Category: Higher Education/System

Eager to encourage public service and give debt-burdened graduates more options, several colleges and universities are trying new initiatives.

This fall, for instance, eight 2008 Princeton University graduates are the first group to begin two-year, federal jobs as a pre-condition for pursuing a free Princeton master’s degree. Harvard Law School said earlier this year it will, starting in 2010, waive one year’s $41,500 tuition for third-year students who commit to work five years in government or non-profit fields. Tufts became the nation’s first university this year to offer loan repayment assistance to all its graduates, not just those from a particular professional school.

Colleges may soon be running ads something like that for chief privacy officers, a title so new in higher education that one campus public-relations official, when asked if his institution had a CPO, replied, “What in the blue blazes is that?”

More U.S. students are studying abroad than ever before, and they’re choosing an increasingly diverse array of destinations, a new report says. A record 241,791 U.S. students went abroad for academic credit in 2006-07, up 8% from the previous year, and nearly 150% more than a decade earlier.

The number of foreign students enrolled in U.S. colleges surged 7% last year to 623,805, an all-time high and the largest one-year increase on record. It is the strongest sign yet that post-9/11 declines are history. Enrollments of foreign undergraduate and graduate students just starting to pursue their degree are rising even faster â?? 10.1% last year â?? suggesting growth will continue, the report says.

In light of the ongoing economic downturn, college foundation directors are preparing to work harder to provide the scholarships that deserving students are going to need more than ever.

Each year, foundation staff members and volunteers raise money for students, faculty and campus projects. The foundation directors early next year will finalize how much money they have available to award to students for the 2009-10 academic year.

The number of international students enrolled in American colleges in the fall of 2007 shattered previous records and represents the largest one-year increase in decades, according to new data from the Institute of International Education.

Educators and government officials say the bounce indicates that hostile student-visa policies, weak recruiting efforts by colleges, and insufficient government support are things of the past. A weak dollar, the growing number of internationally mobile students, the lack of higher-education capacity in key source countries like China, and a rising middle class in those same countries have also helped fuel the growth.

The price of leadership continues to rise in higher education, particularly for public-university presidents. According to The Chronicle’s latest survey of executive compensation, median pay and benefits rose 7.6 percent in 2007-8, to $427,400, for the leaders of 184 public research universities.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i13/13b00301.htm
The price of leadership continues to rise in higher education, particularly for public-university presidents. According to The Chronicle’s latest survey of executive compensation, median pay and benefits rose 7.6 percent in 2007-8, to $427,400, for the leaders of 184 public research universities.

Many of the nation’s wealthiest private institutions also had big pay increases at the top. And some community-college leaders, who earn far less than their four-year peers, made big strides in the past year.

Record numbers of American students are studying abroad, with especially strong growth in educational exchanges with China, the annual report by the Institute on International Education found.

More foreign students came to the United States in the 2007-8 academic year than ever before. But while there were some gains in the core undergraduate and graduate populations, particularly at the graduate level, the record result was driven largely by dramatic increases in the numbers of international students employed off-campus through optional practical training (OPT) and those enrolled in non-degree and intensive English programs. Meanwhile, the number of Americans studying abroad continues steadily growing, according to the latest installment of Open Doors, an annual survey conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

David J. Sargent, the 77-year-old president of Suffolk University in Boston, received a $2.8 million pay package in 2006-7 â?? including a $436,000 longevity bonus and more than $1 million in deferred compensation â?? after the board of trustees, eager to delay his retirement, decided he had long been underpaid.

One of four methods Virginia Tech uses to alert students and faculty in an emergency failed Thursday when school administrators attempted to warn the campus about reports of gunfire in a dorm, the university said.

For the second time this year, a professor at the University of Iowa has taken his own life after being accused of sexual harassment.

For the university, which also has faced a scandal involving alleged sexual assault by athletes and a devastating flood this year, the latest incident added to an unsettling semester.

For years, as the stock market roared, educational endowments swelled, helping private secondary schools and colleges provide more financial aid, expand and attract better faculty. But with the financial markets in crisis, those days are over.

To be persuasive on college costs, universities must be more open about their budgets, a panel of college leaders said here today at the annual meeting of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.

But budget transparency will be a challenge, they said, as universities have long sought to keep some of their costs away from the prying eyes of lawmakers and competitors in higher education.

A major barrier to encouraging interdisciplinary work is the widespread perception that it is not rewarded in the departmental-based promotion and tenure process. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, several committees have said that interdisciplinary faculty members have a tougher time earning tenure, but institutional data suggest that professors involved in interdisciplinary activities get tenure at or slightly above the rate for the rest of the faculty, says Peyton Smith, assistant vice chancellor for extended programs.

CHICAGO (AP) â?? Rafi Zelikowsky skipped class on Tuesday to camp out in downtown Chicago and wait for Barack Obama, the man who captured the hearts of so many young voters.

