University System News
USG NEWS:
www.macon.com
http://www.macon.com/2014/06/18/3156203/georgia-tech-gives-hand-up-to.html?sp=/99/148/198/
Georgia Tech gives hand up to midstate industry
BY WAYNE CRENSHAW
WARNER ROBINS — Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership does for industries what the University of Georgia Extension Service does for farmers. Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson is on a tour of Georgia industries the college has helped, and Wednesday he made a stop in Warner Robins. Peterson visited Cascade Corp., which employs 60 people and makes specialized lift attachments for forklifts. Cascade General Manager Larry Read said the company set records in sales and safety last year, and he said Georgia Tech’s assistance played a key part in that. Georgia Tech has helped the plant improve efficiency and safety, he said.
GOOD NEWS:
www.newindianexpress.com
http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra_pradesh/ANU-Signs-MoU-with-West-Georgia-University/2014/06/19/article2288262.ece
ANU Signs MoU with West Georgia University
By Express News Service
GUNTUR: With a view to get a foreign degree to the students, Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of West Georgia, and is in the process of signing two more MoUs with the Fort Valley State University, Georgia and the State University of New York Institute of Technology, New York. ANU vice-chancellor K Viyanna Rao said that students who complete their first year in MSc (biotechnology) are eligible to pursue their second year in University of West Georgia and Fort Valley State University, to obtain MS in Biology and Biotechnology respectively. While, those who are admitted to first year MBA can pursue the ultimate year in Richards College of Business in University of West Georgia.
RESEARCH:
www.connectsavannah.com
http://www.connectsavannah.com/savannah/uga-skidaway-institute-samples-ocean-sampling-day/Content?oid=2460672
UGA Skidaway Institute samples Ocean Sampling Day
Scientists participate in global event
By Erica Porter
If you’re like me, when people use words like “microbial” and “particulates” your response is usually, “Wait. What?” Your brain may go into a dormant stage until they begin using words you understand again. Unfortunately this is often how I feel when dealing with the subject of science. Yet, when I visited the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography to watch a demonstration of water sampling that will be done for the upcoming Ocean Sampling Day, I was reminded of the importance of knowledge gained from their research. Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a worldwide marine research project coordinated by Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany and the University of Oxford in the UK. Although this will be the Skidaway Institute’s first year participating in OSD, Mike Sullivan, External Affairs Manager, says this project fits right into what the Institute has been doing for years.
Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.politics.blog.ajc.com
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/06/19/when-it-comes-to-college-tuition-hikes-georgia-gets-silver/
Political Insider with Jim Galloway
When it comes to college tuition hikes, Georgia gets silver
By Daniel Malloy, Greg Bluestein and Jim Galloway
Looks like Georgia’s unofficial state motto, “Deo gratias, quia Mississippi,” needs updating. …Only in New Mexico, where net tuition and fees rose a remarkable 188 percent, did state officials shift the cost of college from government to students more than legislators in Georgia. Here, net tuition revenue per student went up by 93 percent as legislators cut education appropriations and reduced the value of the HOPE Scholarship many students depend on for college expenses…
www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2014-06-18/editors-desk-focusing-education-could-improve-economic-development-ion-georgia
The Editor’s Desk: Focusing on education could improve economic development in Georgia
By JIM THOMPSON
In Wednesday’s installment of The Editor’s Desk, the point was made that Georgia students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress did not bode well for the state’s ability to supply homegrown workforces for industries, like the considerable aviation presence around the state, that need workers with STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — skills. Continuing today with a variation on that theme, the same Morris News Service story that precipitated Wednesday’s commentary also turned my attention to the 2014 Manufacturing and Logistics Report from Indiana’s Ball State University. The report grades the 50 states on an A-F scale “in several areas of the economy that underlie the success of manufacturing and logistics.”
