University System News
GOOD NEWS:
www.gainesvilletimes.com
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/92134/
Regents OK new bachelor’s degree at UNG
For The Times
The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has approved a new, four-year communication degree at the University of North Georgia. The university sought expansion of the program in response to the recent sustained increase in demand for writers, animators, cinematographers and media specialists. “The new degree will benefit the region by developing students who can meet the needs of the growing communication labor market, especially Georgia’s film, television and media production industry,” said Jeff Marker, head of UNG’s Department of Communication, Media and Journalism.
USG NEWS:
www.myajc.com
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/georgia-regents-consider-tobacco-ban-for-all-unive/nb2zT/
Georgia regents consider tobacco ban for all university system schools
BY JANEL DAVIS – THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Smokers’ days may be numbered on many of Georgia’s college campuses, as the state Board of Regents considers a total tobacco ban for all 31 institutions in the university system.
The ban is being pushed by Regent Thomas Hopkins, an orthopedic surgeon from Griffin who wants it to apply to students, staff and visitors.
www.gainesvilletimes.com
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/92140/
UNG spends $2 million on improvements, extra parking
By Carly Sharec
The University of North Georgia’s Gainesville campus is going through a face-lift, with more than $2 million in total renovations scheduled to be complete in the first part of 2014. Work includes upgrades to the gym and science buildings, and a new parking lot.
www.myajc.com
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/college-student-caught-breaking-into-fox-theatre/nb4fZ/
Police: College student caught breaking into Fox Theatre
‘Phantom of the Fox’ cut on hands, feet by falling glass
BY ALEXIS STEVENS – THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
A Georgia Tech student claimed he fell asleep after an event Friday night at the Fox Theatre. But he couldn’t explain why he decided to break a window instead of using his cellphone to call for help. It didn’t matter. Kevin Royal was arrested after allegedly breaking into the apartment of the theater’s famous resident, “Phantom of the Fox” Joe Patten, according to a police report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
RESEARCH:
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/real_talk/2013/11/cushman-wakefield-wins-project.html
Cushman & Wakefield lands project manager role for Tech’s HPC center
Douglas Sams
Commercial Real Estate Editor-Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Tech has selected Cushman & Wakefield as real estate adviser for the school’s expansion of Technology Square. …The 695,000-square-foot mixed-use development would serve as home for Georgia Tech’s computer-based research programs and offer space for private companies to house their computer, data center and other high-tech operations.
www.thecrier.net
http://www.thecrier.net/news/article_a67f7dbc-563c-11e3-beb5-001a4bcf887a.html
Study: Dunwoody school district would have $30 million surplus
By Dick Williams For The Crier
The city of Dunwoody has received the feasibility study on an independent school district, prepared by Dr. Christine P. Ries, an economics professor at Georgia Tech, and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The study, paid for by the city and Dunwoody Parents Concerned about Quality Education, shows an independent city school district using current DeKalb County school board tax rates would have an operating surplus of $30.7 million. That figure could be expanded if non-instructional services such as maintenance, food service and transportation were contracted.
Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.northwestgeorgianews.com
http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/rome/opinion/editorials/guest-editorial-arne-duncan-speaks-truth-about-common-core/article_f7534d0a-5591-11e3-a90b-001a4bcf6878.html
GUEST EDITORIAL: Arne Duncan speaks truth about Common Core
Arne Duncan didn’t say it correctly, but what he said was correct. Addressing state school superintendents earlier this month, the U.S. secretary of education discussed the outcry against the new Common Core standards. “It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary,” he said. “You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.” …But at the core, he made a valid point, one he stated more clearly later in an attempt to clarify his remarks.
www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/26/and-now-common-core-tutors/?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads
The Answer Sheet By Valerie Strauss
And now… Common Core tutors
It was inevitable. First we got the Common Core State Standards, adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia and intended to raise the academic achievement of students everywhere. To assess whether that was happening, we got high-stakes standardized tests aligned with the Core, because, in today’s school reform world, standardized tests are the key evaluation metric. A new market of Core-aligned products, apps and websites popped up, and now, to make sure that students can handle all things Core, we have Common Core tutors.
www.redandblack.com
http://www.redandblack.com/views/marginalized-students-deserve-safety-comfort-on-campus/article_862e9fd8-54cb-11e3-8eb6-0019bb30f31a.html
Marginalized students deserve safety, comfort on campus
Leila Register
“Those with privilege are hitting triples when they’re already on third base,” is one of many sentiments expressed in the recently viral YouTube video regarding the staggeringly low numbers of black male enrollment at the University of California, Los Angeles. The speaker, Sy Stokes, a student at UCLA, is clearly not talking about baseball. His frustration lies in his belief that students with preexistent privileges are more inclined to succeed because they have a head start. Stokes does not say who the privileged students are, but does say who they are not: black males.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/11/26/rejecting-foragainst-dichotomy-about-online-learning-essay
We Are Not Hypnotized
By John Raucci Jr.
An article in these pages last week, “We Are Not Luddites,” by Brooks Kohler, argues that being skeptical of online learning does not make one a Luddite. Very well, then. I think most academics would agree. If his article had gone on to critique the tendency of tech folks to alienate skeptics of online learning by labeling them backward or hopelessly outdated, I would have been on board. But Kohler takes a curious turn when he writes that liberal arts instructors who welcome online learning are in a state of “technological hypnosis.” Students, according to Kohler, are in a “fixative trance.”
