USG NEWS:
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/ung-creates-ebola-committee/nhsY5/
UNG creates Ebola committee
By Mark Woolsey
The University of North Georgia has created an Ebola response committee. UNG President Bonita Jacobs says the committee will focus on education, personnel training, preparedness and coordination with external agencies as needed.

GOOD NEWS:
www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-public-colleges-in-america-2014-10
The 100 Smartest Public Colleges In America
JONATHAN WAI AND JENNA GOUDREAU
If you want to be surrounded with some of the smartest students in the US and get the most bang for your buck, you may want to consider one of the following universities. From our recent list of the smartest colleges in America, we pulled out the top 100 public schools. These colleges offer brainpower and affordability, since the average annual cost of attending an in-state public school is $8,500, according to US News & World Report. …Here are the smartest public colleges in America: Rank 1 Georgia Institute of Technology Average SAT 1385 …Rank 33
University of Georgia Average SAT 1240 …Rank 95
Georgia College & State University Average SAT 1140

www.dailyreportonline.com
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/home/id=1202674696839?kw=UGA%20Law%20Grads%20Post%20Highest%20Bar%20Pass%20Rate%20in%20Down%20Year&et=editorial&bu=Daily%20Report&cn=20141027&src=EMC-Email&pt=Afternoon%20News&slreturn=20140927151125
UGA Law Grads Post Highest Bar Pass Rate in Down Year
Jonathan Ringel, Daily Report
The University of Georgia led the pack in the percentage of law school graduates passing the State Bar of Georgia’s July exam, with nearly 94 percent of first-time takers passing.
Overall, 84.5 percent of graduates from the five law schools in Georgia taking the test for the first time passed—a marked drop from the July 2013 exam, when nearly 89 percent passed. Nearly 90 percent passed the July 2012 exam.

RESEARCH:
www.virtual-strategy.com
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2014/10/28/utah-state-university-joins-leading-institutions-modernize-grant-and-research-management-#axzz3HReAyVNX
Utah State University Joins Leading Institutions to Modernize Grant and Research Management with KualiCo
KualiCo, an open source software company focused on the delivery of administrative solutions for higher education, announced today Utah State University has selected Cloud Enterprise for Grant and Research Management to further improve the university’s research administration efficiencies and serve as a single, reliable source for proposal, award, and compliance information. Utah State joins a strong and diverse community of Kuali Coeus institutions including Indiana University, Boston University, Portland State University, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Georgia Southern University,

www.phys.org
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-dna-sequences-key-events-evolution.html
New study uses DNA sequences to look back in time at key events in plant evolution
by James Hataway
Scientists from North America, Europe and China today published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that reveals important details about key transitions in the evolution of plant life on our planet. From strange and exotic algae, mosses, ferns, trees and flowers growing deep in steamy rainforests to the grains and vegetables we eat and the ornamental plants adorning our homes, all plant life on Earth shares over a billion years of history. Regina Baucom, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is one of the more than 40 authors of the PNAS paper. “Our study generated DNA sequences from a vast number of distantly related plants, and we developed new analysis tools to understand their relationships and the timing of key innovations in plant evolution,” said Jim Leebens-Mack, associate professor of plant biology at the University of Georgia and coordinating author of the paper.

www.philly.com
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20141026_Exercise_is_good_for_children_s_brains__too.html
Exercise is good for children’s brains, too
W. Douglas Tynan, director of integrated health care for the American Psychological Association, wrote this for the kids health blog on Philly.com. We all know exercise generally benefits children, and another study to confirm that was recently published in Pediatrics. Though this finding may yield a yawn or two, the latest research goes well beyond quantifying what most of us think is true. Charles Hillman from the University of Illinois and colleagues found kids who took part in regular physical activity enhanced their cognitive performance and brain function. …What makes these results so extraordinary is they are not unusual. Three years ago, Catherine Davis at the University of Georgia did another study of slightly older children who were overweight and did low-level (20 minutes per day) and higher-level (40 minutes per day) exercise versus a control group.

