Category: Higher Education/System

Most questions I get from readers this time of year refer to financial aid. Once students have completed their admissions applications, families are stunned by the harsh reality of college: College is expensive.

Public colleges range from several thousand to more than $20,000 a year, and private colleges are usually about double the cost of public schools. Most families have not saved enough for four years of college, and many have not saved at all.

The night before Drew Gilpin Faust was formally named president of Harvard University, women involved in efforts to promote female leaders in academe happened to be gathering in Washington for workshops and networking sessions held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. During a fund-raising pitch at a dinner, women were reminded that the programs they support might just help someone who could become â??the next president of Harvard.â?

For years, as college costs have climbed to backbreaking levels, more families have begun socking money in tax-advantaged 529 savings plans. Now, as these 529 plans mark their 10th anniversary this year, they are fast becoming the principal way for parents and grandparents to save for college.

College presidents have gotten older and have been in their positions longer than at any time in the past 20 years, indicating an upcoming wave of turnover at the top.

GORHAM, Me. � Rainbow had the bad luck to try to have a baby on a Thursday.
Thursday was her doctor�s day off, and there was no one else for miles who could handle a complicated breech birth, not when the mother was a Holstein cow.

The budget President Bush proposed Monday would increase federal grants to low-income college students by 33% over five years and pay for it by reducing subsidies to private lenders. The Bush plan calls for raising the maximum Pell grant, which hasn’t been increased since 2003, to $5,400 from $4,050 over five years. To offset the cost, the administration proposes reducing interest-rate subsidies to private lenders by half a percentage point. The reduction would save the government an estimated $12.4 billion over five years, the Bush administration said.

As promised, President Bush delivered a 2008 Education Department budget proposal on Monday that would increase the maximum Pell Grant to $4,600 in the coming fiscal year and to $5,400 by 2012. And as expected, he proposed doing so partly by reshuffling funds from several other grant programs for low-income students, and partly by further cutting into the profit margins of banks and guarantee agencies in the student loan industry, drawing howls of protest from lobbyists for students and lenders alike.

Last week, higher-education lobbyists got the good news on President Bush’s proposed budget for the Education Department in 2008. He would increase spending on the maximum Pell grant to $5,400 over the next five years.

On Monday, they got the bad. He would pay for it by cutting lender subsidies and eliminating the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, which augments Pell Grants for low-income students.

Michigan’s public universities and other state-government agencies cannot provide health-care or other benefits to same-sex partners of their employees, the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled.

In an opinion released on Thursday, the court said that such benefits violate an amendment to Michigan’s Constitution that bans gay marriage. A three-judge panel interpreted language in that amendment as barring public employers from recognizing same-sex unions in any way, including offering benefits. Institutions affected by the ruling include the University of Michigan, and Michigan State, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Northern Michigan, and Wayne State Universities.

A Michigan appeals court on Friday ruled that public colleges and universities in the state may not offer health insurance or other benefits to the same-sex partners of employees. The ruling said that a state ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in 2004, barred such benefits.

Since the spread of state amendments to bar gay marriage, a concern of many gay and lesbian college employees had been that the measures would be used to limit their employee benefits, and the Michigan ruling may be the most dramatic evidence yet that those fears reflect a real danger.

College sophomore Carli McGoff could have attended the University of Maryland directly from high school, a decision her parents could afford and would have supported. But the Silver Spring resident opted instead to attend Montgomery College on a merit scholarship for two years and live at home.

Her parents calculate the decision to attend a two-year community college saved them $26,000, money her father Chris McGoff says will now help pay for her to graduate from a four-year institution — she has applied to be accepted as a junior at Georgetown University, Gettysburg College and Franklin & Marshall College. Wherever she goes, she’ll get a diploma at a deep discount from what four full years at any of those institutions costs

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) — In knee-high rubber boots, Jennifer Young peers out over a dozen or so sows and their litters, seemingly oblivious to the stench coming from their pens.

