University System News:
www.ledger-enquirer.com
Charlie Harper: A real blockbuster for Georgia
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2015/06/02/3749710_charlie-harper-a-real-blockbuster.html?rh=1
The goal of the aggressive tax credits has been to attract enough of these productions that the companies that film them and the workers that staff them will make a home in Georgia. This too is showing overwhelming success. …The bad and good news is that Georgia does not have enough skilled workers to meet the growing demand. As such, Georgia’s colleges and technical schools are adapting their curriculum to produce students with employable skills in the industry. The University of North Georgia has received approval from the Board of Regents to begin offering a four-year degree in Film and Digital Media. Last year, Governor Deal expanded the Hope Grant program to offer Film Set Design as a category for Strategic Industries Workforce Development Grants, where students may receive tuition paid based on their course of study. …As the industry is incredibly transient, it can go away as fast as it has appeared. Other Southern states have cut their tax credit programs back as Georgia has expanded ours. Their losses have been our gain. The Georgia Film Tax Credit is one of our finest examples of setting broad tax policy and letting the market then work. Ten years after initial implementation, the physical investment in studios and the shortage of available workers demonstrate that the state has cultivated an industry with long-term prospects and expanding employment opportunities. We need to keep the sequels running. The credits are starting to look really nice for film production in the Peach State.
USG Institutions:
www.myajc.com
Developers, Georgia State get earful at Turner Field meeting
http://www.myajc.com/news/business/developers-georgia-state-get-earful-at-turner-fiel/nmTXH/
J. Scott Trubey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A development team and Georgia State University officials got an earful Tuesday from residents near Turner Field, with many asking the partners to shelve conceptual plans to transform the stadium area until a neighborhood planning effort can determine what the community wants.The development team, led by Atlanta real estate firm Carter and Georgia State, have proposed a blend of private student apartments, senior housing, single-family homes, a grocery store, shops and separate college football and baseball stadiums on about 80 acres. The proposal is essentially unchanged since first reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 13 months ago.
www.wmbfnews.com
Georgia State University on alert after mugging at gunpoint
http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/29223886/georgia-state-university-students-and-staff-on-alert-after-mugging-at-gunpoint
By Tylar Bacome
ATLANTA (CBS46) – Darryl Burke says he now lives in constant fear after a morning he’ll never forget. “My heart was racing with fear. I didn’t know if I’d be able to come home to see my wife and my daughter,” said Burke. Burke says he was walking to his job as a custodian on Georgia State University’s campus just before 6 a.m. on May 28 when a man approached him and stuck a gun to his neck. “He told me to give it up, just kept saying I want everything; ‘Phone, wallet, give me everything,’ and I did and he just had a gun pointed at me the whole time,” said Burke. Burke said the man hopped in an SUV with three others and took off after the attack. GSU student Jamiya Brinson works the 6 a.m. shift at the Student Recreation Center near where Burke was attacked, so she just missed witnessing the mugging, or worse. “It’s dangerous. It makes you scared and afraid to actually just walk on campus,” said Brinson.
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
Where the College Grads Want to Live
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/03/where-college-grads-want-live
New college graduates have shifted their patterns on where to move after graduation, according to research published in the journal Papers in Regional Science. In the 1990s, new graduates were flocking to cities with high tech industries and cultural life, and many cities focused on attracting the types of organizations that would be attractive to new graduates. But since 2000, with the economy making it more difficult for new graduates to find jobs, new graduates have placed more emphasis on size of city, believing that since there are more jobs in larger cities, they should head to them, based on their size, not the industry make-up or cultural life.
www.insidehighered.com
Corporations Go to College
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/03/improving-economy-brings-opportunities-corporate-partnerships-higher-education
By Carl Straumsheim
Are colleges and universities getting savvier about pitching their programs to the private sector, or are corporations increasingly turning to higher education to train their employees? The answer, according to workforce researchers, corporate education providers and companies themselves, is somewhere in the middle. In the last year alone, companies such as Anthem, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, McDonald’s and Starbucks have announced that they will pay to send their employees to college — or back to college. At the same time, many institutions have entered or are in the process of entering the adult learner market, offering programs catering to working adults or signing agreements with corporations to offer tuition discounts to their employees. It’s a partnership that makes sense: companies need to train employees, and colleges need to increase enrollments. But when corporations outsource their training programs, they tend to spend their money outside higher education.
www.insidehighered.com
Polytechnic Resurgence?
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/03/purdue-university-and-u-akron-embrace-new-polytechnic-identity
By Kellie Woodhouse
Enrollment at the University of Akron is declining, and revenue is down. To many prospective students, the institution is indistinguishable from the handful of other regional universities in northeast Ohio. Top officials this year surveyed the trajectory of the college and weren’t happy with what they saw. A change was in order: a rebranding and a rethinking of mission. Earlier this month Akron rebranded itself as “Ohio’s Polytechnic University.” …Although polytechnic institutions remain relatively rare in the greater landscape of U.S. higher education, they are prevalent internationally. … Becoming a polytechnic has other advantages, aside from possible enrollment increases. If done well, it can increase job placement rates. Polytechnic institutions also attract large numbers of international students and potentially help with fund-raising as relationships between universities and industry are strengthened.
www.chronicle.com
Kipnis Case Highlights Perilous Clash of Title IX and Academic Freedom
http://chronicle.com/article/Kipnis-Case-Highlights/230621/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Katherine Mangan
Students deserve to be educated in an environment free from sexual harassment, and professors, to speak and write freely about sensitive topics. But what happens when federal laws designed to protect those rights “butt heads,” as some say occurred during the fallout over a Northwestern University professor’s essays on what she termed “sexual paranoia” on college campuses? Universities nationwide are grappling with those issues as the number of campuses being investigated by the federal government for potential violations of the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX has climbed to more than 100.
www.chronicle.com
With Restorative Justice, Students Learn How to Make Amends
http://chronicle.com/article/With-Restorative-Justice/230575/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Beth McMurtrie
Last year Dalhousie University discovered that a group of male dental students had been using a Facebook group to make derisive and sexually explicit comments about their female classmates. But instead of simply penalizing them, the university, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, also used a process known as restorative justice. For five months the male students, their classmates, and a wider circle of administrators, dental professionals, restorative-justice experts, and community members met to talk about what the students had done, why, how it had hurt people, and what the students could do to change both themselves and the environment that had fueled their behavior. Dalhousie drew widespread attention, in part because many observers were outraged that the university had not immediately expelled the students. The case became a high-profile example of a growing practice in which colleges try to help redeem, rather than just discipline, students who violate campus policies.
www.chronicle.com
Alternative Idea for Resolving Sexual-Assault Cases Emphasizes Closure
http://chronicle.com/article/Alternative-Idea-for-Resolving/230623/?cid=at
By Sara Lipka
Under federal and public pressure, colleges are building courtlike systems to resolve students’ reports of sexual assault. Yet activists driving the movement keep calling attention to how campuses fail them. Maybe the problem isn’t how colleges run the process, say a few researchers and practitioners, but the process itself.