www.bloomberg.com
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-28/savannah-surges-as-major-port-for-imports-on-u-s-growth.html
Savannah Surges as Mighty Gate for Imports on U.S. Growth
By Margaret Newkirk and James Nash
Blueberries from Chile, Peru and Brazil may soon be heading toward U.S. tables via Savannah, Georgia, opening another shipping market in the city’s emergence as a major trade hub.
With a population of just 143,000, Savannah trails only New York City as an East Coast container port and ranks No. 4 nationally after Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, according to Datamyne and compiled by Bloomberg. “Not only have we been the fastest-growing port in the U.S. for a decade now,” Curtis Foltz, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said at the organization’s annual meeting in September. “But we’re now in a position to grow and become No. 1. Something that was unfathomable a decade ago is something that is at least within our sight.” …A sister port in Brunswick, Georgia, about 70 miles south, handles mainly roll-on, roll-off traffic, including automobile exports. Brunswick also imports more Jaguars, Mercedes and Porsches than any port in the U.S. Together, the two ports contributed $32.4 billion to Georgia’s economy in 2011, or 7.8 percent of the total, according to the most recent University of Georgia study.

Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.getschooled.blog.ajc.com
http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2014/10/28/america-sends-far-too-many-kids-to-college-they-graduate-with-debt-but-few-career-ready-skills/
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
America sends far too many kids to college. They graduate with debt but few career-ready skills
Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
By Peter Morici
The U.S. economy remains locked in mediocre growth and increasing inequality. To help break that cycle, federal and state governments should cut funding and student assistance at colleges and universities and redirect resources and students into vocational programs.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/educating-whole-person
Educating the Whole Person
Steven Mintz
General education requirements were instituted to ensure that every undergraduate receives the rudiments of a liberal education.The goal was to expose students to the methods, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, essential knowledge and skills, and habits of mind of diverse disciplines. Approaches to the core curriculum differ widely. Very few institutions follow Brown University in rejecting any core requirements. The vast majority require students to receive a broad, general education before concentrating in a major. Columbia, St. John’s, and the University of Chicago are among the only institutions to require all students to undergo a common core curriculum experience centered upon key economic, historical, literary, philosophical, and theological texts.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Support-Dont-Thwart-/149573/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Black Males Aren’t Failing Our Schools. Our Schools Are Failing Them.
By Ivory A. Toldson
We need to “shift the focus from ‘Why are young black males failing?’ to ‘Why are schools failing young black males?’” That was the tweet I posted on October 2. In response, Cato June, a noted high-school football coach and former professional player, wrote: “Not sure that they are. Kids don’t show up. Schools can’t fail them if they aren’t there.” Then ensued a Twitter conversation among us and Rhonda Bryant, author of the report “Uneven Ground: Examining Systemic Inequities That Block College Preparation for African American Boys.” Bryant and I contended that racial inequities in schools result directly in black boys’ failing to live up to their academic potential.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/28/essay-international-education-initiatives-and-what-they-are-missing
Time to Check Your GPS
By Patti McGill Peterson
U.S. colleges and universities face choppy waters ahead. Navigating institutional direction these days requires not only a clear grasp of what the domestic challenges are but also demands a good global positioning system. Domestic challenges and global positioning intersect at the need for a steady revenue stream of fee-paying students. The past five years have seen an exponential growth in the business of recruiting international students, especially undergraduates, to U.S. campuses. The search for tuition revenue from abroad has happily converged with a rising middle class around the world that is attracted to U.S. higher education. This intersection has its risks and calls for careful steering. Colleges and universities that view these students as principally a revenue fix and confuse their mere presence on campus with internationalization are ultimately headed for stormier seas. It’s time to check the GPS.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view/alarming-expansion-profits
The Alarming Expansion of the For-Profits
By Liz Reisberg
The growing presence and influence of for-profit higher education internationally is worrisome and seems to be attracting less attention that it deserves. Supporters of the trend towards more for-profit universities, like to claim that this sector expands access. This may be true to some extent but access to what? For-profit higher education has the primary objective (of course) of generating profit.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/10/24/unc-chapel-hill-should-lose-accreditation/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
UNC-Chapel Hill Should Lose Accreditation
by Brian Rosenberg
The revelations from the report on the academic-fraud scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been startling: More than 3,000 students over a period of 18 years were awarded grades and credit for nonexistent courses. But much of what has been said and written to date about the extraordinary failures in ethics and oversight seems to miss both the seriousness of the misbehavior and the extent to which it strikes at the core of any college or university. This is not chiefly an athletics issue, though the students involved are disproportionately intercollegiate athletes. Nor is it primarily a matter for the NCAA, which is more a cause of than a solution to the problem of athletics in American higher education. This is an issue of institutional integrity, a violation of the most basic assumption upon which the credibility of any college or university is based:

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Guns-on-Campus-Have-Already/149663/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Guns on Campus Have Already Curtailed Free Speech
By Jennifer Sinor
Earlier this month, the feminist and media critic Anita Sarkeesian was scheduled to speak to students on the campus of Utah State University. The day before her talk, emails were sent to staff and faculty threatening violence if Sarkeesian was allowed to proceed. The threats were fairly general: Sarkeesian and all the feminists in the audience were the targets. But they were also exceptionally charged, promising “the deadliest school shooting in American history.” Administrators and public-safety officials met with Sarkeesian and made plans to increase security. However, once Sarkeesian learned that Utah State could not guarantee a gun-free audience because state law allows concealed weapons on college campuses, she, understandably, canceled her appearance. In that decision, we witnessed one of the first clear examples of how laws allowing concealed weapons on a college campus can thwart academic freedom and First Amendment rights to free speech.

Education News
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/3-colleges-drop-questions-about-applicants-criminal-histories/88505?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
3 Colleges Drop Questions About Applicants’ Criminal Histories
by Andy Thomason
Three colleges in New York State have agreed to drop from their applications questions about prospective students’ criminal records, The New York Times reports. A review conducted by the state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, found that St. John’s University, Five Towns College, and Dowling College make overly broad inquiries into applicants’ criminal histories.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/27/rose-hulman-plans-add-new-psychological-test-admissions-process
Admissions Psychology
By Scott Jaschik
Some people have a knack for writing, while others will never write well no matter how hard they try. That is an example of a question that will be part of a battery that Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology plans to start asking undergraduate applicants to determine if they think they can control their destinies. Students who answer in ways that suggest that they are confident they can control their fates — or who have a “locus of control” to use the psychological term — will get an edge in admissions decisions. And the system could start as early as next year.