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/joining-medu-board
Is your institution spinning off edtech companies?
By Joshua Kim
This is not a game that only the Stanford’s, Carnegie Mellon’s, and MIT’s of the world should be playing. There are huge advantages to the home institution when an edtech startup is born and leaves the nest. These advantages are, I would argue, not so much financial but cultural.
Education News
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/26/study-online-learning-finds-it-helps-not-hurts-credential-attainment#ixzz2llD0vH9t
Online Learning and Credential Completion
By Doug Lederman
ORLANDO — The discipline of research on online learning is nascent enough, and the body of long-term studies thin enough at this point, that keeping tabs on the state of thinking is a bit like watching a table tennis match. Every study that provides evidence of the effectiveness of online teaching seems to elicit a critical one. And vice versa.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Truce-Over-Technology/143229/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A Truce on the Tech Front at San Jose State
By Steve Kolowich
San Jose, Calif.
Peter J. Hadreas is tapping his knuckles on the desk again. He was a jazz pianist before he was a philosophy professor here, and it’s hard to tell if the tapping is an unconscious tic or a rhetorical technique, but he does it every so often when he is focusing very hard on what he is saying and wants you to do the same. “To have somebody in front of you whom you really believe is going to try to find the truth of things even if it goes against the group—to see somebody like that is as powerful as learning what ad hominem and half-fallacies are,” he tells us. “I don’t think the screen can do that.” He’s talking about online education, of course—a high-profile issue here at the San Jose State University, where Mr. Hadreas is chair of the philosophy department. He says the web is great for transmitting information, but that the most important exchanges occur among humans face to face.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/26/lecturers-email-about-not-calling-classes-provokes-discussion#ixzz2llDrr75e
Why I’m Not Canceling Class
By Megan Rogers
What could make a professor more popular than calling off class to support a social movement? At the University of California at Berkeley, an instructor has seen his email message to students about not canceling class go viral — with largely positive reactions and some criticism as well. Alexander Coward, a lecturer in mathematics, emailed his freshman calculus class last week to confirm that class would not be canceled — despite a union protest that drew the support of many professors and graduate student instructors who did call off class.
www.post-gazette.com
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2013/11/26/Penn-State-criticized-for-keeping-pay-secret/stories/201311260100#ixzz2llJMqSWw
Penn State criticized for keeping pay secret
By Bill Schackner / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Penn State University should rethink any intent to use a newly created compensation committee to award in secret pay packages to top campus leaders, two state officials and a government watchdog group said Monday. Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he found it hard to understand how a public university facing so much scrutiny of late over disclosure would do anything other than release immediately what it pays its top leaders.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/26/meningitis-update-more-unlicensed-vaccine-use-possible-stay-vigilant-over-holiday#ixzz2llFvI200
Monitoring Meningitis Outbreaks
By Allie Grasgreen
Facing a rare instance of simultaneous and growing meningococcal disease outbreaks on campuses – on opposite coasts, no less – college administrators are taking what may be unprecedented vaccination steps, issuing precautions and hoping this unusual situation doesn’t get much worse.
www.nytimes.com
Gunman Scare at Yale Believed to Be a Hoax
By ROBERT DAVEY and ARIEL KAMINER
NEW HAVEN — Yale University began the day Monday with a campus lockdown and swarms of law enforcement officials, but ended it with sighs of relief as reports of a gunman appeared to be a hoax.
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/news-wire/2013/11/25/how-to-understand-crowdfunding.html
How to understand the new world of crowdfunding
Lisa Kahn Grossman
Contributing Writer
The SEC and FINRA recently issued proposed rules, but there are still unknowns as to how it will play out, and there will certainly be more debate and regulation to come.
Crowdfunding presents a tremendous opportunity for private companies to raise capital by collecting small contributions from a large number of investors. Although crowdfunding has been around in some shape or form for centuries – praenumeration is considered an early form of this business model – it has just started to become regulated.
www.chornicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Everyone-Has-a-Solution-for/143225/?cid=at
Now Everyone Has a Solution for Higher Education
By Beckie Supiano
Rarely does a week go by without an announcement or three of another forum, summit, or—lately—”convening” that proposes to shake up higher education or predict its future. The New America Foundation explores the potential of competency-based education. National Journal examines demographic change. College Possible shares research on serving low-income students. The Charles Koch Institute defines the “diploma dilemma.” And that’s just this month.
www.online.wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304281004579220413684985176
Financial Outlook For Colleges Remains Negative
Credit-Rating Firm Cites Low Revenue Growth, Stagnant Job Market, Uncertain Regulatory Environment
By DOUGLAS BELKIN CONNECT
Credit-rating firm Moody’s Investors Service Inc. kept its negative outlook for the U.S. higher-education sector Monday, citing slow revenue growth, a stagnant labor market and an uncertain regulatory environment. It is the second year in a row that Moody’s has issued a negative outlook for the sector. The report comes as both public and private colleges and universities are struggling with declining net tuition revenue as they compete for a smaller pool of students by offering larger aid packages. After years of holding the line on raises and maintenance, schools are facing a difficult time cutting expenses further.