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/06/19/colleges-should-focus-less-student-failure-and-more-success-essay#sthash.HnVuoJTE.dpbs
Stop Focusing on Failure
By Dave Jarrat
In their effort to improve outcomes, colleges and universities are becoming more sophisticated in how they analyze student data – a promising development. But too often they focus their analytics muscle on predicting which students will fail, and then allocate all of their support resources to those students. That’s a mistake. Colleges should instead broaden their approach to determine which support services will work best with particular groups of students. In other words, they should go beyond predicting failure to predicting which actions are most likely to lead to success.
www.theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jun/18/college-cost-false-meritocracy-jobs-wealth-education
College costs expose the false meritocracy of the American dream
The cost of an education in America has risen so much that only the wealthy and indebted can attend. The system doesn’t work
Chris Arnade
…It is not just Wall Street. Most of the best paying jobs now require a college degree, or post-college degree, and still rarely hire from state schools. They want Ivy schools, or similar. That feels safe. This is a problem. Businesses have abdicated their primary role in hiring, handing it over to colleges, which have gladly accepted that role, and now charge a shit-load for it. Want a job kid? Pay $60,000 a year for four years. Then maybe pay for another two to get a MBA. Yet, those best schools do not teach kids anything radically different from what the average colleges do.
www.radioboston.wbur.org
http://radioboston.wbur.org/2014/06/17/humanities-decline
Are Higher Education Humanities Majors Really Declining?
With the rise of the 21st century knowledge economy, many politicians and experts have been saying something similar about humanities education. They say all the best jobs will be in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — and encourage students not to major in the humanities. So there’s a kind of plague spreading in humanities departments everywhere, at least according to popular media reports.
www.nytimes.com
A Smart Way to Skip College in Pursuit of a Job
Udacity-AT&T ‘NanoDegree’ Offers an Entry-Level Approach to College
Eduardo Porter
Could an online degree earned in six to 12 months bring a revolution to higher education? This week, AT&T and Udacity, the online education company founded by the Stanford professor and former Google engineering whiz Sebastian Thrun, announced something meant to be very small: the “NanoDegree.”
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/a-failure-to-capitalize-on-globalization/33965?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A Failure to Capitalize on Globalization
by Guest Writer
Globalization is one of the most dominant forces facing higher education in the 21st century. Many colleges have responded to it with plans to internationalize their campuses and academic programs. Yet all too often, college presidents fail to harness the huge potential globalization affords. That failure is most frequently reflected in a severely limited understanding of what campus internationalization involves; it is further exacerbated by less-than-ideal decisions regarding those hired or promoted to provide leadership in this area.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Miseducation-of-America/147227/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
The Miseducation of America
The movie ‘Ivory Tower’ and the rhetoric of crisis and collapse
By William Deresiewicz
While I was watching Ivory Tower, a documentary about the state of college in America that appears in select theaters this month (the movie also airs on CNN this fall), it occurred to me that of the many problems with higher education these days, not the least concerns the way we talk about it. “Efficiency,” “art-history majors,” “kids who graduate with $100,000 in debt,” “the college bubble,” the whole rhetoric of crisis and collapse: The public discourse is dominated by sound bites, one-liners, hearsay, horror stories, and a very great deal of misinformation. Higher ed is not unique in this respect, of course, but it is particularly bad.
www.newyorker.com
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all
THE DISRUPTION MACHINE
What the gospel of innovation gets wrong.
BY JILL LEPORE
In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and new graduates—to do what little was left of the work of the employees they’d laid off. This was in Cambridge, near M.I.T. I’d type users’ manuals, save them onto 5.25-inch floppy disks, and send them to a line printer that yammered like a set of prank-shop chatter teeth, but, by the time the last perforated page coiled out of it, the equipment whose functions those manuals explained had been discontinued. We’d work a month here, a week there. There wasn’t much to do.
Education News
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/morris-brown-sale-approved-but-may-require-further/ngNWw/
Morris Brown sale approved, but may require further litigation
By Nicholas Fouriezos
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Morris Brown College won a victory Wednesday in its long road out of bankruptcy after a federal judge approved a sale of its land interests.The college’s $14.5 million sale to Invest Atlanta, the city’s development authority, and Friendship Baptist Church hinges on a contested 17-acre portion of the 37-acre land deal. Clark Atlanta University objected to the sale, saying the land is subject to a decades-old agreement between the schools to use it for educational purposes. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Barbara Ellis-Munro ruled that Morris Brown could sell its interests in the land without voiding its original agreement with Clark Atlanta. But she said Clark Atlanta could pursue additional litigation — in state courts — to determine what those interests are.
