University System News:
www.myajc.com
Mixed results for in-state tuition program aimed at border students
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When a group of Georgia’s colleges reconvene this fall, they will do so with more out-of-state students paying in-state prices, thanks to an initiative aimed at boosting enrollment at some lagging institutions. The plan, in place since the fall of 2015, means less tuition coming in, in exchange for an infusion of students to staunch enrollment declines at 11 schools in the state’s University System. Even though the initiative has attracted border state students to the participating colleges during its first year, enrollment at about half of them continued to show declines from the previous year. The loss of students led to layoffs at two Georgia colleges this year, which both received about $2 million less than the previous year in state funding and tuition. The 11 participating institutions are scattered mainly across south Georgia, some near state borders such as Bainbridge State College near Alabama, and Valdosta State University near Florida. Officials with the state’s University System say it’s too early to fully measure the impact of the initiative, but initial signs from fall 2015 suggest that the out-of-state waivers helped prevent some enrollment decline. Gains will be better measured using enrollment figures for the upcoming school year, which are not yet compiled. Classes begin this month for most of Georgia’s colleges.
www.ledger-enquirer.com
More help for college affordability in Georgia
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/opinion/article94006982.html
BY DUSTY NIX
Good news on the subject of education continues to be in short supply, here and across the country. And even when educational quality isn’t an issue, cost almost always is. Nowhere is that more obviously the case, of course, than in higher education, where costs have soared beyond too many families’ ability to afford them. Georgia is certainly no exception. While the quality of instruction in the state’s academic and technical colleges is generally excellent, access to that education comes at a high price. The HOPE scholarship and grant program has helped greatly; so has the University System of Georgia’s decision to hold the line on tuition the last two academic years. But there’s another high cost none of that covers — textbooks. The going price tag for just one semester’s worth has elicited many a gasp from students and parents alike. Fortunately, Georgia is addressing that affordability issue as well. The Athens Banner-Herald reported last week that the University System has saved the most money of any state’s higher education system in the nation by participating in Houston-based Rice University’s OpenStax free textbook program. …According to a Rice press release, almost 36,000 University System students saved $3.5 million in textbook costs through OpenStax. But efforts to ease textbook “sticker shock” for Georgia students didn’t begin at Rice, as the Banner-Herald also reported. Kennesaw State interim president Houston Davis, the University System’s former vice chancellor and chief academic officer, told the newspaper that an “Affordable Learning Georgia” initiative actually raised the savings for students to about $16.6 million. It involves, among other alternatives, free, rental or library supplied materials. Davis said the program has grown so quickly that savings could grow as high as $100 million a year, or about a third of textbook costs. At Columbus State University, according to information from the University Relations office, one professor used OpenStax last year and several more reportedly will be using it for the coming year. The university’s own cost-saving textbook rental program saved CSU students more than $331,000 just in the 2015-16 academic year, according to John Lester, assistant vice president for university relations.
USG Institutions:
www.accesswdun.com
Hugh Mills, first president of Gainesville Junior College, dies
By AccessWDUN staff
Hugh Mills, Jr., the founding president of Gainesville Junior College (now a part of the University of North Georgia), died Thursday night. Word of his death came Friday from UNG President Bonita Jacobs. “I write with sad news that Dr. Hugh M. Mills, Jr., the founding president of Gainesville Junior College, passed away last night,” Jacobs said in an email. “Dr. Mills was an inspiring educational leader who dedicated his career to serving the students of this region.” Mills served as president of Gainesville Junior College from 1965 until his retirement in 1983. After retiring, he served briefly as interim president of Brenau University in 1985. The physical education complex on UNG’s Gainesville Campus is named in Mills’ honor. A native of Albany, Georgia, he graduated from North Georgia College (now the University of North Georgia) in 1943. He received the UNG Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2003 and was also inducted into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame earlier this year for his successful basketball career in college and as a coach at the high school level in both basketball and track.