Pigs have been Young’s constant companions during her five years at North Carolina State University, whether it’s been running their genetics statistics on a computer, or more odious tasks like weighing and measuring them in the muck at the “Swine Education Unit” on a university-owned farm.

With Michigan�s new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.

At Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, a new admissions policy, without mentioning race, allows officials to consider factors like living on an Indian reservation or in mostly black Detroit, or overcoming discrimination or prejudice.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Like many students at the country’s largest college campus, Melissa Nail now thinks twice before boarding crowded elevator cars.

It was on her campus three months ago that an 18-year-old freshman was killed while trying to wriggle out of an overcrowded dorm elevator that was stuck between floors.

“I’ve always had a little bit of a fear of the elevators and definitely now I just don’t get into overcrowded ones,” said Nail, 18, a freshman at Ohio State University.

Pressure is mounting for colleges to be top performers in a category with stakes as large as the planet: the fight to stop global warming. A report card released today evaluates North America’s 100 wealthiest colleges and universities. Those that rely on renewable energy sources, buy locally grown food and disclose where endowment money is invested get high mark.

Remedial education may raise questions about access to education, the application of standards and about how and by whom such deficiencies should be addressed, but one thing’s clear, said Rebecca Martin, interim senior vice president for academic affairs for the University of Wisconsin System: “This is the way things are now. I think that if we want our students to be successful in college, which we do, if we want them to stay with us and make it all the way through to graduate, then we have to provide what they need to be successful.

Any help in lowering the costs of higher education helps students, university officials and legislators said a day after the House of Representatives voted to lower the interest rate on college Stafford loans.

But, they also agree that just chipping away at interest doesn’t really address problems with rising college costs and ongoing concerns about affordability for students.

The U.S. House passed Wednesday with strong bipartisan support a bill reducing interest rates for many student loans. The bill was part of the Democrats’ agenda but drew yes votes from 124 Republicans despite opposition from the White House.

The bill’s full benefits are phased in over a five-year period and will ultimately cut interest rates on federally-subsidized loans in half.

Now that the rush of applications and essays for seniors has ended, the focus on college preparation is now on juniors, and that means attention from college admissions offices.

….Here are the facts: Colleges send viewbooks or paper applications to students because they want multitudes of students to apply, not because they intend to admit them. Colleges want many applicants because when they later deny most of them, their selectivity rate drops.

Anyone who held out hope that the dawn of a new Congress would somehow elevate the rhetoric about higher education issues on Capital Hill had them dashed Wednesday. That, more than anything else, became clear as the House of Representatives debated and ultimately passed legislation that would cut the interest rate on some student loans in half over five years.

A Colorado think tank critical of affirmative action has issued a report alleging that the University of Colorado at Boulder has little idea how much money it spends on various diversity efforts and poorly manages such expenditures.

The libertarian Independence Institute, based in Golden, Colo., says in a report issued on Monday that the state’s flagship campus has greatly understated how much it spends on diversity programs and devotes a disproportionate share of such funds to paying administrative salaries rather than helping minority students.

Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1960s, Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the flagship law school of the University of California, learned early about racial discrimination. After all, his father, one of the few African-American graduates in Harvard Law School�s class of 1953, could not get a job in a Philadelphia law firm.

ââ?¬Å?Theyââ?¬â?¢d hired William T. Coleman from Harvard a couple of years earlier,ââ?¬Â Mr. Edley recalled, referring to the former transportation secretary, and ardent defender of civil rights. ââ?¬Å?And they were waiting to see how that experiment worked out before hiring another one.ââ?¬Â

At a time when even entry-level jobs often require a bachelor’s degree, hardly anyone disputes the importance of a college education. Even so, many parents and students struggle to understand why college costs so much.

Emory University announced today that it would replace loans with grants for qualifying students from families with annual incomes at or below $50,000. The new program stipulates that eligible students must be dependents, graduate in four years, and make a personal contribution to their education of $1,550 as freshmen, and $2,150 in every subsequent year.