“We’re feeding off the energy,” said Zelikowsky, a 19-year-old Northwestern University student from Los Angeles who arrived at 7:30 a.m. EST to stand in a long line outside the park where supporters awaited Obama’s victory address more than 15 hours later. Zelikowsky, who voted for Obama by absentee ballot in California, also spent her previous weekend canvassing for the Illinois senator in rural Iowa.

Barack Obama, who won the overwhelming support of college students, faculty members, and higher-education officials during his campaign, will be the next president of the United States. His election on Tuesday breaks a racial barrier, making the U.S. senator from Illinois the first black man to ascend to the nationâ??s top job.

Mr. Obama, who taught constitutional law as a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, campaigned on a platform that called for increased aid to students, a doubling of federal funds for basic research, and government grants to â??successful community collegesâ? that train unemployed workers in emerging industries.

Many higher education leaders had hoped to see college issues, or education generally, emerge as a major issue in the 2008 race. That never quite happened. And with the war in Iraq and the collapse of the economy, that may not be surprising. But over the course of two years leading up to his election, Sen. Barack Obama has given many policy addresses and issued many proposals about education that may guide his work in office â?? at least after he deals with the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan.

During a debate among the Democratic presidential candidates at Saint Anselm College in January, Charles Gibson, the moderator, used what he thought was a realistic example of a two-career academic couple at the small college in New Hampshire. Between them, he ventured during a discussion about tax policies, they would earn about $200,000 a year.

The audience met Mr. Gibson’s statement with laughter and guffaws. Even some of the candidates told him he was off base â?? and they were right. On average, tenured associate professors at Saint Anselm earned around $65,000 last year. For young assistant professors, the pay was closer to $50,000.

Our visitor was a petite, 60ish writer in an ill-fitting suit and a loud tie. A man of some reputation, he had been flown in to speak to the students in our graduate program about his own work and his thoughts on writing. We looked forward to his visit as eager colleagues; we were pleased he had come and grateful for whatever insights he might share.

Author: J.D. Nordell is a graduate fellow in poetry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An article of faith among conservative critics of American universities has been that liberal professors politically indoctrinate their students. This conviction not only fueled the culture wars but has also led state lawmakers to consider requiring colleges to submit reports to the government detailing their progress in ensuring â??intellectual diversity,â? prompted universities to establish faculty positions devoted to conservatism and spurred the creation of a network of volunteer watchdogs to monitor â??political correctnessâ? on campuses.

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is beginning to shake up the budgets and planning on U.S. college campuses, even in the elite Ivy League.

Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League institutions, yesterday became the latest school to react to the declining economy. The school will suspend hiring of non-faculty staff from outside the university through March 31, Cornell President David Skorton said. Construction won’t begin for any new projects on Cornell’s Ithaca, New York, and New York City campuses for at least 90 days.

Concern over the rising cost of college is nothing new, but it’s taking an interesting turn. Most of the attention given to college costs focuses on the sticker price, but few students ever pony up that much. As that price rises, merit-based aid does, too, and most students get what amounts to a discount.

The College Board’s recent reports on trends in college pricing and student aid highlight yet again the difference between the price in the admissions brochure and what families actually pay (The Chronicle, October 29).

After several years in which college costs rose more rapidly than other consumer goods, average costs for tuition and fees this year increased less than 1% for public and private institutions when adjusted for inflation, a report released Wednesday shows. They even declined at public two-year institutions.

But context is everything: The 2008 inflation rate of 5.6% is more than double last year’s rate (2.4%) and well over 1991’s 4.4%. And while financial aid spending has increased, it is not keeping pace with tuition increases.

Costs rose 5.9 percent this year at private four-year colleges in the U.S., outpacing the biggest gain in inflation in 17 years and increasing the demand for financial aid.

Tuition and fees rose 0.3 percentage point more than inflation at those schools, to an average of $25,143, according to a report today by the College Board, the New York-based publisher of the SAT exam for high school students.

Higher education has been a growth industry in the United States, evidenced by swelling enrollments, expanding campuses and growing endowments. But the global economic crisis has caught colleges and universities in a vice.

With their endowments shrinking along with stock markets, some schools may raise tuition more than usual, even as students complain it is already too expensive and struggle to get loans.

At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the school’s $1.8 billion endowment has shrunk by 18 percent since the start of the year, Sandy Wilcox of the University of Wisconsin Foundation said. Dipping into the endowment to make a promised contribution to the school’s budget only shrinks it further.

Wisconsin, like many schools with substantial endowments — 400 have endowments over $100 million and 76 above $1 billion — use a three-year averaging system to smooth out how much they pay out from earnings.