www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/67602/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=8a44bfe34ec24ac8b10fd766f8ec091c&elqCampaignId=415
Report Encourages Incentivizing States to Share in Costs of Higher Education
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — In order to reverse the trend of students and families being forced to shoulder an increasing share of the cost of college, the federal government should develop a “new formula” that will incentivize states to invest more in higher education. That’s the crux of a new report titled “A Great Recession, a Great Retreat: A Call for a Public College Quality Compact,” released Monday by the Center for American Progress.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/27/how-reverse-and-prevent-state-disinvestment-higher-education
The States’ ‘Great Retreat’
By Doug Lederman
When they are being pounded for having raised their students’ tuition, public college leaders are quick in turn to point the finger at legislators and governors in their states, whose cuts in financing for higher education are overwhelmingly responsible for the tuition increases. A new report from the Center for American Progress details — on a state-by-state basis — the extent to which recession-driven reductions in public college financing since 2008 have sent tuitions soaring, and how disproportionately low- and middle-income students and the institutions that serve them have been affected.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/10/28/new-bloomberg-effort-help-low-income-students
New Bloomberg Effort to Help Low-Income Students
Bloomberg Philanthropies and other nonprofit groups will today announce a new effort to help talented low-income high school students get into and succeed in college, The New York Times reported.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Helping-Black-Men-Succeed-in/149585/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Helping Black Men Succeed in College
By Ben Gose
Cameron Slater spent nearly a decade on the streets in Little Rock, Ark.—he says he saw four friends die within three months—before he enrolled at Pulaski Technical College after a nudge from his pastor. In his first year, he and his friends noticed some adults on the campus, in North Little Rock, who always seemed to be chatting with black male undergraduates. “We thought they were probation officers,” he says. The adults were actually academic coaches at the Network for Student Success, a Pulaski effort supported by the U.S. Education Department to improve retention and graduation rates among black male students. Mr. Slater gave the program a try. He was assigned a “success coach,” who helped him identify academic goals. …The higher-education struggles of black men are well chronicled. Over the past 15 years, dozens of colleges have started programs designed specifically to get black men enrolled and help them graduate. So far, they are still significantly outnumbered and outperformed on campus by black women. But efforts to improve their experiences are likely to accelerate since President Obama’s announcement in February of the My Brother’s Keeper program, which includes philanthropic pledges of $200-million to help young black students.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/How-They-Made-It-to-the-Top/149587/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
How They Made It to the Top
Black academic leaders took different paths but share a desire to ‘pay it forward’
By Jennifer Howard
David A. Thomas wrote the book on how to get an executive-level job if you’re an African-American man. Mr. Thomas is dean of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Earlier in his career, he spent four years at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, followed by 21 years at Harvard Business School as a professor and associate dean. He holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Yale University. As he built that career, Mr. Thomas had a template to follow: his own research. His 1999 book, Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America, written with John J. Gabarro, compared the trajectories of minority employees with those of white employees, looking for differences in success patterns and other factors that help make or break careers. In conversations with The Chronicle, Mr. Thomas and other African-American men who have achieved high-ranking administrative jobs in academe described the patterns that have shaped their own careers at Ivy League and major public universities, liberal-arts colleges, historically black colleges, and community colleges.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/10/28/hirings-college-graduates-salaries-stagnant
Hirings Up for College Graduates, but Salaries Stagnant
Hiring of college graduates this year is expected to reach levels not seen since the early 2000s, but the starting salaries of those positions are improving at a much slower pace, according to new reports authored by Phil Gardner, the director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/NCAAs-Graduation-Rates-Dont/149627/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
NCAA’s Graduation Rates Don’t Necessarily Prove Success
By Brad Wolverton
College athletes are serious students, the National Collegiate Athletic Association says. And every year, it offers up numbers to make its case. Last year, the association reported that 82 percent of Division I athletes had graduated within a recent six-year period, up from 74 percent a decade before. Last year’s data also showed that a record proportion of football players from major conferences completed college in that time. “More student-athletes than ever before are earning their college degrees,” Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s president, said last year. “And we are gratified to see our reform efforts impact the lives of those we serve.”

