Nellie McKay, one of the nation’s foremost scholars of African-American literature, died Sunday.
McKay, who was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1978, died at HospiceCare after battling liver cancer for the last year. She was 75.
McKay was best known as the co-editor of “The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,” written with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She was a pioneer in the movement to make black studies an academic area of higher education.
A TREND TOWARD privatization and a shift in spending priorities is putting California’s public colleges and universities at risk of forsaking their mandate to deliver a quality public education to the state’s growing ranks of would-be college students.
Doyle’s plan, dubbed the “Wisconsin Covenant,” would let eighth-graders whose families meet certain income requirements sign a pledge promising they will take college-prep courses, maintain a high grade-point average and be good citizens. Then, when those students are ready for college and all other aid is exhausted, the state will cover whatever tuition gap remains through grants, subsidized loans or work-study jobs at any University of Wisconsin System campus that accepts them.
Antiwar protests at eight colleges have made a Pentagon watch list of “suspicious incidents.”
The 400-page list, which was obtained by NBC News, includes information on 1,500 “threats” to national security that occurred over a recent 10-month period, and characterizes them as either “credible” or “not credible.”
An independent alumni group formed to attack “radicalism” at the University of California at Los Angeles has offered $100 prizes to any student who turns over extensive documentation of cases in which professors show political bias in the classroom.
Public colleges in states that spend a lot of money on higher education aren’t necessarily better than colleges in states that provide them with meager support, according to a report that ranks states based on an analysis of their higher-education budgets and the performance of their colleges.
The report, which was prepared by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, attempts to answer the age-old question in debates over state financing of higher education: Does more money equal better quality?
Americ Azevedo taught an “Introduction to Computers” class at UC Berkeley last semester that featured some of the hottest options in educational technology.
By visiting the course’s websites, the 200 enrolled students could download audio recordings or watch digital videos of the lectures, as well as read the instructor’s detailed lecture notes and participate in online discussions.
The line to return textbooks snaked up the steps of University Book Store and into the lobby. People who wanted to buy books had to fight their way through the crowds.
“I kinda like the fact it’s crazy crowded,” University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore Adam Markoff, from Northbrook, Ill., said Monday. “I might run into someone I know.”
Students have returned to campus and classes begin today. The mob scene at the bookstore, expected to continue all week, demonstrates the continued allure of buying and selling textbooks in person.
The State Department invited 120 college leaders here this month to talk about how to make American higher education more engaged with the world and counter the perception that the United States no longer welcomes foreign students. President Bush used the occasion to announce a $114-million proposal to increase the teaching of “critical” foreign languages, including Arabic, Chinese, and Farsi. Part of the money would be spent by the military and intelligence agencies.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – The protest was carefully orchestrated, planned for weeks by Students Against War during Friday evening meetings in a small classroom on the University of California campus here.
So when the military recruiters arrived for the job fair, held in an old dining hall last April 5 – a now fateful day for a scandalized university – the students had their two-way radios in position, their cyclists checking the traffic as hundreds of demonstrators marched up the hilly roads of this campus on the Central Coast and a dozen moles stationed inside the building, reporting by cellphone to the growing crowd outside.
“Racist, sexist, antigay,” the demonstrators recalled shouting. “Hey, recruiters, go away!”
THE largest university in Oregon is camouflaged, its many parts spread among the tight urban canyons of downtown Portland. But one building at Portland State University stands out. It has a roof of grass, plants and gravel, like a slice of the high desert on the wet side of Oregon. It is 10 stories high, and inside, all the mechanical organs work with so little waste – pumping water, air and electricity to the 400 residents of the dormitory and, on lower floors, to classrooms – that it would impress even the thrifty New Englanders who founded Portland.
When state legislators and governors gather from around the country, they might be forgiven for thinking that all of those who run state higher education systems come from Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average. For in just about every state ââ?¬â? whether generous or frugal on college spending ââ?¬â? administrators say that they are making the absolute best possible use of available dollars.
Of all his possible higher education aspirations, Vinny Kang never thought he’d spend a good portion of his college days slicing up salmon to try to help discover why the fish always die after spawning.
But he’s not complaining.