Universities are watching their state budgets crumble across the country: The University of Arizona has put a freeze on all state-financed hiring, Georgia’s 14 technical colleges are being merged into seven, and New York will probably have to shelve a plan to create a $3-billion fund to attract cutting-edge research to the Empire State, which faces an estimated $6-billion budget gap.

But in some places, things look much different. States with booming industries, including oil and natural gas, are using their riches to bolster higher education, sometimes at their neighbors’ expense.

Three years of legal wrangling between Google and a group of publishers came to an end Tuesday, but the $125 million settlement left unresolved the question of whether Google violated the law by digitizing copyrighted material without permission from rights holders.

The two lawsuits brought by authors and publishers challenged Googleâ??s ambitious Book Search program, which has thus far digitized more than 7 million books from participating libraries. Authors and publishers had challenged Googleâ??s contention that posting â??snippetsâ? of copyrighted works online was permissible under â??fair useâ? standards, and the parties still disagree on that salient legal question.

The faltering economy is forcing many high school seniors who were set on attending private colleges or universities to consider less expensive public ones.

“It’s great for the public colleges,” says Paul Kanarek, a vice president at the Princeton Review, the test preparation service. For years, he says, private schools usually got the top students, “based on the prominence of their brands and the size of their wallets. Now, the deck has been shuffled.”

During the three presidential debates this fall, both John McCain and Barack Obama opened by thanking their university hosts. If not for their locations, it’s likely you wouldn’t have heard the words “college,” “university,” or “higher education” even uttered in the debates.

The presidential election has generated new proposals for reinvestment in America’s basic social infrastructure: roads and bridges, health care, job training and employment, renewable energy, and education. Barack Obama’s campaign has called for a “National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank,” which has growing Congressional support, and last January mayors and governors from both major parties formed a coalition to start the rebuilding process.

The current financial crisis will undoubtedly cause short-term public budget cuts as government officials figure out how to pay a staggering bailout bill. But in the long run, it will reduce many leaders’ confidence in market forces and encourage greater interest in public investments in the economy. People will be increasingly reluctant to let financial markets determine their standard of living.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former education dean at the University of Louisville has been indicted on charges of mishandling federal grant money.

Federal prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday that ex-dean Robert Felner is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail fraud, conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and income tax evasion.

Marquette University has hired a Rutgers University executive to help grow its research program, a first step toward eventually having a technology transfer office, officials said.

In the competition to get into the most selective colleges, some students and their parents are resorting to a tasteless tactic: bashing other applicants.

The letters, mailed to college admissions offices, typically arrive without a signature. They say rival applicants cheated on exams or got suspended for underage drinking. Sometimes, they include an unflattering newspaper clipping or a sly suggestion to check out pictures on a student’s Facebook page.

The 2008 presidential election is about two weeks away, but it’s not too early to declare a winner: Forrest Maltzman.

A professor of political science at George Washington University â?? just a few blocks from the White House â?? Mr. Maltzman teaches a course on the American presidency and says he’s having a blast.

BIDDEFORD, Me. â?? When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle.

â??I was like, â??A free bike, no catch?â?? â? Ms. Galliani, 17, a freshman from Fort Bragg, Calif., asked. â??Itâ??s really an ideal way to get around the campus.â?

Colleges have been asserting for months â?? in an effort to persuade Congress not to impose new requirements on them to fight illegal file sharing â?? that theyâ??re spending big bucks to monitor, prevent and discipline online behavior that could run afoul of copyright law. But lawmakers ignored their pleas and added several new mandates to the Higher Education Act in August.

Now that itâ??s been a few months, and the dust has settled, it seems fair to ask: What does it cost to comply with the provisions of the law that require colleges to police their studentsâ?? peer-to-peer activity?

In difficult dinner-table conversations, college students and their parents are revisiting how to pay tuition as personal finances weaken and lenders get tough.

Diana and Ronnie Jacobs, of Salem, Ind., thought their family had a workable plan for college for her twin sons, using a combination of savings, income, scholarship aid and a relatively modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job at Colgate-Palmolive.

For many colleges, the last 15 years have been a golden age. Philanthropy and Americans’ grudging tolerance for high tuition fueled an unprecedented boom â?? investments in everything from gyms, dorms and labs to faculty and expanded financial aid. Now, suddenly and like the rest of us, many colleges are faced with toning down their ambitions, at least in the short term.

The financial meltdown is forcing institutions to tear up budget plans and prepare for a simultaneous hit to their three major revenue sources â?? government funding, donations and tuition. At the same time, they’re having to find more money for one of their major budget items â?? financial aid â?? or risk seeing students drop out.

College campuses are going smoke-free in rapidly growing numbers across the USA. More than 140 campuses now are completely smoke-free, more than triple the number that had banned smoking as recently as March 2007, said Frieda Edgette, of the lobbying group Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.