Related article:
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2014/06/18/judge-approves-sale-of-morris-brown-property-to.html
Judge approves sale of Morris Brown property to city and Friendship
www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/fitzgerald-proposes-college-savings-accounts-ohio-kindergartners
FitzGerald proposes college savings accounts for Ohio kindergartners
Submitted by Stefanie Botelho on Wed, 06/18/2014 – 7:51pm
The Columbus Dispatch
Every Ohio kindergartener would get $100 for a college savings account and current college students would get about $160 million more in state financial aid under a higher education plan rolled out this afternoon by Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate for governor. “There is a crisis in higher education and anybody that’s trying to get a higher education knows it,” he said during a press conference on the corner of Mt. Vernon Avenue and Spring Street on the campus of Columbus State Community College.
www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jindal-withdraws-la-from-common-core-standards-program/2014/06/18/17088c40-f719-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html?wpisrc=nl%5Feve
Jindal says he’s withdrawing Louisiana from Common Core standards
BY LYNDSEY LAYTON
Tensions over the Common Core in Louisiana erupted into an intramural battle Wednesday as Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) declared he was withdrawing his state from the national education standards while the state’s top education officials insisted Louisiana would keep them. Jindal issued an executive order to remove Louisiana from a consortium of 14 states and the District of Columbia that is creating new standardized reading and math tests based on the Common Core. The tests are scheduled to be given to Louisiana students next spring. “This gets us out of the Common Core,” Jindal said, adding that he wants state officials to develop “Louisiana standards and Louisiana tests for Louisiana students.”
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/19/hampshire-becomes-only-competitive-college-country-wont-look-sat-act-scores#sthash.Mrd65bfo.dpbs
‘Test-Blind’ Admissions
By Scott Jaschik
More than 800 four-year colleges and universities do not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. But of these “test-optional” colleges, the competitive ones will look at scores that are submitted. And most selective, test-optional colleges report that a majority of applicants (typically a large majority) submit scores. On Wednesday, Hampshire College announced that it would become the only such college that will be “test-blind,” meaning that it will not look at SAT or ACT scores even if applicants submit them.
www.sun-sentinel.com
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorials/fl-editorial-final-fcat-scores-dv-20140618,0,3864071.story
FCAT’s swan song shows students earning Ds
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board
The good news is that the FCAT — the high-stakes test that promised to hold Florida schools more accountable for teaching our kids — is about to be replaced with a better test.
But as the FCAT exits stage left after 16 years, its final report card shows only about 60 percent of students passed its math, reading and science exams.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/19/early-success-colorados-broad-set-remedial-reforms#sthash.H5vxB6rl.dpbs
Complex Problem, Complex Solution
By Paul Fain
Colorado’s public colleges are taking on the problem of low success rates in remedial education from multiple angles, with encouragement from state government. And the early returns look good. More students are completing remedial courses, according to an annual progress report the state requires its community colleges and public four-year institutions to produce. Colorado’s statewide remedial course completion rate climbed last year to 62 percent from 59 percent the previous year.
www.hechingerreport.org
http://hechingerreport.org/content/colleges-try-speed-pace-students-earn-degrees_16424/
Colleges try to speed up pace at which students earn degrees
New programs try to reverse the trend of higher education taking longer
By Jon Marcus
INDIANAPOLIS — In the year since they graduated together, Daranie Ounchaidee still runs into a lot of her friends from high school. After all, they ended up commuting to the same community college, where those classmates stopped to commiserate in the corridors about the twists, turns, and missteps they’d already taken on their paths to associate’s degrees. Many work part time, prolonging their time in school. Others have changed majors or dropped courses. …But for her, a degree came with astonishing swiftness. Ounchaidee, along with a select group of 40 fellow students from low-income families in which they were the first to go to college, just earned her two-year associate’s degree in only 11 months. They are among the pioneers of a new movement to speed up the ever-slowing pace at which students get through college, from two years to one for associate’s degrees and four years to three for bachelor’s degrees, saving them and taxpayers money and improving low graduation rates.
