Category: Higher Education/System

As parents and students cope with the ever-rising cost of higher education, many debate whether attending private institutions � which charge far more than public universities � is worth the expense. Is the quality of the education better? Will students have more access to their professors? Will those professors be more distinguished? Do students make important contacts that pay off later in life? Are any such advantages worth going deeply into debt?

As parents and students cope with the ever-rising cost of higher education, many debate whether attending private institutions � which charge far more than public universities � is worth the expense. Is the quality of the education better? Will students have more access to their professors? Will those professors be more distinguished? Do students make important contacts that pay off later in life? Are any such advantages worth going deeply into debt?

The University of California, Los Angeles alerted about 800,000 current and former students, faculty and staff on Tuesday that their names and certain personal information were exposed after a hacker broke into a campus computer system

Federal spending for student aid and scientific research in the 2007 fiscal year will be frozen at last year’s levels, and most academic earmarks will be eliminated, under a plan announced on Monday by chairmen of the Congressional appropriations committees. College lobbyists and a senior Democrat said that there remained a slim chance for some increases in education programs.

The 2007 federal budget was never destined to be a great one for higher education, given the strict spending limits imposed by Congress and the government�s generally penurious financial climate.

But the outlook took a fairly drastic turn for the worse late Monday, when Democratic leaders announced that they would essentially punt on the 2007 budget process that the Republican-led 109th Congress had begun, opting instead for a yearlong ââ?¬Å?continuing resolutionââ?¬Â that will for the vast majority of federal programs adopt the spending levels set in the 2006 budget. Congress finished work on only two of the appropriations bills, those for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The University of California, Los Angeles alerted about 800,000 current and former students, faculty and staff on Tuesday that their names and certain personal information were exposed after a hacker broke into a campus computer system.

It was one of the largest such breaches involving a U.S. higher education institution.

Officials at the University of California Los Angeles alerted about 800,000 current and former students, faculty and staff on Tuesday that their names and certain personal information were exposed after a hacker broke into a campus computer system.

It is probably the largest breach of computer security at an American university.

COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. � John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its tuition.

Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State University jointly filed a motion on Monday asking a federal judge to let them complete their current admissions cycles without complying with the state’s new ban on affirmative-action preferences.

The motion asks Judge David M. Lawson of the U.S. District Court in Detroit to delay enforcement of the preference ban, scheduled to take effect on December 23, until the universities have completed their admissions and financial-aid decisions for next fall.

A new national survey shows that state spending on higher education is continuing to rise throughout most of the nation and growing faster than kudzu in much of the South.

Total state general-fund appropriations for higher education are up by 7 percent, to $72.18-billion, in the current 2006-7 fiscal year, according to an annual survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Education Policy, at Illinois State University.

Texas A&M University will guarantee admission to students � many of them from low-income families � at nine community colleges as part of a push to increase diversity on campus.

At the University of Mississippi, “anyone using offensive language” on the telephone can be referred to campus police. And someone who exhibits “behavior that annoys” at William Paterson University in New Jersey could be violating disorderly conduct rules.

Fifteen students at Purdue University are in their 19th day of fasting Tuesday in an effort to convince the university to join an anti-sweatshop labor organization.

That organization, the Designated Suppliers Program, aims to protect the rights of workers who manufacture university apparel and merchandise. The goal of the program is to respect these rights by ensuring a living wage and promoting good labor standards. Additionally, the program guarantees that sweatshop products are not sold in university stores.

Universities should not fear debate of controversial theories.

TRENTON, N.J. – The family that in 1961 made one of the biggest donations in the history of academia to Princeton University wants their money back.

Relatives of Charles S. and Marie Robertson said the couple wanted their gift to be spent solely to educate graduate students for careers in government, especially as diplomats for the United States.

Dear Editor: “Colleges ought to shed light on religions.” Thus opined Notre Dame’s top academic officials, John I. Jenkins and Thomas Burish. It might surprise them and a lot of your readers to know that almost all atheists are 100 percent in agreement with the sentiment, if only for the reason expressed by Isaac Asimov: “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

For decades, college gates have opened wider and wider to the American public, with more whites and minorities attending than ever before. But that expansion is under strain in the face of rising costs and faster growth of minority populations long left behind in the march to graduation.

A higher-education panel created by the National Conference of State Legislatures agrees with most of the points raised by a national commission created by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

But there’s one major exception: It says states, not the federal government, must be at the center of a nationwide higher-education reform movement.

The U.S. intelligence community pours millions into higher education, paying for hundreds of scholarships, intelligence-related courses and fellowships at nearly a dozen universities, public documents and interviews with officials show.

The morning after Michigan voters approved a measure to bar affirmative action in public colleges and universities, University of Michigan officials refused to talk about how the university might carry out the ban. Instead, at a speech that afternoon on the Ann Arbor campus, President Mary Sue Coleman said that the university was seriously considering going to court to block Proposition 2, as the measure is known.

