Category: Higher Education/System

Preschool teachers should have at least a bachelor’s degree — and get salaries that match those of public elementary, middle and high school teachers, an influential education group says.

Bush policies widen gap By Bruce Reed As the son of a mill worker and the first in his family to go to college, John Edwards knows better than anyone that it will take hard work, not words, to give all Americans the same opportunities he had.

When John Edwards accepts the Democratic vice presidential nomination Wednesday night, his speech is likely to sound a bit like a Charles Dickens novel. For the rich, blessed with rising incomes and falling taxes, it is the best of times.

University of Wisconsin System President-designate Kevin Reilly is likely to be paid only slightly more than outgoing President Katharine Lyall, according to the two top regent leaders.

University of Wisconsin-Extension employees are cheering over the selection of one of their own as leader of the UW System.

After 16 years Jo Catherine Mannix was growing tired of her job in the supply room at an Air Force base when, one morning in 1986, she heard a radio advertisement for the Peace Corps. (Subscription required.)

Democrats opened their national convention here on Monday and are poised today to approve a platform that mirrors the promises that their presumed nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry, has made on the campaign trail. The proposals include reining in rising college costs and taking ideology out of the making of scientific policy.

Madison – A search committee picked the head of the University of Wisconsin Extension to be president of the UW System of campuses. Kevin Reilly, chancellor for the past four years, must be approved by the full Board of Regents. He would lead a system that lost $250 million in state aid in the last two-year budget.

The federal government should consolidate and simplify federal-tax incentives for college students and make permanent the tax exemption of education-related withdrawals from 529 college-savings plans, college and industry officials told the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday.

Texas Tech Chancellor Dr David Smith announced today that he plans to stay right here in Lubbock.

David Smith pulled out as a candidate for University of Wisconsin System president a day before he and three other finalists were to interview for the job. Smith, the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, is in negotiations with Texas Tech officials on a contract extension. He earns more than the maximum salary allowed for the UW post.

…OK, so it’s just one issue. But judging from the volume of calls and e-mails I receive every time I write about student loan debt, it’s an extremely important one.

Textbooks are expensive because publishers inflate prices by adding “bells and whistles” that professors don’t want and students don’t use, an official of a student-advocacy group told the U.S. House of Representatives’ principal subcommittee on higher education on Tuesday. (Subscription required.)

Critics of a recently enacted Kansas law that makes some undocumented immigrants eligible for lower tuition rates at state colleges filed a lawsuit this week that seeks to block the new benefit. (Subscription required.)

This fall’s crop of freshmen at Duke University will get a snazzy digital toy along with their campus maps, dormitory-room keys, and orientation booklets: a brand-new iPod, paid for by the university. (Subscription required.)

Thirty-nine years ago, in a landmark speech at Howard University, President Lyndon B. Johnson called on the nation to achieve not just legal equality for all races in America, but “true equality.”

Sheyda Jahanbani may be a student, but her life at Brown University in Providence, R.I. feels more like a job. There are long hours of teaching, a boss who gives orders, and she depends on her income to pay the bills.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ordered the University of Minnesota last week to reveal the names of candidates in the university’s 2002 presidential search. (Subscription required.)

As president of the University of Hawaii System, Evan S. Dobelle kept in his office here a bucket of plastic crabs tipped on its side, a few fake crustaceans scattered across the floor. The scene was meant to send a message about his mission in Hawaii, a place where Mr. Dobelle says people had clawed and pulled each other into a trap of sustained mediocrity. (Subscription required.)

A burgeoning class of itinerant college presidents, who have more in common with corporate chief executives than with the tweedy campus leaders of yesteryear, does not necessarily bode well for institutions of higher education, a leading expert on organizational success cautioned college business officers on Sunday. (Subscription required.)

Six more colleges have signed deals with Napster to provide the company’s online music service to their students, the company plans to announce today, in a move that college officials hope will reduce illegal music trading by offering a legal alternative. (Subscription required.)

George Washington University this fall will become one of a small number of colleges to attempt a novel solution to the problem of students illegally downloading music from the Internet.

NEWTON, Mass. – The SAT is changing next year, most notably by adding a written essay, and the nearly as-popular ACT will include an optional essay. But while the changes are designed to make the tests less “coachable” starting in spring 2005, test prep companies insist the opposite is true and that the tips and methods they’ve been teaching for years are even more useful now.

ANN ARBOR � The University of Michigan Board of Regents on Thursday approved a modest 2.8 percent tuition hike.

But first they made it clear they won�t be bullied again by the state to set their rates at certain levels and will raise tuition if the university isn�t spared from more state funding cuts.

The fast-growing movement to unionize graduate students at the nation’s private universities suffered a crushing setback yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board reversed itself and ruled that students who worked as research and teaching assistants did not have the right to unionize.

New high school graduates who think they are finished being judged by colleges and universities should think again. Some are in for a big surprise this summer. (Login required.)

Pressured to shrink bureaucratic spending, University of Illinois officials said Tuesday they are on track to trim administrative costs by 25 percent by the end of the current fiscal year–a reduction of about $37.4 million, including the elimination of 57 senior administrative posts.

BERKELEY, California (AP) — Too many students are qualifying to get into the University of California, prompting officials of the prestigious system to consider raising standards.

The University of Illinois says it has trimmed the fat.

Responding to criticism it spends too much money on administration, the university says in a report to be released today it has identified administrative cuts totaling $37.4 million per year.

The maximum Pell Grant award would remain steady, and the National Institutes of Health would receive a slight budget increase, under a spending bill for the 2005 fiscal year approved by the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday. Funds for the Perkins Loan Program, which provides low-cost loans to disadvantaged students, would be reduced by the measure. (Subscription required.)

Harvard University’s new treasurer, the official charged with directing that institution’s financial matters, is the head of a mutual fund company under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Elizabeth D. Capaldi, a vice chancellor of The State University of New York, is one of four top contenders for the presidency of the University of Wisconsin System, a source close to the selection process said Monday.

Public and private colleges should disclose more information about their academic policies and financial practices, and should make themselves more accountable to the public, Carol T. Christ, president of Smith College, said on Monday at the annual meeting of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. (Subscription required.)

A Texas administrator who made national headlines as a verbal punching bag for mercurial college basketball coach Bobby Knight is a top candidate to lead the University of Wisconsin System, according to sources close to the selection process.

David R. Smith, a physician and chancellor of Texas Tech University System since May 2002, is among a handful of candidates rising to the top, the sources said.

The Ohio State University decided Friday to offer health benefits to same-sex partners, joining a trend started by Ohio and Miami Universities as well as Cleveland State University.