This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for Sep 15, 2025

'Wicked' college experience at Ann Arbor MI football game shows what the value of college could be.  

One of the ways I unwind during the last part of each day is to watch YouTube videos.  I like to watch talented entertainers and comedy clips from TV shows. 

One of them that came across my feed over the weekend was the UMich Band and Students recently performing a medley of songs from the musical Wicked.  It was just stunningly good.

I bring this up as an opportunity to again say that college is good.  Go if you can. Not all colleges are going to get you where you want to be.

Watching those students in the band and the few dozen student singers was just plain mesmerizing.  

These students exemplified an important part of the college experience.  It was a quality experience at a Power 4 Big Boy college.  While I mostly talk about colleges with troubled colleges and poor outcomes (graduation rates), the college experience for millions of students is positive and will continue.

It is those colleges, public and private, that clearly don’t have the financial resources to provide a comprehensive, quality college experience that need to be called out.  Those are the ones that I point out – and will continue to do so.

Here are the news stories and commentary for this week.

+ Fall 2025’s Unexpected Enrollment Successes

+ Colleges as commodities from the Education Alliance Groun and Dr. Chet Haskell

+ My first-ever public college ‘not worthy of consideration’ call for WIU

+ Wrap with Selling Dreams, Not Reality

+ and a couple of individual college stories as well.