University System News:
www.ajc.com
Regents confirm tuition freeze for next school year at Ga. colleges
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/regents-confirm-tuition-freeze-for-next-school-yea/nq4xd/
Janel Davis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s public college students won’t see a tuition increase next year and will pay less to enroll in some online courses. The state’s Board of Regents, which oversees Georgia’s public college and university system, formally approved the tuition freeze and e-course discount Wednesday during a called meeting. The board also approved the system’s amended budget of just over $2 billion for the current year, and a $2.14 billion budget for the upcoming year, which awaits the governor’s signature. Next year’s budget is a 5.8 percent spending increase over the current year’s funding from the state, and includes $59.5 million in state money for merit-based pay raises for employees.
See also:
Regents affirm no tuition hike for 2016-17 school year
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2016/04/13/regents-affirm-no-tuition-hike-for-2016-17-school.html
Board of Regents backs no tuition hikes at Georgia schools
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/state/georgia/article71546347.html
University System of Georgia tuition will remain same for next academic year
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/University-System-of-Georgia-tuition-will-remain-same-for-next-academic-year-375557391.html
Students to pay same tuition for the 2016-2017 academic year with zero percent increase
http://savannahnow.com/education-news-news-latest-news/2016-04-13/students-pay-same-tuition-2016-2017-academic-year-zero
Board of Regents backs no tuition hikes at Georgia schools
https://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=157&sid=39314606&title=board-of-regents-backs-no-tuition-hikes-at-georgia-schools
www.insidehighered.com
Changing Laws to Win National Championship
A new law, touted as giving the University of Georgia an edge in football, will let state college athletic departments wait three months before responding to record requests.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/13/georgia-law-extends-athletics-related-open-records-response-time-90-days?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=825eb3a0e1-DNU20160413&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-825eb3a0e1-197515277
By Jake New
Georgia’s governor, Nathan Deal, on Monday signed into law a bill that allows public college and university athletic departments to avoid responding to open-records requests for up to 90 business days. The change extends the time in which institutions must either produce the requested records or at least acknowledge the request from three days to more than three months. The amendment was quietly added to existing legislation designed to restrict public access to records about Georgia’s economic development projects after the University of Georgia’s head football coach, Kirby Smart, spent a day visiting the state capitol in March. Open-records advocates this week expressed concern that existing open-records laws were amended simply because a college football coach may have suggested the change. …The amendment made an exception only for “salary information for nonclerical staff,” including that of coaches. The law applies to “any unit of the University System of Georgia, including athletic departments and related private athletic associations.” That includes the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Augusta University.
USG Institutions:
www.thebrunswicknews.com
CCGA dedicates Lake Teel for former college president
http://www.thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/ccga-dedicates-lake-teel-for-former-college-president/article_8bf031bc-e513-5a65-b326-aee3b546333c.html?_dc=58971023917.55959
by Anna Hall
More than 30 years ago, John Teel had a serious decision to make. At the time, he was the president of what is now College of Coastal Georgia, and he had a dedicated vision for the future of the school. If he had it his way — which it turns out he does — what was then Brunswick Junior College would become a four-year college. It would thrive with a balance of academia and culture, and would be a hallmark of the Coastal Georgia community. As he lead the charge for the college for 22 years, serving as president, he was put in many positions to make decisions that would leave a lasting impact on the college campus. …After a handful of studies, Teel was left with less-than-clear data. The lake he was set on building could go one of two ways: become a mud pit, or be an additional element of attraction on the Brunswick campus. Taking a chance, Teel moved ahead with the project and gave the OK for the construction of what he hoped would be a centerpiece of the college he so clearly adores. That decision was honored Tuesday, when the lake was officially dedicated to Teel during a celebratory ceremony attended by past college presidents, members of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, college faculty, students, staff, members of the city and county commissions and members of the board of education.
www.onlineathens.com
Younger professors get better pay at UGA
http://onlineathens.com/breaking-news/2016-04-12/younger-profs-get-better-pay-uga
By LEE SHEARER
Young University of Georgia professors are well-paid compared to other Southeastern Conference universities and national averages, but older, more experienced faculty members’ paychecks don’t compare so favorably, according to the American Association of University Professors’ annual salary survey. UGA pay for assistant professors, the lowest rank, was about $85,255, behind only the average salaries for assistants at private Vanderbilt University ($94,400, rounded to the nearest $100) and Texas A&M ($86,900) among SEC schools. The higher education website Inside Higher Ed this week posted the AAUP salary survey, which includes information on full-time faculty members’ average pay from more than 1,100 U.S. colleges and universities.
www.myajc.com
What are the best colleges for African-Americans?