Kang, a junior attending UW-Madison on a full-tuition violin scholarship, wants to go to medical school after he graduates. And working on an independent research project in the lab of animal science professor Terence Barry is the kind of resume-builder that will probably help get him there.
The organization that owns the SAT says it plans to consider allowing students to take the three-section test in separate sittings. But officials warn that students shouldn’t expect to see a change anytime soon ââ?¬â? if at all.
Your high-school senior is starting college this fall, but you’re not one of those sentimental parents who puddles up at the thought of your baby chick leaving the nest. In fact, you’re counting the days until you can turn your child’s bedroom into a sun porch.
It is true that the United States is losing its advantage in drawing foreign students, but a major point was not stressed enough in USA TODAY’s recent article (ââ?¬Å?USA losing its advantage drawing foreign students,ââ?¬Â News, Jan 6).
(In letters to the editor.)
Baby boomers, who fueled a rise in company-supported day care nearly a generation ago, are driving a new employee benefit: help with their kids’ college admissions. With an assist from admissions-savvy entrepreneurs, a small but growing number of employers offer options ranging from brown-bag lunches on college-related topics to sessions with former Ivy League admissions officers to Web-based programs that let parents manage their child’s progress.
States must give up some control over their public universities so the institutions can continue educating the masses, former University of Wisconsin System President Katharine Lyall says in her new book.
“The state-agency model is failing as a functional management concept for universities; it is driven forward by untenable, long-term fiscal realities,” writes Lyall and her co-author, former UW System administrator Kathleen Sell, in the book, “The True Genius of America at Risk.”
Lyall, who retired in 2004, imagines the state university of the future as a quasi-public, not-for-profit “public-purpose university,” freer from political interference and needless bureaucracy by the state government.
ON a frigid night during finals week last month, Caroline Proctor waited alone for friends to pick her up outside the Yale gymnasium, near the edge of campus and the rough neighborhoods of New Haven. “I don’t get worried until about 10 o’clock,” says Ms. Proctor, a graduate student in psychology. “There’s been a lot of muggings. We keep getting e-mails.”
AS far as Kyle Stoneman is concerned, the campus police were the ones who started the Facebook wars. “We were just being, well, college students, and they used it against us,” says Mr. Stoneman, a senior at George Washington University in Washington. He is convinced that the campus security force got wind of a party he and some buddies were planning last year by monitoring Facebook.com, the phenomenally popular college networking site. The officers waited till the shindig was in full swing, Mr. Stoneman grouses, then shut it down on discovering under-age drinking.
Mr. Stoneman and his friends decided to fight back. Their weapon of choice? Facebook, of course.
In October 2005, an article appeared in the journal Science that piqued the federal governmentââ?¬â?¢s interest. It was titled ââ?¬Å?Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus.ââ?¬Â The Spanish Flu Pandemic killed 50 million to 100 million people. And there, in the pages of Americaââ?¬â?¢s most prestigious scientific journal, was the formula for destruction.
A Christian high school’s lawsuit against the University of California is escalating the culture war over the role of religion in public education. The Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, Calif., with 1,300 students, is suing UC for not giving credits for some courses with a ââ?¬Å?Christian viewpointââ?¬Â when students apply for university admission. The lawsuit is about theological content in ââ?¬Å?every major area in high school except for mathematics,ââ?¬Â says Wendell Bird, a lawyer for Calvary Chapel.
For nearly three years now, dozens of Congressional aides and college lobbyists have poured their time and energy into the process of renewing the Higher Education Act, the law that governs most federal student aid and other college programs. The heavy lifting has been done, and the job is nearly complete.
1. Harvard University $22,143,649
2. Yale University $12,747,150
3. University of Texas System $10,336,687
4. Princeton University $9,928,200
5. Stanford University $9,922,000
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$5,865,212
7. University of California $4,767,466
8. Emory University $4,535,587
9. Columbia University $4,493,085
10. Texas A&M University $4,373,047
U.S. colleges and universities earned ââ?¬Å?respectable returnsââ?¬Â on their endowments last year as wealthier schools posted higher averages than less wealthy ones, a report shows today. Annual returns on endowments averaged 9.7%, says the Commonfund Benchmarks Study. It is based on 729 education institutions, primarily public and private universities but also independent schools and private education foundations.