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/65053/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=86fe09cf7f2644518808fddbb3f9362e&elqCampaignId=173
‘Tough Love’ Urged in Higher Education Reform Plan
by Ronald Roach
An estimated 600,000 college students attend four-year institutions whose six-year graduation rates fall below 15 percent and at which three out of 10 students incurring student loan debt will eventually be unable to repay their loans, reports The Education Trust advocacy organization in a study released Wednesday. In “Tough Love: Bottom-Line Quality Standards for Colleges,” Education Trust researchers take aim at four-year institutions falling within the bottom 5 percent of colleges on student success metrics of graduation and student loan repayment rates. The report presents a comprehensive plan that recommends the federal government use student aid and tax benefits as levers to spur underperforming schools to improve graduation rates and loan repayment performance.
Related article:
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Face-a-Tough/147247/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Colleges Face a ‘Tough Love’ Problem
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Smart-People-Go-to-College/147235/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Smart People Go to College, and Other Twists in Measuring the Value of a Degree
By Beckie Supiano
It is well established that, on average, people with college degrees earn quite a bit more over the course of their careers than do those without. That earnings premium is one of higher education’s major selling points. A slew of studies—especially recently—have sought to quantify the return on investment, examining annual or lifetime earnings by attainment level or subject studied. But people who go to college or not aren’t otherwise identical. And even those who do go self-select into different majors. In a new paper on the college payoff, Douglas Webber, an assistant professor of economics at Temple University, tries to take all of that into account.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/19/survey-finds-career-aspirations-motivating-students-fully-online-programs#sthash.4kYlu1KF.dpbs
Have Aspirations, Will Travel
By Carl Straumsheim
Students are increasingly looking across state lines to find online degree or certificate programs — especially if an institution can tempt them with improved job prospects, according to a new look at trends in distance education. This spring, the researchers, consultants and senior officers at Learning House and Aslanian Market Research surveyed 1,500 recent, current and prospective online undergraduate and graduate students pursuing either degrees or certificates at institutions across the country.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-chief-reach-of-teaching-will-define-great-universities/53445?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Coursera Chief: Reach of Teaching Will Define Great Universities
by Steve Kolowich
In October 1993, in his first major speech as president of Yale University, Richard C. Levin talked about the importance of Yale’s becoming a “world university.” Great universities have a responsibility to drive global change, he said, and they achieve that primarily by nurturing future leaders and world-changing research inside their walled gardens. This spring, after two decades at the helm of Yale, Mr. Levin took a job as chief executive of Coursera, the online-education company. His views on the responsibilities of the “world university” have not changed, but for a crucial detail: The great universities of the 21st century will not just teach an exclusive subset of the ruling class; they will teach everybody.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Will-ASU-Online-s-Starbucks/147239/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Will ASU Online’s Starbucks Baristas Outearn Their Professors?
By Audrey Williams June
Amid the public-relations back and forth over Starbucks’s new partnership with Arizona State University’s online degree program, an online comment caught our eye: This is a major PR boost for ASU as well, and considering many adjuncts make less than the baristas they’ll be teaching, I doubt ASU is losing money here. —Steve Foerster
Forgetting, for a moment, the financial big picture, is it possible that Starbucks baristas will be better paid than their instructors?
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/study-of-moocs-suggests-dropping-the-label-dropout/53421?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Study of MOOCs Suggests Dropping the Label ‘Dropout’
by Avi Wolfman-Arent
Way back in 1978, Frenchy in Grease was unceremoniously dubbed a beauty-school dropout. But what if she took a MOOC today on midcentury follicular art? Might we call her a beauty-school “collector”? What about a beauty-school “bystander”? Maybe, thanks to a new quantitative study of MOOC engagement released on Wednesday by Cornell and Stanford Universities. After tracking the behavior patterns of more than 300,000 students enrolled in Stanford-based Coursera courses, the authors created a “taxonomy of engagement” to differentiate between different types of MOOC participants. In this new paradigm there are five broad types of MOOC students.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/start-up-aims-to-solve-perpetual-graduation-problem-butchered-names/53385?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Start-Up Aims to Solve Perpetual Graduation Problem: Butchered Names
Stanford University, whose students gave us the modern search engine, the modern sneaker company, and the modern method of money transfer, is finally tackling a native challenge: commencement. At graduation ceremonies over the past weekend, eight departments at the university used a web-based service that allows students to record their names before commencement for the benefit of whoever reads aloud the list of graduates. Dubbed NameCoach, the start-up was founded last year by students at—where else?—Stanford. Universities using the service send a link to graduates, who are directed to a web page where they can record their names as they want them pronounced. …This year 42 universities and public-school systems across four continents signed up for NameCoach, which is now free, though its founders plan to eventually charge a fee.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Senate-Bill-to-Renew-Higher/147241/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Senate Bill to Renew Higher Education Act Is Democrats’ Wish List
By Kelly Field
Washington
Senate Democrats are poised to introduce a bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that would create a unit-record system for tracking individual students, allow borrowers to refinance their student-loan debt, and reverse some recent cuts in the Pell Grant program, according to several sources who have previewed a draft of the measure. The bill, which lawmakers are expected to introduce next week, would also crack down on for-profit colleges, make the accreditation process more transparent, and create grant programs to encourage innovation and dual enrollment, the sources said.
