Category: Higher Education/System

Vice President Joe Biden pledged Friday to close gaps between family incomes and college costs to make higher education a reality for more young people.
Biden told a town hall-style meeting in St. Louis that he’ll the Treasury Department to look into how to make family college-savings plans more effective and reliable. Many families save for college in tax-deferred plans known as 529s, and Biden said the government will consider options such as low-interest loans against those plans to help families pay for school.

Faced with one of the most challenging fund-raising environments anyone can remember, colleges and universities are appealing to donors to help meet the swelling demand for financial aid.

Using such demand â??as a fund-raising tool totally makes sense in this environment,â? said Richard J. Krasney, a wealth manager and philanthropy adviser. â??More than ever, people want to know that their money is being used to address current needs.â?

The private student lending industry and its allies in Congress are maneuvering to thwart a plan by President Obama to end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students.

According to a national study released Monday, full professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison earn significantly less than the national average for those who work at doctoral universities. That finding will surprise virtually no one in town, as leaders of the state’s flagship university have long argued that low pay has led to a brain drain of top faculty members bolting the institution for higher-paying jobs elsewhere. However, it may surprise some to learn that assistant professors at UW-Madison earn more than the national average.

Salaries for full professors at public and private universities in Wisconsin are below national averages, according to a new national report being released Monday.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked No. 6 in a new study that examines how often a college or university’s name appears in a wide range of media.

In the first American effort of its kind, universities and colleges in Indiana, Minnesota and Utah are starting pilot projects to make sure that degree programs in their states reflect a consensus about what specific knowledge and skills should be taught

As church bells pealed, Claire Gillen, a Notre Dame freshman, stood on the stone steps of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, accusing this fabled Roman Catholic institution of sin and sacrilege.

â??Itâ??s a scandal,â? said Ms. Gillen, voicing outrage over the universityâ??s invitation to President Obama, a supporter of abortion rights, to deliver the commencement address here on May 17.

The first time Kathy Peterson saw the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the six-page form that the government uses to assess student need, she felt overwhelmed.

“I just kept going from one screen to the next, wondering, ‘When is this going to end?'” said Ms. Peterson, an office manager for a telecommunications trade association, whose son will attend Old Dominion University in the fall.

In the bid for a fat envelope this year, it may help, more than usual, to have a fat wallet.

Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year.

As a resident assistant at Seton Hall University, Mark Cantine has brokered peace between warring roommates, called for medical transport after a student became dangerously drunk, nudged one freshman who was sleeping all day into counseling and rescued another who had locked himself in his bathroom â?? twice.

True, it’s not a great time financially to be going or sending a kid to college. But from the success of a bailout to the federal student loan system, to the tuition “deals” some colleges are offering, there’s more good news out there on college costs and financial aid than some families recognize.

For the first time since the dot-com bust, there is a jump in the number of undergraduate computer-science majors. New enrollment in North American computer science and engineering programs rose 8% during the 2007-08 school year from the year before, according to a report released Tuesday by the Computing Research Association, a trade group for about 200 university computing departments. It is the first increase since 2002.

Most workers who have a degree from a community college can earn more than a person who had no formal training after high school. And even if they never complete a two-year degree, students who attend some community college can get higher-paying jobs.

But what if that student goes on to earn a bachelor’s? A study being released today shows that people with a bachelor’s degree who transferred from a community college earn less than those who start at a four-year school.

When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it â??The New American University,â? with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state.

He quickly made a name for himself, increasing enrollment by nearly a third to 67,000 students, luring big-name professors and starting interdisciplinary schools in areas like sustainability, projects with partners like the Mayo Clinic and Sichuan University in China, and dozens of new degree programs

Times are tough, very tough. The great majority of colleges are looking at 2009 and 2010 and beyond, in anticipation of the deepest budget cuts in more than a generation. But as bad as the financial situation may be, colleges can survive if they take swift and strong emergency action.

It is time for some straight talk, starting with the realization that organizations that can’t or won’t adapt will fail. This recession has caused many of the nation’s largest retailers, banks, airlines, manufacturers, and brokerage houses to do so. Millions of Americans have lost jobs and homes. Why would we think colleges, and those employed by them, would be exempt from the same fate? The market sorts itself out at times like these. Industries realign.

Blog posting from higher education reporter for USA Today.

Yesterday I posted an item about research showing that a review of 30,000 photos in college recruitment brochures for nearly 400 colleges found that black students were overrepresented compared with their actual population on campus. Hispanics and Latinos were underrepresented.

Those brochures are aimed at prospective students. Today, I look at a couple of studies related to college admissions. Specifically, they deal with something called stereotype threat — the fear that your behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which you identify. Read carefully: It’s a long post on a complex and touchy subject. I look forward to hearing your response from the question I pose below.

Blog posting from the higher education reporter for USA Today. Note: Cover of our viewbook was posted.

Hi everybody! Over the next few days, I plan to post some items related to campus diversity, a hot-button issue in some circles. The first one, below, focuses on recruitment.

Remember several years ago when officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (right) and the University of Idaho confessed to having photo-shopped minority students into photographs used in campus publications?

Mike Westfall calls it the second wave of bad financial news on campus. First came a dramatic drop in university endowments. Now students and their parents are learning those same endowments are short of money for next year’s college scholarships.

It’s a national issue, but small regional universities with less than epic endowments are feeling the pain most sharply, said Westfall, vice president for university advancement at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, near Spokane.

Expanding the Perkins Loan program, as President Obama has proposed, will help millions of middle-class families afford college, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on Wednesday at the Association for Career and Technical Educationâ??s annual conference.

The extra aid, Mr. Duncan said, would provide “an unprecedented chance for families to go on to college … at a time when going to college has never been more important, more critical.”