When Rebecca Walkowitz enters her classroom, the chatter stops. The 35-year-old carries herself like a woman nearly twice her age, but speaks at a fast clip, as if she has more to say than her 50-minute class period could possibly allow. She is equally comfortable introducing juniors to Ulysses as she is isolating vulgarities in Trainspotting for a close reading of vernacular.
“Plus she’s pretty hot,” reads one of Walkowitz’s University of Wisconsin-Madison student ratings on Rate My Professors (ratemyprofessors.com). She “rocks” another student’s “socks off.”
Dillard University sophomore Marvin Palao was living off-campus with his family when Hurricane Katrina hit in August. He had to swim out of his Gentilly home when the levees broke and swamped the house with 11 feet of water. As Dillard’s spring semester begins this week, Palao is living on campus ââ?¬â? at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel. ââ?¬Å?The Hilton is my home now, because I have no home,ââ?¬Â Palao says
Katie Nix had her reasons for enrolling at Tulane University last fall. She just can’t recall what they are.
“I’ve forgotten,” said the freshman from Racine who spent three days at Tulane before Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, forcing the city’s universities to shut down.
After Katrina, Nix and hundreds of other displaced students landed in Wisconsin, where they were taken in by universities across the state. Now their home institutions are reopening, and most of the students are going back.
State spending for higher education grew at the fastest rate in five years during the current fiscal year, allowing colleges throughout much of the nation to regain their financial balance after a series of tight budgets.
Kumble R. Subbaswamy, the dean of arts and sciences at Indiana University’s main campus in Bloomington, has been named the University of Kentucky’s new academic leader, making him the highest ranking minority in the university’s 140-year history.
On Dec. 21, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, long regarded as one of the nation’s top public research universities, announced that Subbaswamy was one of its three finalists for provost.
BERLIN ââ?¬â? Alexander Galkin could have left Russia to study for his doctorate in neuroscience in the USA. Instead, he’s at Humboldt and Free universities in Germany’s capital, because, ââ?¬Å?I had better scientific opportunities.ââ?¬Â
Speaking before a crowd of 120 college presidents here, President Bush announced on Thursday that he would ask Congress for $114-million to teach languages critical for national security to students from kindergarten through college.
On Thursday, President Bush and a bevy of government officials ââ?¬â? including the secretaries of state, education and defense ââ?¬â? announced a wide ranging plan to enhance the foreign language skills of American students.
Scott Walker would cap tuition at University of Wisconsin schools, although he was not sure at what amount. He also could foresee offering incentives to attend UW campuses, perhaps in a similar way to the military paying for education in return for service.
He would consider cutting the number of graduate programs at UW-Madison and focus on attracting more resident undergraduates.
Scott Walker wants to take aim at the University of Wisconsin system. He thinks UW-Madison has too many graduate programs and too many out-of-state students.
He says the main goal of the university should be to educate undergraduate students so that they can get productive jobs.
In the latest rebuke against the University of California’s pay practices, a Republican state senator plans to introduce legislation that threatens to revoke UC’s operating independence unless it does a better job of disclosing executive pay to the public.
President Bush is expected to tell dozens of college and university presidents tomorrow of an administration plan to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars on training in foreign languages deemed critical to the United States. Arabic, other Middle Eastern languages, and Chinese are expected to be a focus ââ?¬â? potentially providing for a significant expansion of study by American students, who are notoriously monolingual.
In one of its last acts of 2005, Congress took an ax to the government-backed student-loan programs, cutting $12.7-billion to help slow the growth of federal spending over the next five years.
The cuts, which are the largest in the loan programs’ histories, account for one-third of a $40-billion deficit-reduction package that lawmakers in both chambers approved just days before heading home for the holidays.
Like a tasty but forgettable meal in an expensive four-star restaurant, the year 2006 is likely to disappoint many colleges by merely being good. Certainly, some of the basic ingredients for a great year, such as a rebounding national economy, are on hand.
A college newspaper that printed a photo essay depicting an editor’s sexual fantasy of being raped created such a backlash on campus that a task force is being formed to focus on the problem of violence against women.