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/what-are-the-best-colleges-for-african-americans/nq4NF/
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The college selection process can be arduous for students and their parents. To help with the decision, Essence and MONEY magazines have released a new ranking of the best 50 colleges for African Americans. Topping the list is Princeton, followed by Harvard, Duke and Cornell universities. Atlanta’s Spelman College, ranked sixth, was the top-ranked among Georgia schools. Georgia Tech ranked 12th, and Emory University ranked 42nd.
www.myajc.com
Three Georgia students among elite scholars
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/three-georgia-students-among-elite-scholars/nq4Jp/
By Christopher Quinn – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Three Georgia students received $90,000 graduate scholarships from The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants. A total of thirty U.S. recipients were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic field, and were selected from a pool of 1,443 applicants. The Georgia students include Abubakar Abid, who went to Walton High School in Cobb County and then onto the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sharada Jambulapati of Cairo, Ga., who is in law school at the University of California-Berkeley; and Binbin Chen who went to school in LaGrange, then to Georgia Tech and is now in medical school at Stanford University.
www.bet.com
[Black Girls Rock!] Georgia Tech Student Slays and Breaks the Internet All at Once
This is what a rocket scientist looks like.
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2016/04/12/-black-girls-rock—georgia-tech-student-slays-and-breaks-the-in.html
By Rachel Herron
Tiffany Davis is a graduating senior at Georgia Tech whose graduation photos took the world by storm. The aerospace engineer major tweeted a series of photos with the hashtag #YesImARocketScientist and the post instantly went viral. Davis became interested in engineering after she received a circuit board for a Christmas present. She began studying at the Georgia Institute of Technology and majored in aerospace engineering, which falls under the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) umbrella.
www.inc.com
How Billion-Dollar Udacity Plans to Make Money
http://www.inc.com/linkedin/sramana-mitra/billion-dollar-unicorn-udacity-leans-industry-giants-sramana-mitra.html
The rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has given rise to several startups like Coursera, EdX, and Udacity with a mission to provide high quality education to students anywhere in the world. However, MOOCs came with its own set of problems like low course completion rates and monetization. Udacity has come up with solutions to these problems and is one of the first MOOC startups to join the Billion Dollar Unicorn Club… Udacity went on to offer courses in algebra, statistics, computer science, etc. It also launched a three-year online degree course on the MOOC platform in collaboration with Georgia Tech that cost just $7000 in January 2014. It had 1.6 million users in 12 full courses and 26 free courseware in April 2014.
www.economictimes.indiatimes.com
Our courses are same in quality as offline courses: Zvi Galil
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/our-courses-are-same-in-quality-as-offline-courses-zvi-galil/articleshow/51786834.cms
By Varuni Khosla, ET Bureau
Contrasting visions of the direction of international higher education – from MOOC-like masters degrees to undergraduate programmes in seven countries for students who want a true global experience – were presented to the first “Student of the Future” conference organised by Dutch-based StudyPortals. The global study choice platform held the event at Groningen University in the Netherlands on 5 April, and attracted over 100 top minds working in international education. They came together to consider the needs and expectations of the next generation of students and the future education landscape. Opening speaker Dr Zvi Galil, dean of computing at Georgia Tech in the United States, told how his university had teamed up with the American multinational telecommunications corporation AT&T, and Udacity – the for-profit educational organisation offering massive open online courses or MOOCs – to create a MOOC-like masters degree in computer science.
www.tucsonsentinel.com
Factchecking the White House on climate, heat deaths
http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/041216_heat_deaths/factchecking-white-house-climate-heat-deaths/
Vanessa Schipani
In a recent “fact sheet” on the threat climate change poses to human health, the White House cherry-picked data on the estimated number of premature deaths due to future extreme temperatures:… Conducted by Brian Stone Jr., an urban environmental planning expert at Georgia Tech, and others, the study notes that “heat management strategies most effective in offsetting mortality vary by region.”
www.crowdfundinsider.com
Worldpay-Georgia Tech FinTech Initiative Yields Success
A year after launching an accelerator program focused on helping entrepreneurs in Georgia’s growing FinTech sector succeed, the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech is working with a portfolio of 20 innovative startups — including 8 which have already raised more than $16.8 million in funding. The ATDC FinTech Program was created through a $1 million gift Georgia Tech received from Worldpay, the global payments technology company.
Higher Education News:
www.diverseeducation.com
2 Econ Professors Cite Student Borrowing as Contributor to Rising Tuition
http://diverseeducation.com/article/83278/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elqTrackId=987abcbd18f14f729570f08448f078cc&elq=e8496766a396440e95496de6da839327&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=771
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — Increased student borrowing, more generous financial aid and the increased value of a college degree have all conspired to drive up tuition, two economics professors argue in a new paper released Tuesday. “Our model assumes that colleges effectively collude with each other, which would exaggerate some of these effects,” said one of the co-authors, Grey Gordon, an assistant professor of economics at Indiana University Bloomington. “Those who act like monopolists get a lot of tuition out of students if they really want to go to school.” Gordon made his remarks Tuesday at the American Action Forum, a nonprofit that purports to advance the “center-right policy debate” on various issues. He was joined by co-author Aaron Hedlund, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Missouri. Gordon and Hedlund spoke of colleges spending on “quality-enhancing activities” to attract high-achieving students.