As colleges weigh this yearâ??s round of applications, high school seniors are not the only anxious ones.
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Just as nervously, colleges â?? facing a financial landscape they have never seen before â?? are trying to figure out how many students to accept, and how many students will accept them.

When times were better, Susan and David Bersie considered sending their only son to an East Coast college where he could enjoy a traditional four-year education and broaden his life experiencesâ??an opportunity that his mom says she missed out on.

But as Jake Bersie, 18, nears the end of senior year at Carmel Catholic High School in Mundelein, the family faces an entirely different scenario. David was laid off from his marketing sales job in November. Susan is struggling to keep her small medical supplies business afloat.

Admissions officers at the State University of New York college campus here are suddenly afraid of getting what they have always wished for: legions of top high-school seniors saying â??yesâ? to their fat envelopes.

Students are already tripled up in many dorm rooms after an unexpectedly large freshman class entered last fall. And despite looming budget cuts from the state, which more tuition-paying students could help offset, officials say they are determined not to diminish the quality of student life by expanding enrollment at their liberal-arts college beyond the current 6,000 undergraduates.

Here’s what’s perhaps most unusual about President Obama’s big budget proposals for higher education: That he’s thinking about higher education at all.

Delineated in a handful of brash proposals Thursday, Obama’s plan to make college more affordable and within reach of more students represents a break from the approach that President Bush took â?? he focused much of his energy from Day 1 on improving K-12 education, most notably with his signature No Child Left Behind law.

To the dismay of lenders and the delight of students, President Obama on Thursday unveiled a budget blueprint that would abolish the bank-based student-loan program and use the savings to raise the maximum Pell Grant and make it an entitlement.

The preliminary budget for the 2010 fiscal year, which administration officials say they will flesh out in April, would also provide a $5-billion increase for Perkins Loans, making an estimated 2.7 million more students eligible for the aid and reducing borrowers’ reliance on private loans.

One idea that elite universities like Yale, sprawling public systems like Wisconsin and smaller private colleges like Lewis and Clark have shared for generations is that a traditional liberal arts education is, by definition, not intended to prepare students for a specific vocation. Rather, the critical thinking, civic and historical knowledge and ethical reasoning that the humanities develop have a different purpose: They are prerequisites for personal growth and participation in a free democracy, regardless of career choice.

Before President Obamaâ??s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, the White House compared the purpose of the event to Franklin D. Rooseveltâ??s fireside chats during the Great Depression. But for higher education, Mr. Obama was more like John F. Kennedy when he issued the challenge in 1961 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

This presidentâ??s goal was equally daunting: for the nation to have the worldâ??s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. â??That is a goal we can meet,â? he said to applause in the chamber.

The federal government has quietly increased its support of the student loan market to such a degree that the real question may be whether there is a role left for private lenders at all.

The Education Department agreed in the waning days of the Bush administration to expand its commitment to buy student loans to keep the market working, much as the government has agreed to buy up all manner of loans, from mortgages to commercial paper, to unfreeze various credit markets.

Not much else seems to be helping keep down college costs, so maybe this will: a three-year college degree. It’s an idea that’s never really caught on, at least in the United States, but it may be gaining traction with the economy in deep recession.

The nation’s colleges and universities set another fundraising record last year, but nobody expects a repeat in 2009, a survey says.
Charitable contributions grew 6.2%, to $31.6 billion, based on a survey of 1,052 colleges by the Council for Aid to Education, a New York-based non-profit that tracks private giving to colleges and universities.

Kevin J. Renken learned the limits of his academic freedom the hard way.

As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mr. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him and several colleagues. When the university subsequently reduced his pay and returned the grant, he sued, alleging illegal retaliation.

The University of Michigan announced on Monday that it was ending its apparel licensing agreement with the Russell Corporation, becoming the 12th university to do so in response to the companyâ??s decision to close a unionized factory in Honduras.

University of Michigan officials said an agreement under which Russell made T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces with university logos would end as of March 31 because Russell had violated the universityâ??s code of conduct calling on licensees to guarantee the basic rights of workers.

Nearly 40,000 college students would get enough financial aid to offset tuition increases during the next two years under Gov. Doyles budget proposal. Doyle has promised that University of Wisconsin System tuition increases will be moderate, and in line with recent hikes of 5.5% the past two years. Students from families with an income of $60,000 or less would be protected from the increases.

Presidents of a number of colleges vowed in November to take a pay cut or otherwise give back part of their earnings as a way to help buffer their schools against the struggling economy. Now, an analysis of tax filings of more than 4,000 other employees at 600 private colleges shows that presidents’ earnings are relatively modest.

For example, the head football coach at the University of Southern California and a Columbia University dermatologist each earned more than $4 million in 2007, making them the highest paid employees at private colleges.

Two more universities have joined the growing list of institutions that have cut ties with apparel maker Russell Athletic over the companyâ??s alleged mistreatment of unionized workers at one of its plants in Honduras.

On Friday, Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University announced that they have terminated their licensing agreements with the Russell Corporation and will not renew the contracts when they expire, in both cases, at the end of March.

Congress and other watchdogs have grilled colleges in recent years for what some regard as the excessive pay of their chief executives. But presidents and chancellors are a minority of the highest-compensated college employees, a Chronicle analysis has found.

Recently, the Star Tribune reported good news for Carleton College when StateUniversity.com “quietly slipped” the Northfield school in at No. 15 in its ranking of the best 2,000 universities in the country. What was not reported was the bad, even ominous, news that the University of Minnesota ranked 199th in the same survey — a ranking that places the university 10th out of the 11 schools in the Big Ten (add Penn State). This is very sobering news considering that on the same day a report from the Federal Reserve indicated that Minnesota has the highest unemployment rate in the upper Midwest, trailing only Michigan.