Students ââ?¬â? who will borrow as much as $1 billion next year in federal student loans ââ?¬â? would face hundreds of dollars more in interest payments under the congressional budget bill.
The bill passed the Senate 51-50 last week and is expected to pass the House of Representatives a final time next month. It would cut $12.7 billion from student aid over five years, a figure that accounts for about one-third of the projected savings across all sectors of the economy.
It’s one of the smallest pieces of your property tax bill, but it’s growing fast and is one of the least scrutinized.
A state lawmaker says he plans to introduce legislation this year to increase accountability of technical college district boards and reduce their reliance on property taxes.
Boycott movements on college campuses tend to take hold (or fade away) based on whether a critical mass of well known institutions participate. So critics of Coca-Cola have much to celebrate as 2006 begins.
The cost of college, a growing concern that professors are overwhelmingly liberal and Hurricane Katrina were among the top stories in higher education in 2005.
Robin Harris talks to her parents nearly every day, often asking for help with her homework, in deciding what classes to take and about how to clean up a mess she had made.
Jacqueline King is a researcher who carefully sifts data for the American Council on Education in search of trends that colleges and universities might find helpful. One recent discovery jumped out: Over the past eight years, the percentage of middle-class males on campus shifted dramatically downward. Even more surprising, the sharpest drop occurred among white males.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison administrator collected $125,000 in salary during nearly eight months of paid leave after he stepped down and his position was eliminated, university officials acknowledge in court records.
The university could have saved $77,000 of that salary had Chancellor John Wiley demoted Paul Barrows into a lower-paying backup job after he forced him to resign as vice chancellor, UW-Madison human resources official Stephen Lund said in an affidavit.
WASHINGTON ââ?¬â? Though Christopher Flickinger calls himself “dean” and poses in parodistic photos waving a small American flag and looking stern, he says he’s never been more serious about eliminating what he claims is pervasive anti-conservatism on college campuses today.
A UW-Madison administrator collected $125,000 in salary during nearly eight months of paid leave after he stepped down and his position was eliminated, university officials acknowledge in court records.
More than a decade after promising to end the practice, the University of California has given several top administrators lengthy paid leaves when they stepped down.
In the past 13 months alone, at least three senior managers have received paid furloughs at their executive salaries before returning to teaching.
The interim Chancellor at UW-Eau Claire has said no to a plan for students to pay an extra fee to subsidize faculty pay.
Last month, the UWEC Student Senate voted to charge students a twenty-dollar annual fee to fund pay raises for professors and instructors. The fee would have been the first of its kind in the UW System. (10th item.)
Colleges nationwide are trying to contain or deter problems associated with dangerous drinking. Here, University of Georgia students weigh in on what’s effective on their campus.
USA TODAY’s special report Nov. 17 on widespread campus drinking drew reaction from across the USA. College presidents often cite underage drinking as their No. 1 headache. But students are closest to the problem
Every year at this time, school counselors and teachers write countless letters of recommendation that supplement the college applications of high school seniors. Selective colleges typically require letters from the school counselor and two teachers.
A letter can determine a student’s fate. ââ?¬Å?Homogeneity among applicants makes it difficult to discriminate in a highly selective pool. The letters provide an independent view,ââ?¬Â says Ann Wright, vice president for enrollment at Rice University in Houston. ââ?¬Å?It can make all the difference in the world.ââ?¬Â
While attending a Pennsylvania Republican Party picnic, Jennie Mae Brown bumped into her state representative and started venting.
Disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk was forced to quit his post at Seoul National University after the college said his pioneering stem-cell research was partly faked.
Hwang, who until last month was feted as a national hero, was flanked by weeping researchers as he apologized for the fabrication of a 2005 study that was heralded as a breakthrough in finding cures for diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. The government said it is considering cutting funding for his work.
Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday signed a bill into law that prohibits the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority from making, buying or assuming mortgage loans to anyone without a Social Security number.
Other legislation he signed included three bills that benefit university and college students.
A search committee has forwarded three finalists for the position of provost to University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley. They are:
� Patrick Farrell, executive associate dean of the UW-Madison College of Engineering.
� Sue Rosser, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
� Kumble Subbaswamy, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 – Nearly one-third of all the savings in the final budget bill comes from student aid, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