During lectures, they answer their cell phones, text message their friends and play games on their laptop computers. Are college students really that rude? Yes, says Delaney Kirk, a professor of management at Drake University in Des Moines. But, she adds, it’s not their fault.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 ââ?¬â? Thanks to an e-mail message from ââ?¬Å?trinity gurl,ââ?¬Â an anonymous cybersnoop, Patricia A. McGuire, the president of Trinity University here, suddenly faced a digital-age dilemma.

The e-mail message turned in another student for using profanity on her personal Web page, which linked to Trinityââ?¬â?¢s Web site. Nothing scandalous, but Dr. McGuire was more troubled, she said, that ââ?¬Å?trinity gurlââ?¬Â had snitched in secrecy.

So Dr. McGuire reached for a particularly apt solution in the age of the blogosphere: She censured the eager informant on her own blog, comparing the e-mailer to Big Brother and asking, ââ?¬Å?Who is ââ?¬Ë?trinity gurlââ?¬â?¢ and why is she sending me this kind of information about something a student is posting online?ââ?¬Â

In a widely watched case regarding the ability of public colleges to award domestic-partner benefits, a judge in Ohio has dismissed a lawsuit in which a state lawmaker contended that Miami University was violating a 2004 law banning same-sex marriage by making those benefits available.

Madison, Wis. – As law professors at major universities, Rebecca Eisenberg and Arti Rai want to make their case perfectly clear: they are not calling for repeal of Bayh-Dole, the landmark law that gave universities the right to patent their inventions.

The nation’s top public universities ââ?¬Å?are becoming disproportionately whiter and richer,ââ?¬Â says a new report that looks at enrollment and graduation rates at 50 public flagship universities.The report argues that financial aid practices at those and similar institutions create barriers for low-income and minority students.

Nothing subtle about the title: ââ?¬Å?Engines of Inequality.ââ?¬Â Public flagship universities do a generally poor job of enrolling and educating underrepresented minority students and those from low-income families, and actually regressed rather than made progress on those fronts from 1995 to 2004, the Education Trust argues in a report released Monday. UW-Madison received an overall grade of D.

More college presidents are earning annual compensation of $500,000 or more,fueled in part by stiff competition by schools for the best candidates and a move toward more ââ?¬Å?corporate-styleââ?¬Â management.

Following the lead of other expensive, elite universities, Northwestern University on Tuesday announced initial funding for a program that will provide full scholarships for low-income students.

A donation from Chicago businessman Patrick Ryan and his wife, Shirley, both Northwestern graduates, will fund scholarships for the school’s neediest students, allowing them to graduate without having to pay back student loans. The amount of the gift was not disclosed, and university officials said they don’t know how many students will benefit.

It�s quiet. Too quiet.

Those who have been following the work of the Secretary of Education�s Commission on the Future of Higher Education � be it with excitement or, more commonly in higher education, trepidation � might be forgiven for feeling either forlorn or relieved at how little has been said and done about the panel�s agenda since the commission formally completed its work in August.

As the longtime resident expert on institutional data at Earlham College, provost Nelson Bingham says he used to feel like the Maytag repairman.Not anymore. Today, he says, a ââ?¬Å?culture of assessmentââ?¬Â pervades the campus.

Ever since Education Secretary Margaret Spellings unveiled plans seven weeks ago to overhaul the nation’s higher education system, she and her staff have been trying to relieve anxieties.

Students who participate in collaborative learning and educational activities outside the classroom and who interact more with faculty members get better grades, are more satisfied with their education, and are more likely to remain in college. But the gains from those practices are even greater for students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, or who come to college less prepared than their peers.

Foreign student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities last year appears to have stabilized after two years of declines, a study shows. And a separate online survey suggests that foreign-student enrollments could rebound this year. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. students studying abroad continues to increase.

The number of new foreign students coming to the United States grew this school year, after several years of weakness that followed the terrorist attacks of 2001, according to a survey to be released today by the Institute of International Education.

It’s hard to imagine many college students would want to sit through their professors’ lectures more than once. But for UW-Madison students such as Kelly Egan, it’s almost required.

Roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education � about 3.2 million people � took at least one online course last fall, a sharp increase defying predictions that online learning growth is leveling off.

With the baby boom echo winding its way through high school and college, the Department of Education projects the number of high school graduates will keep rising through 2009. Not only are there more high school graduates, but the percentage expecting to go to college also has grown. It’s now more than 60%, says David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Less than 24 hours after they learned that their party had swept back into control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic leaders said on Wednesday that they would move quickly next year to pass legislation to make college more affordable for students and their families.

“We will invest in our schools, colleges, and students so that every child has an opportunity to succeed and so that America maintains its economic leadership in the world,” Rep. George Miller of California said in a news release announcing his plans to seek the chairmanship of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the panel on which he currently is the ranking Democrat.