Good morning. It's Sunday.

• Sorry to wake you, but we're back with a special higher-ed-themed edition.

🎧 Sounds like: "Easy" by The Commodores.

Today’s newsletter is 985 words — a 3.5-minute read.

In Virginia, college students can earn credit studying Bigfoot, witchcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, hip-hop beats and the ethics of colonizing Mars.

Why it matters: College is about broadening your horizons. Sometimes, apparently, all the way to Mars.

State of play: With spooky season still lingering on the lawn, we went in search of some of the weird, witchy and wonderful classes available at Virginia's four-year universities.

What we found: Colleges in the Old Dominion are packed with magnificently specific courses that prove there's academic credit for just about every curiosity.

Zoom in: Here are a few of our faves:

👽 Radford: Bigfoot Stole My UFO!: Critically Engaging with Science, Pseudoscience, and the Paranormal — three credits on Bigfoot, UFOs, Chupacabra, psychic powers, ancient aliens and how to evaluate paranormal claims scientifically.

🧙 University of Richmond: Occult America and Witchcraft and Its Interpreters — two religious studies courses exploring witchcraft, hauntings, spirit possession, magic and the Salem witch trials.

🧛 University of Richmond: Vampires in Literature and Film — the lit course you didn't know you needed explores vampires from the 16th century through modern TV and film.

Zoom out: Not every wonderfully weird course involves the paranormal or occult.

🐉 UVA: The Ethics of Dungeons & Dragons — a fall 2026 course using D&D to examine race, power, colonialism and ethics.

🚀 UVA: Decolonize Mars — an ethics course built around colonization and space exploration, focused on Mars as humanity's "natural next step," per the course description.

🐝 Virginia Tech: Bees and Beekeeping, plus a separate lab, introduces students to honey bee biology — complete with actual beekeeping.

🎧 VCU: Code Beats With Python — a one-credit course that teaches Python by having students create hip-hop beats.

🛶 VCU: Footprints on the James — students paddle, camp and study their way down the James River watershed for six credits in this summertime course.

The bottom line: You can go to college in Virginia to study accounting, engineering or biology.

• Or you can go looking for Bigfoot.

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America's future college pipeline is growing in the South, but Virginia is bucking the trend.

Why it matters: Colleges in shrinking markets will face a fierce fight for students, while those in growing regions will have to adapt to serve an expanding, more diverse student body.

• The nation's student pipeline is also becoming less white, more Latino, more first-generation and more cost-conscious.

By the numbers: The number of U.S. high school graduates is projected to peak in 2025 and then fall 13% by 2041, per the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).

• The decline is especially steep in major college markets: California is projected to lose 29% of its high school graduates, New York 27% and Pennsylvania 17%.
• The South is projected to grow 3%.

Zoom in: Virginia, however, is projected to lose 6% of its high school graduates over that same period.

• In its most recent enrollment projections, state higher-ed officials noted that Virginia's high school graduate count is projected to decline through 2033, tick back up in 2034, then continue falling.

What we're watching: Colleges in declining markets may cut jobs, humanities programs and low-enrollment majors to stay afloat.

Tell a senior

JMU recently made a bold promise to its students: if they haven't landed a job or meaningful next career move within a year of graduation, the university will keep helping them — for free.

Why it matters: JMU is joining a small but growing group of colleges willing to put a guarantee behind graduates' career outcomes at a time when confidence in higher education is slipping.

State of play: Last month, the Harrisonburg university announced its new Employment Guarantee — the school's promise to continue to support its bachelor's degree graduates who haven't reached what the university calls a "positive career outcome" within 12 months.

• That means a job, graduate or professional school, military service or a service or volunteer year.
• Dukes who haven't reached one of those milestones can get continued career coaching, resume and interview help, employer connections, work-based learning and additional undergraduate coursework, as space allows.
• It starts with the Class of 2027 and it's available at no additional cost for students.

The intrigue: JMU's guarantee goes beyond students. The school is also promising employers who hire its grads that it will provide additional training if a company identifies gaps in a former student's workplace skills.

• That promise lasts for up to three years after graduation — and comes at no cost to the employer.

The bottom line: JMU isn't guaranteeing every grad a job or every employer a perfect worker. It's putting some institutional skin in the game by promising its responsibility to students doesn't end when they get a diploma.

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The boost college graduates get in pay over those who don't go to college is massive — but it's been declining a bit in recent years.

Why it matters: College is a big financial investment, and a lot of graduates are banking on it paying off.

By the numbers: Last year, the average college graduate earned 55.2% more than the typical high school grad, per Labor Department data analyzed by the progressive Economic Policy Institute.

• That's down from a peak of more than 60% a decade ago.

Zoom in: The payoff is striking in metro Richmond, where bachelor's degree-holders earn nearly twice as much as high school grads— around $69,000 a year vs. $40,000, according to 2024 Census data previously analyzed by Axios.

The bottom line: The college pay premium may be shrinking nationally, but in Richmond, a degree still comes with a pretty hefty paycheck boost.

Tell someone trying to decide about college

🤓 Karri is considering going back to school just to study Bigfoot.

Thanks to Alexa Mencia Orozco for editing today's edition