www.chronicle.com
Rebuilding the Bachelor’s Degree
http://chronicle.com/article/Rebuilding-the-Bachelors/236087?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=a1aabed988584515b62e6b2b8708e25c&elq=7a0fe7213de849dea4cc67b762a8d09d&elqaid=8654&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2903
By Jeffrey J. Selingo
…Complaints about the state of undergraduate education didn’t come from just students, however. Employers I interviewed lamented that their recent hires with newly minted bachelor’s degrees were underprepared, complaints that are nothing new, of course, but that seem to have grown louder in recent years. And I heard from dozens of faculty members at all types of institutions who were frustrated with the either/or arguments pitting liberal education against professional training that have come to define the debates over curricular reform efforts. What I concluded after nearly two years of interviews with employers, recent graduates, career advisers, and professors was that efforts to simply reform the undergraduate course catalog are not enough if we hope to prepare students for a future where automation threatens to increasingly displace college-educated workers. A desperate need exists for wholesale reform of the baccalaureate degree. Until now, fiddling with the actual structure of the four-year degree has been mostly off limits — except for a few experiments with a three-year version at a handful of colleges. Institutions are reluctant to change the inner workings of the bachelor’s degree because they are unsure exactly what part of its complex formula leads to success.
www.chronicle.com
In Admission Decisions, the Deciders’ Own Backgrounds Play a Big Role
http://chronicle.com/article/In-Admission-Decisions-the/236088
By Peter Schmidt
A new study of admissions officers calls into question selective colleges’ claims that they have fully embraced holistic admissions as a means of promoting diverse enrollments. The study, based on an unusual experiment involving more than 300 admissions officers at selective colleges, found that a large share of the institutions gave holistic consideration only to midrange applicants. They used academic cutoffs based on grades, standardized-test scores, or the academic rigor of high-school courses to admit those at the top or reject those at the bottom.
www.nytimes.com
Are Public Universities Neglecting In-State Students?
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/11/are-public-universities-neglecting-in-state-students
Almost all flagship state universities have sharply increased the number of nonresident students they accept over the past decade, partly because they want the higher tuition they pay. After a scathing audit found that the University of California was hurting locals by lowering standards for out-of-state students, the system announced last week that it will accept almost 15 percent more in-state freshman this year. Have state universities gone too far in seeking out-of-state students?
www.chronicle.com
What It’s Like to Lead a College’s Response to Disaster
http://chronicle.com/article/What-It-s-Like-to-Lead-a/236084?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=dff78a274bdb404596edb538df56d57d&elq=7a0fe7213de849dea4cc67b762a8d09d&elqaid=8654&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2903
By Peter Schmidt
…Such experiences have led Ms. Treadwell, now associate director of the University of Kansas’ Office of First-Year Experience, to take a deep interest in how colleges respond to tragedies involving a substantial loss of life. She recently conducted a qualitative study involving extensive interviews with 11 college administrators — chief student-affairs officers or their second in command — who had overseen their institution’s response to such disasters as mass shootings, plane crashes, or hurricanes. Ms. Treadwell presented a paper summarizing her findings here on Tuesday at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association. The Chronicle interviewed her last week about her research. Following is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.
www.washingtonpost.com
Universities aren’t doing enough to train the cyberdefenders America desperately needs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/11/universities-arent-doing-enough-to-train-the-cyberdefenders-america-desperately-needs/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_tech
By Andrea Peterson
The threat of hacking seems to lurk around every corner, but American universities may not be doing enough to prepare the next generation of cyberdefenders. None of America’s top 10 computer science programs — as ranked by U.S. News & World Report in 2015 — requires graduates to take even one cybersecurity course, according to a new analysis from security firm CloudPassage. Three of the 10 top-ranked programs don’t even offer a single elective cybersecurity course, according to the company’s findings. And only one of the top 36 programs, the University of Michigan, requires students to take a security course to graduate.
www.insidehighered.com
Report Calls for Improved Oversight of Colleges
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/04/13/report-calls-improved-oversight-colleges?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=825eb3a0e1-DNU20160413&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-825eb3a0e1-197515277
The U.S. Department of Education’s system for monitoring colleges for fraud and other problems is inadequate and needs to be retooled, says a new report by the Center for American Progress. The department’s efforts to see whether colleges are following existing laws and regulations are not useful in capturing systemic fraud or misconduct, especially at for-profit colleges, the report says. The report — titled “Looking in All the Wrong Places” — is based on an analysis of more than 6,000 pages of audit documents that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It was written by Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Elizabeth Baylor and Ben Miller of the Center for American Progress. Among the problems outlined in the report is that audits of colleges by the federal government and auditors hired by the colleges are too narrowly focused on the minutia of how financial aid is disbursed at the expense of broader and more pressing concerns, such as whether a college is misrepresenting information to students.