University System News:
www.jacksonville.com
Georgia students’ dual enrollment process streamlined
http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2015-05-21/story/georgia-students-dual-enrollment-process-streamlined
By Walter C. Jones
ATLANTA | As the current school year ends, officials at the state’s colleges are gearing up for the impact of a law that streamlines access to free college for high school students. “Our hope is that one day we will have students who are graduating not just with their high school diploma but also with a technical college degree,” said Gretchen Corbin, commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia. Already 11,000 teens have been enrolled in technical college classes while still in high school and another 6,700 students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities. Administrators expect those numbers to grow as a result of two bills that Gov. Nathan Deal recently signed into law that simplifies the dual-enrollment options. “What we were seeing across the state was a lot of confusion about dual enrollment with families,” said Tracy Ireland, associate vice chancellor at the University System of Georgia. That confusion hampered parents and students from taking advantage of free access to college. The new laws cover all expenses, including textbooks and transportation from the high school to the university or technical college which could be in a neighboring county.
www.mdjonline.com
State Rep. aims to investigate how campus rape is handled
http://mdjonline.com/printer_friendly/26648977
by Philip Clements
MARIETTA — A Cobb lawmaker wants to conduct hearings on how colleges and universities handle rape cases, saying there shouldn’t be a separate judicial process for crimes on campus. State Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) is the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees appropriations for public universities. Ehrhart said he read a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that described a “secret process for judging sexual misconduct allegations,” which troubled him because it outlined what he considers a violation of the right to due process as its laid out by the Fifth Amendment. “If somebody commits a crime, that’s the purview of trained professional jurists, district attorneys (and) law enforcement. The universities absolutely don’t need to be in that business, so I want to make sure that they’re not,” Ehrhart said. “They don’t need a secondary system of justice on university campuses. That’s the issue.”
www.bizjournals.com
Top Georgia public university presidents get big raises
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/capitol_vision/2015/05/top-georgia-public-university-presidents-get-big.html
Dave Williams
Atlanta Business Chronicle
The University System of Georgia is giving the presidents of its top universities hefty raises in a bid to keep their services, putting two into the millionaire category. The system’s Board of Regents voted this week to adopt a compensation plan that will pay Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson $1.09 million in both the current fiscal year and in fiscal 2016, which starts July 1. Mark Becker, president of Georgia State University, is to receive $1.07 million in each of the two years. “Higher education has become a competitive market for leaders,” said system Chancellor Hank Huckaby, who put together the compensation plan for Peterson, Becker and Jere Morehead, president of The University of Georgia. “We compete for the best, and we want to keep them.”
USG Institutions:
www.wabe.org
Report: Clayton State, Ga. Southern Prepare Teachers Best
http://wabe.org/post/report-clayton-state-ga-southern-prepare-teachers-best
By Martha Dalton
How do you know if a teacher is well prepared? According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, it could depend on where they went to college. The council ranks colleges’ teacher preparation programs. It uses criteria like admissions standards, curriculum, and how much time students actually spend in classrooms teaching. According to the latest rankings, Clayton State University, which is just south of Atlanta, produces Georgia’s best-prepared high school teachers. The report says the best-prepared elementary school teachers graduate from Georgia Southern University, which is located in Statesboro.
www.insidehighered.com
The Other Lesson of Kennesaw
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/other-lesson-kennesaw
By Matt Reed
The Kennesaw State “advisor” video debacle is potentially far more radical than most people seem to assume. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a hidden camera (presumably cell phone) video of a white female advisor being aggressively dismissive of a young black male student’s request for help. She seems to go out of her way to escalate an apparent misunderstanding into something much more sinister. After the video went public, the advisor was placed on leave. The video and its fallout have mostly been framed as being about racial and gender politics, and there’s good reason for that. It’s hard not to wince when you watch it. But it’s also about a shift of control. I don’t know either of the parties to the video, so this isn’t really about them. But as a manager, I saw the difference between rule-bound discipline and unbound discipline.
www.onlineathens.com
Resident helps nab UGA tool thief
http://onlineathens.com/blotter/2015-05-22/resident-helps-nab-uga-tool-thief
By Joe Johnson
Athens-Clarke County police on Wednesday arrested a possible suspect in a recent series of tool thefts from vehicles at the University of Georgia’s Chicopee Complex in east Athens. While investigating an unrelated matter that day, an officer was approached by a Herman Street resident who read in the newspaper about the recent thefts. The resident was telling the officer about a suspicious man she’d seen in the area when she nodded her head to tell the officer, “There he is,” according to the report. …The officer arrested Walls upon learning there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Hall County. The report notes when searching the man, the officer found some tools in Wall’s pocket. A UGA police officer who arrived on the scene was given the tools for comparison with tools stolen from the Chicopee Complex.
Higher Education News:
www.augusta.chronicle.com
Economists say Georgia must work to stay competitive
Economists say Georgia must work to stay competitive
By Jenna Martin
Staff Writer
After a gradual seven-year climb out of the recession, Georgia’s future economic development will see fierce competition from surrounding states, economist Roger Tutterow said Thursday. Tutterow was joined by Georgia Budget and Policy Institute Executive Director Taifa Smith Butler as guest speakers at the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce’s post-legislative breakfast. Tutterow referenced business magazine Site Selection’s November ranking of states with the best business climates as an example. The magazine put Georgia on top for the second consecutive year.“If you look at the next 10 states on the list, eight of them are in the Southeast, including every state that touches Georgia,” said Tutterow, the director of Kennesaw State University’s Econometric Center. “Now is not the time to get complacent. The economic development game is more competitive in the Southeast today than in any time in the last quarter century.” …Both Butler and Tutterow agreed that the state’s ability to attract business will hinge partially on how skilled the workforce is. They discussed the importance of investing in the training of existing and future workers through programs and partnerships with technical schools to meet the needs of future employers.
www.insidehighered.com
Students Feel Unprepared for Job Market
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/05/22/students-feel-unprepared-job-market
Only one in five college students say they feel “very prepared” to join the workforce, according to the results of McGraw-Hill Education’s annual student workforce readiness survey. While 45 percent of the roughly 1,000 respondents said they feel “somewhat prepared” to begin a career after college, slightly more than half said they did not learn how to write a résumé. And 56 percent did learn how to conduct themselves in a job interview. The survey found that less than one-third of students said career services on campus were effective.
www.diverseeducation.com
Expert: U.S. Must End ‘Addiction’ to Bachelor’s Degrees
http://diverseeducation.com/article/73116/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=08d56576ce32458087739a000cff9fcc&elqCampaignId=415&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqTrackId=fc5b0a69d2d94a439cad88d6c06862d8
WASHINGTON — America must break its “addiction” to bachelor’s degrees and become better acquainted with the financial benefits of one- and two-year degrees and certificates, an education researcher argued at a recent panel discussion about what level of higher education it takes to break into the middle class. “When you ask people what they think about postsecondary education, they say ‘bachelor’s,’” said Mark Schneider, Vice President and Institute Fellow of the Education Program at the American Institutes for Research, or AIR. “I think of this as a bachelor’s addiction which has to be broken and has to be changed,” Schneider said. “The contemporary bachelor’s degree takes too long, it’s too expensive and it’s not for everyone.” Schneider presented wage-earnings data that show various one- and two-year degrees and several certificates enable holders to command salaries that surpass those of some bachelor’s degree holders.