www.tiftongazette.com
ABAC president says ‘Life is Better at ABAC’
Special to The Gazette
In his 11th fall conference address to the faculty and staff, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College President David Bridges assured the Thursday morning audience in Howard Auditorium that “life is better at ABAC.” Bridges, the longest-serving president in the University System of Georgia, said ABAC has stayed true to its mission since its founding as the Second District Agricultural and Mechanical School in 1908. “Making the lives of young people better was the mission in 1908, and we’re still doing that today,” Bridges said. “We offer only one product but it is a very valuable product. We offer the opportunity for a life-changing educational experience to every student who walks on our campus. The value of the ABAC experience is absolutely priceless.”
www.thebrunswicknews.com
CCGA opens second residence hall
By LAUREN MCDONALD
The College of Coastal Georgia opened the doors Friday to its second residence hall, Mariner Village. State legislators, Glynn County’s community leaders and University System of Georgia officials, who traveled from Atlanta for the event, cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony, which took place 14 months after the building’s ground breaking. “Our students in generations to come will be beneficiaries of the hard work being celebrated today,” said Jason Umfress, CCGA’s vice president for student affairs. Over the next few weeks, students will move into the 216-bed residence hall located at the forefront of the college’s campus. CCGA partnered with the USG and Corvias Campus Living, a privately-owned company that works with higher education institutions to provide on-campus living needs, to construct the residence hall.
www.forsythnews.com
South juniors shadowing UNG medical students
By Kelly Whitmire
Staff Writer
Two Forsyth County students earned medical experience over the summer from older students. Rohan Rege and Aditya Bhave, both juniors at South Forsyth High School, participated in a 10-week internship with the University of North Georgia’s Department of Physical Therapy, where they were mentored by graduate level students. “It was certainly a very different experience than what I am used to, but it was very eye opening,” Rege said. “I want to go into the medical field, and this helps me learn what I’m going to be doing to further my education to pursue that.” The students went to the university once a week for four hours and split time learning and applying palpation methods, or using hands to feel injuries or other issues.
www.diverseeducation.com
Crowdfunding Efforts Prove Beneficial for Some Students
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
When Angelo A. Smith set up a GoFundMe page about a week ago to raise $800 for applications to various physician assistant programs, he doubted that his crowdfunding effort would pay off. “I was highly skeptical of the help that I would receive,” Smith, who graduated recently with a bachelor’s degree in public health from the University of Toledo, told Diverse. “When you post about things on Facebook/Instagram, people always seem to verbally support your goals and endeavors,” Smith said. “However, you never really know if that can turn into monetary support.” But after Smith got his first $25 contribution, his skepticism gave way to hope. “I instantly began to cry. I was filled with tears of joy,” Smith recalled. “Even a donation so little meant so much to me.” Soon, other donations began to stream in—including donations from complete strangers. …As college students here in the United States and around the world turn to crowdfunding to finance their higher-education-related expenses, some experts warn others not to harbor high expectations about the method.“Crowdfunding, except from friends and family, is generally ineffective at raising money to pay for college,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of strategy at cappex.com, a website designed to help students find colleges, scholarships and majors that suit their interests and strengths. “There are always exceptions, but those usually involve something unusual and widespread publicity on local or national TV,” said Kantrowitz. As an example, he cited the recent case of Fred Barley, a homeless Gordon State College student who biked six hours last month just to register for classes and set up a tent on campus until the dorms opened up, only to be told by police he had to break down his makeshift home. But when the officers learned his story, they took him to a local motel and covered his pay for two days, according to news reports. Then an officer’s wife posted his story on Facebook, and a supporter set up a GoFundMe page that ultimately raised nearly $184,000 for the biology major and aspiring doctor. “The Fred Barley example was successful in part because the police contributed their own money and asked others to help,” Kantrowitz said. “If Fred Barley had set up the GoFundMe page, it probably would not have been as successful.”
www.myajc.com
Bill Torpy at Large: Fall in Athens: Reading, writing, drinking, jail
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local/fall-in-athens-reading-writing-drinking-and-jail/nsBpG/
By Bill Torpy – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Attorney J. Tom Morgan has advice for parents of students attending The University of Georgia: “I tell them your kid has a good chance of getting his mugshot taken.” Morgan, the former district attorney of DeKalb County, has carved out a defense practice trying to get young people out of trouble. And Athens, Ga., home of the Bulldogs, sends plenty of business his way. He just got three more cases last week. “All college kids do the same thing everywhere,” he said. “But the Georgia kids are the ones going off to jail.” In fact, a study he did four years ago found that Athens-Clarke County had 50 percent more underage drinking arrests than Atlanta/Fulton County. This is something to keep in mind as students return to classes at UGA. If you imbibe, then don’t jaywalk, carry an open container or act the fool on Broad Street. Those actions will put you in the pokey. …And so the town of Athens grapples with a yin and a yang — it’s known for a cluster of bars and an eclectic music scene, but there’s also a need for a semblance of order. Put 27,000 undergrads in one place and tomfoolery follows. How to marshal all that youthful passion is the trick. Enter Athens’ and UGA’s police forces.
