs, viral music and dance clips.

Even TikTok accounts that discuss news and politics tend to mix those topics with lighter fare such as humor and entertainment, Pew found.

Polls Reveal Most Irritating Corporate Buzz Phrases

Corporate meetings and emails are clogged with buzz phrases that most people would never use outside of work, from “do a deep dive” to “flesh it out.” Glassdoor surveyed its users to discover the corporate jargon they find most annoying. 

Topping Glassdoor’s list of worst workplace phrases is “We’re building the plane as we fly it,” followed by “Let’s double click on that,” and “Let me circle back with you.” 

Other eye-rolling corporate patois that Glassdoor’s respondents mention include the phrases “Loop me in on that,” “I don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” “That won’t move the needle,” “Can we take this offline?” and “Can we put a pin in this?”

When asked to identify characteristics of cringe-worthy corporate jargon, one Glassdoor user said “anything incorporating an acronym.” Another suggested striking the word “bandwidth” from the workplace, joking “Why would you have bandwidth? Are you a person or a network?” 

One commenter was “just on a meeting and someone said, ‘Let’s double click on that.’ I thought they wanted to double click on a link and was confused because there wasn’t one.” He then saw the Glassdoor poll and found the phrase listed among the cringiest.

People might think corporate buzz phrases sound clever or signal membership in the group, but many professionals use vague, verbose metaphors to convey what should be simple meanings, when they could just get to the point, the polls found. 

Are New Leaders Prepared for Workplace Conflicts?

Nearly half (49%) of manager candidates lack skills to manage workplace conflicts, and only 12% are proficient at handling conflicts, says a September report from DDI, a leadership-development company. Just 30% of manager candidates are confident in their ability to manage conflicts at work.

“With rising political tensions and growing employee distrust of leaders, workplaces are becoming more polarized,” said Stephanie Neal, director of DDI’s Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research. Conflict can ripple “throughout organizations, stifling productivity, creativity and morale — and ultimately driving higher turnover.” 

Lack of understanding causes conflict, so new leaders must learn to communicate well. But many are not prepared to discuss conflicts within or between the teams they lead, which causes further misunderstandings.

Training helps leaders learn to ask open-ended questions and to involve employees when resolving workplace conflicts, the report says.