A panel of national higher education and business leaders issued a road map Wednesday for reforming higher education, arguing that college graduates must be able to do more than equip themselves for their first job. Rather, it says in a report, “in an economy fueled by innovation, the capabilities developed through a liberal education have become America’s most valuable economic asset.”

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) — The University of Michigan announced Wednesday it will comply with a new voter-approved ban on affirmative action and immediately stop considering race and gender in admissions.

The move came in the middle of the admissions process for next fall’s freshman class. The university has already begun sending out acceptance and rejection letters.

The state constitutional amendment approved by the voters in November bans the use of race and gender preferences in public university admissions and government hiring and contracting.

David A. Caputo, the president of Pace University, has ricocheted from one crisis to another.

Freshman enrollment this fall at his sprawling, six-campus university in Manhattan and Westchester County plunged after a big tuition increase. That led to a sizable deficit, a hiring freeze, demonstrations, the threat of a no-confidence vote by the faculty, and attacks on his annual compensation of nearly $700,000.

Dear Editor: The recent Joel McNally column blasting Ward Connerly contains some very misleading statements. Since Proposition 209 took effect in 1998, the number of “underrepresented minorities” in the eight campuses of the California university system has increased to its highest level. And more to the point, their graduation rates have increased.

….Real affirmative action in education would focus on improving the elementary and secondary education of underrepresented minorities.

The U.S. Supreme Court may have unanimously squelched a First Amendment challenge on the part of law schools to a 1994 law tying federal funding to campus access for military recruiters back in March. But it left one door open for opponents of the so-called Solomon Amendment: ââ?¬Å?Law schools remain free under the statute to express whatever views they may have on the militaryââ?¬â?¢s congressionally mandated employment policy, all the while retaining eligibility for federal funds,ââ?¬Â the court ruled in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR).

UW-Madison art history Professor Julia Murray will spend the next school year writing a book about a once-important, now-destroyed shrine to Confucius near Shanghai – tracing its evolution, components, activities and significance from the 12th to 20th centuries. She will also develop a course on shrines in China.

….All in all, 290 faculty members throughout the University of Wisconsin System will take sabbatical leaves during the 2007-08 academic year – 144 for one semester and 146 for both semesters. But are some of the subjects of study too esoteric to provide value in the “real world”?

GAINESVILLE, Fla. � If there is any goal that the University of Florida has pursued as fervently as a national football championship for the Gators, it is a place among the nation�s highest-ranked public universities.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. � If there is any goal that the University of Florida has pursued as fervently as a national football championship for the Gators, it is a place among the nation�s highest-ranked public universities.

ââ?¬Å?We need a top-10 university, so our kids can get the same education they would get at Harvard or Yale,ââ?¬Â said J. Bernard Machen, the university president.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – A Marquette University engineering alumnus and his wife have pledged $25 million to the school’s College of Engineering, university officials say.

The Rev. Robert A. Wild, Marquette’s president, said Monday the benefactors, who wish to remain anonymous, hope the gift “inspires others to help fund the bold initiatives that will position the College of Engineering as the premier Catholic institution in the nation for engineering education.”

A Marquette University engineering alumnus and his wife have pledged $25 million to Marquette’s College of Engineering, a donation that could lead to future donations from the couple of $1 million a year, university officials announced Monday.

On Thursday, Kevin Poulsen, senior editor for Wired News, noted in his blog (blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/), a milestone in the number of records that have been compromised in data breaches since the ChoicePoint breach nearly two years ago:

ââ?¬Å?Rapid-fire announcements this week by U.C.L.A. (800,000 records) and Aetna (130,000) moved the total to the threshold, when Boeing revealed yesterday that a laptop recently stolen from an employeeââ?¬â?¢s car contained names, Social Security numbers and other data on 382,000 current and former employees of the aerospace giant ââ?¬â? bringing the total to a grim 100,152,801 records (as of this post).ââ?¬Â