www.planetary.org
Back to school: LightSail 2 and Prox-1 provide unique experience for university students
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2016/20160808-back-to-school-lightsail2-prox1.html
Posted by Jason Davis
It’s back-to-school time here in the United States, and more than 20 million students are expected to flood college campuses across the country. According to a recent National Academies report, more than 1,000 of those students will graduate this year with a unique academic credential: experience working on a CubeSat mission… And, of course, they get to work on something that will fly in space… Prox-1 is being developed and built almost entirely by students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech. This summer, five of those students landed internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Christine Gebara is the Prox-1 project manager. I reached her by phone on a Thursday afternoon, as she and Lindsey Berger, the spacecraft’s mechanical and ground support team lead, kicked off a road trip from Pasadena to Zion National Park in Utah. Gebara said JPL allows interns to work 80 hours in a nine-day span, which gives them alternating three-day weekends. Gebara is an aerospace engineering student, while Berger is in mechanical engineering. Both are undergrads. Before we spoke, Gebara took an informal survey of the Prox-1 team at JPL to ask how working on the project has helped prepare them for future spaceflight careers. “The consensus we came to is that it gives us the language that’s used in the aerospace industry,” she said. “So when I’m at NASA, I’m familiar with the same problems they have when they’re developing their spacecraft.”
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
What’s Missing in the Student Debt Debate
Unfortunately, the news media and other observers often overlook the fact that student debt is a problem with a color and class element, writes Mark Huelsman.
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/08/08/student-debt-problem-color-and-class-element-essay
By Mark Huelsman
Since student debt, free tuition and debt-free higher education have emerged as presidential campaign-level issues, a narrative has begun to emerge among elite news media that the rising price of college and ever-increasing student debt are phantom problems given the overall lifetime benefits of a college degree. Unfortunately that narrative, which has been highlighted over the past few weeks to varying degrees by major media outlets, including NPR and Vox, rests on a pretty narrow set of assumptions about college and its benefits. And, in fact, it misunderstands the entire point behind the push for debt-free public college. For instance, a recent editorial in The Washington Post titled “Democrats’ Loose Talk on Student Loans” makes the case that we have more of a nuisance than a crisis on our hands.
www.chronicle.com
Some Texas Faculty Members Wonder if They Can Keep Guns Out of Their Offices
http://chronicle.com/article/Some-Texas-Faculty-Members/237385
By Katherine Mangan
When Texas’ campus-carry law was approved, gun opponents at Texas A&M University’s flagship campus, in College Station, were relieved to find that they’d have the option of keeping their offices weapon-free, as long as they could make a convincing case to the administration. But a week after the law took effect and just three weeks before classes start, there’s no evidence that any requests have been answered and no timetable for making those decisions. The new law allows people age 21 and over who have concealed-carry licenses to bring guns into most buildings on public-college campuses. Individual institutions were given some leeway to carve out exclusion zones; the University of Texas at Austin, for instance, generally bans weapons from dormitories, while Texas A&M University does not. Allowing faculty and staff members with private offices to declare their spaces off-limits to firearms has been a consolation prize of sorts to those who feel uncomfortable around potentially armed students. “That was the sliver of sanity visible in the whole situation,” says Patrick Burkart, a professor of communication on the College Station campus. He became discouraged, however, when he learned the hoops the university’s policy required him to jump through, including a form that would need to be approved by the president and three other administrators. According to the form, exclusions would be considered for offices where a gun “presents a significant risk of substantial harm due to a negligent discharge.” Exclusions would also be considered for “research areas with high-risk human subjects,” like those with psychological disorders, and “research areas containing high-hazard materials or operations.”