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/28/tufts-adjuncts-tout-pay-and-job-security-gains-first-union-contract
A Model Emerges
By Colleen Flaherty
Service Employees International Union launched its Adjunct Action campaign less than two years ago, with an ambitious goal: take SEIU’s metro-wide adjunct organizing effort in Washington, D.C. — which took years to establish — national, and fast. Drives were soon happening from Boston to San Francisco, leading to a dozen new unions. Now Adjunct Action is touting its first successful contract negotiation, and adjuncts at Tufts University outside Boston are saying it could serve a model for the many contract negotiations happening elsewhere.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/28/president-under-fire-hiring-top-aide-who-had-yet-graduate
Degree or No Degree
By Ry Rivard
Jim Catanzaro, the longtime president of Chattanooga State Community College, met Lisa Haynes, now a top aide, in Barbados. He later hired Haynes, a native of the island nation, for a newly created job. At the time, she didn’t have a college degree. Then he bumped her pay up to $108,000 this year. Now, roughly a third of the college’s faculty have backed a no confidence vote in Catanzaro’s leadership and the hiring has drawn scrutiny from state higher education regulators.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/10/28/foundation-bought-alabama-coachs-home-31m
Foundation Bought Alabama Coach’s Home for $3.1M
Nick Saban, head football coach at the University of Alabama, sold his home to the Crimson Tide Foundation for nearly $3.1 million, AL.com reported. The private nonprofit foundation, which helps fund athletics at the university, bought the home from Saban in January 2013 and has paid taxes on the property since then.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/most-colleges-in-boston-dont-pay-in-full-for-city-services?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Most Colleges in Boston Don’t Pay in Full for City Services
by Andy Thomason
Most colleges in Boston have not paid the city the amount of money it has requested for municipal services, The Boston Globe reports. As part of a three-year-old program, nonprofit organizations with property valued at more than $15-million are asked to pay the city twice a year for services like police protection and snow removal. A Globe review found that most colleges don’t make the voluntary payments. For example, Northeastern University, which was asked to pay the city $2.5-million for the most recent fiscal year, paid nothing.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/In-San-Francisco-an/149655/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
In San Francisco, an Accreditor—but Not Accreditation—Goes on Trial
By Eric Kelderman
The accreditor that oversees California’s community colleges goes on trial on Monday in a state court in San Francisco. But whatever the judge eventually rules, it will have almost nothing to do with accreditation or academic quality. The San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, is suing the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges over its decision last year to revoke the accreditation of City College of San Francisco. That action would have closed the college this summer, but the court put it on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/28/competency-based-education-arrives-three-major-public-institutions
Big Ten and the Next Big Thing
By Paul Fain
Competency-based education is going upmarket. Three brand-name, Big Ten-affiliated institutions are now offering degrees in this emerging form of higher education. Yet the new programs at the University of Michigan, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin System are not aimed at the vast numbers of undergraduates who come to those campuses for the traditional college experience.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/10/28/lessons-learned-competency-based-education
Lessons Learned on Competency-Based Education
Western Governors University has unveiled a new website, dubbed CBEInfo, which seeks to be a discussion space for lessons from the nonprofit university’s collaborations with community colleges.

www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/28/facing-end-life-status-institutions-running-angel-look-new-lms-providers
When an LMS Dies
By Carl Straumsheim
The Angel learning management system, after cheating death once, will officially retire in October 2016. Before then, hundreds of institutions will have to search for a new provider.
The death of a major learning management system is not an everyday event. In the day-to-day battle for market share, providers make gains by peeling off customers from their competitors, outmaneuvering other suitors when a college or university looks to makes a once-in-a-decade shift. U.S. higher education is considered a saturated market, and as one of those systems now leaves the space, it creates an opportunity for providers to scoop up new clients — and headache for the colleges and universities urged to migrate.

www.wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu
http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/what-second-term-rick-scott-or-charlie-crist-will-mean-florida-education
What A Second Term Of Rick Scott Or Charlie Crist Will Mean For Florida Education
By JOHN O’CONNOR
Polls show Governor Rick Scott and former Governor Charlie Crist are polarizing. Voters are as likely to dislike the candidates as they are to approve of them. So both candidates are talking about schools, colleges and scholarships — to motivate their supporters. “Education is an issue that is helping to appeal to the base,” says Sean Foreman, a Barry University political science professor and chairman of the education committee for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Foreman says they’ve got a pretty good idea what a second term of either candidate would mean for education.

www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/67608/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=8a44bfe34ec24ac8b10fd766f8ec091c&elqCampaignId=415
HBCUstory Symposium Convenes in D.C., Provides Healing for Founder
By Autumn A. Arnett
A group of historians (and just plain storytellers) gathered in the nation’s capital over the weekend to discuss the past, present and future of historically Black colleges and universities in this country. Meeting under the umbrella theme “Where do HBCUs Go From Here? Strategic Partnerships + Sustainable Futures,” scholars from across the country convened for the second annual HBCUstory Symposium, presenting research and case studies around the modern relevance of these institutions at the Association of Public Land-grant Universities headquarters in Washington, D.C. Oct. 24-25.