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/65062/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=86fe09cf7f2644518808fddbb3f9362e&elqCampaignId=173
Walmart Awards Thurgood Marshall College Fund $600K Grant
by Diverse Staff
The Walmart Foundation has awarded a $600,000 grant to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund in support of the organization’s Annual Leadership Institute, coaching and mentorship for low-income students and first-generation scholarships for freshman college students. TMCF partners with 47 public historically Black colleges and universities to promote access to higher education and achievement.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/06/19/thomas-jefferson-u-receives-110m-medical-school#sthash.mGaSIvU4.dpbs
Thomas Jefferson U. Receives $110M for Medical School
Thomas Jefferson University on Wednesday announced a $110 million gift for its medical college from the Sidney Kimmel Foundation.
www.touch.latimes.com
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80539001/
USC and Scripps Research Institute are in talks about affiliation
BY LARRY GORDON
USC is in talks to acquire or affiliate with the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, the independent biomedical organization that is home to Nobel-winning scientists and has helped produce important drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. …“The University of Southern California (USC) and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) are discussing the possibility of a relationship that would enhance the missions of both institutions. TSRI and USC have a shared commitment to academic excellence that will result in meaningful breakthroughs to improve health and well-being,” the statement said.
www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/partnerships-making-expansion-possible-texas-higher-ed
Partnerships making expansion possible for Texas higher ed
Submitted by Stefanie Botelho on Wed, 06/18/2014 – 7:55pm
The Rancher
Fort Bend County’s continual growth is unique among most of post-Great Recession America, but the challenges facing its institutes of higher learning are not. While still subject to the same national trends, decreased funding and changing regulations as the rest of the country, the county’s main collegiate players are increasingly utilizing school, government and private partnerships to undertake their present and future expansions.
www.winonadailynews.com
http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/local/colleges-struggle-to-help-homeless-students/article_4c38fe63-b217-5b02-bac2-c66220ff2522.html
Colleges struggle to help homeless students
Alex Friedrich MPR News
…College can be a hard course for anyone, but it’s doubly difficult for students who must grapple with school and find a place to sleep each night. Menday was among an estimated 2,500 Minnesota students in college and homeless. It’s a group that goes largely unnoticed and unaided on campuses. State officials want to change that. College administrators gathered recently to talk over how to support homeless students. Keeping them in school and earning a degree or certificate is good for Minnesota, said Higher Education Commissioner Larry Pogemiller. If the state can help them succeed, it will pay dividends later on, he added.
www.advocate.com
http://www.advocate.com/education/2014/06/17/sc-gov-oks-measure-penalizing-schools-lgbt-curricula
S.C. Gov OK’s Measure Penalizing Schools for LGBT Curricula
The state budget requires two colleges to make up for having put LGBT-themed books on student reading lists by teaching about the nation’s founding documents.
BY TRUDY RING
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has approved a state budgetary item requiring two state-funded colleges to teach about the nation’s founding documents – a requirement that’s basically a penalty for the schools having included LGBT-themed books on student reading lists. Haley upheld the requirement Thursday while vetoing several other items in the budget, reports South Carolina newspaper The State. It mandates that the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Upstate spend $52,000 and $17,000, respectively, on curricula regarding the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents, “including the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals.”
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/19/survey-shows-female-students-worry-more-about-assault-gun-violence#sthash.tl2dp9pt.dpbs
Gender Gap on Safety
Jake New
Female students are considerably more concerned about campus violence than their male peers and are less likely to think their colleges are doing enough to protect them, according to a new survey conducted by Chegg, the textbook rental company.