University System News:
Albany Herald
State sells $1 billion-plus in general obligation bonds
From Staff Reports
Gov. Brian Kemp announced this week the state of Georgia successfully sold $1.03 billion in three different series of general obligation bonds to fund new construction projects and equipment, make repairs and renovations to existing facilities, and refund outstanding bonds to achieve debt service savings. “Georgia works diligently to maintain our coveted triple-A bond rating,” Kemp said in a news release. “I am incredibly proud of our state’s fiscal responsibility and efficient use of taxpayer resources. This successful sale allows us to continue to invest in vital infrastructure projects across the Peach State to support economic growth, provide job opportunities in the construction industry, and meet the future needs of our citizens.” The Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission — responsible for issuing the state’s bonds — approved the bond sale at a Friday meeting. The bond issues were sold on a competitive basis with investors showing solid demand for Georgia’s highest-rated bonds. …The largest amount of funding provides over $246 million for Board of Regents projects for the University System of Georgia. …Georgia State University’s Convocation Center: Accommodating a growing population at the state’s largest university in terms of enrollment, a 200,000-square-foot, multi-use, and state-of-the-art facility will support various athletic events, conferences, commencements, graduation ceremonies, and large gatherings. The design also will integrate athletics-adjacent academic programs, such as kinesiology, health, nutrition, and student media to encourage year-round utilization of the facility. Kennesaw State University’s Academic Learning Center: The objective is creating a space where a variety of departments can collaborate in a singular unit for student assistance. It will house offices for University College, the Department of Foreign Languages, the Coles College of Business, the Honors College, the Center for Student Leadership, and Career Planning & Development.♦
Athens Banner-Herald
Georgia has cut higher ed money more than most states
By Lee Shearer
Georgia’s state government reduced funding for higher education more than all but five other states between 2001 and 2017, according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Adjusted for inflation, the state reduced funding for Georgia public colleges and universities by about $4,000 per full-time student, according to the working paper, “Public Universities: The Supply Side of Building a Skilled Workforce.” Public colleges all across the nation saw funding cut in the first two decades, generally beginning well before the recession of 2008, although eight states actually increased funding during the period, according to authors John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna and Sarah Turner. The University System of Georgia’s fall enrollment in the 2018-19 academic year was 328,712 students last fall; the state’s higher education budget for the year was about $2.43 billion. Higher education funding for the upcoming year is up by about $147 million, or 6.1 percent. States disinvestment in public funding for education actually began back in the 1990s, but most of the cuts have been in the last 10 years, according to the report.
Moultrie Observer
CCHS grad receives Fiesta del Pueblo scholarship
CNHI News Service
The Fiesta del Pueblo committee recently awarded its 2019 Maria Guadalupe Cervantes Memorial scholarship to German Gregorio Llamas of Moultrie, according to the committee. He is the son of Mario Llamas and Isabel Vazquez and he currently is in Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College majoring in engineering. After obtaining his associate’s degree he plans to continue his education in UGA or Kennesaw University. Llamas graduated from Colquitt County High School in 2018. He is the oldest of the siblings and he has always dreamed of being a college student. His family helped him and always influenced him to succeed and make his dream come true.
Athens CEO
Fulbright Fellow at UGA Gains, Shares Knowledge to Benefit World Agriculture
Denise Horton
From the time he left high school, University of Georgia doctoral candidate Fawad Khan knew he wanted to use his interest in biology to help farmers. Although he grew up in the city, he knew that a major part of his native Pakistan’s economy was farm based. If he wanted to improve people’s lives, he could make a big impact by working in agriculture. “Even though I was from the city, I saw how farmers worked and the challenges they faced,” Khan said. “I wanted to see how I could integrate my knowledge of agricultural sciences to help them improve their outcomes, to improve their farming practices.” It was that drive to improve the livelihoods and lives of farmers that led him to UGA as a Fulbright Fellow. The Fulbright Fellowship Program, which covers all of the expenses associated with earning a doctoral degree, is part of the larger Fulbright Program established in 1946 to improve international relations, cultural diplomacy and intercultural competence through the exchange of people, knowledge and skills. It is considered one of the most prestigious and competitive fellowship programs in the world.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia campuses debate value of ‘closed’ presidential job hunts
By Eric Stirgus
It all seemed to happen fast, too fast, for some Georgia Tech students. State officials announced June 6 that Ángel Cabrera was the sole finalist to become the school’s next president, replacing G.P. “Bud” Peterson, who announced his retirement plans in January. Seven days later, the Georgia Board of Regents voted to hire Cabrera, a Georgia Tech alumnus who has been president of George Mason University since July 2012.Some faculty and students at Georgia Tech hoped to meet Cabrera before he got the job and wanted to know who else had applied. Neither happened. In recent years, more states, including Georgia, have conducted what the higher education industry calls “closed” — and others describe as secretive — searches for college presidents where one finalist is named and little to no information is shared about other job candidates. Critics have complained the process lacks transparency and can mean the first a campus sees of its new leader is after the person is hired. Others say the secrecy is necessary to get the highest level of candidate and to protect the candidates from backlash in their current jobs.
13WMAZ
VERIFY: Will Senate Bill 278 take away HBCU status for 3 Georgia universities?
The state Senate has a bill on the table that could mean some changes for three historically black colleges in the state, but there’s been some confusion.
Author: Kayla Solomon
Kevin Blalock is the owner of Eighteen36 restaurant in downtown Fort Valley. He also comes from a long line of Fort Valley State University Wildcats. “My parents went to school at Fort Valley, I got an uncle, I got a brother that went to school at Fort Valley — my body just bleeds blue-and-gold.” …Blalock, like many other people, was under the impression that Fort Valley State may merge with Savannah State and Albany State universities, and all three schools would lose their status as historically black colleges and universities. So we asked, if the bill is passed, will all three lose their HBCU status? We verified that is false. The bill does not say this status will be lost.
Market Screener
Georgia Southern University issued the following news release: Georgia Southern University’s student chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) teamed up with the Statesboro location of manufacturing company Briggs & Stratton to help the company better understand why long-term employees choose to stay. The executive board of SHRM worked in groups to conduct 22 stay interviews in mid-April. Much like exit interviews when people resign from a company, the stay interviews help Briggs & Stratton Human Resources Manager Amanda See (MGMT, ’97; MBA, ’01) to understand what has kept the longer-term employees on the job.
Jackson Progress-Argus
Gordon State College opens new Student Center
Special to the Progress-Argus
Gordon State College officially opened its newest campus addition recently with a ribbon-cutting celebration and tour of the Student Services Center. The 11,271-square-foot building, at the corner of College Drive and Spencer Street, features desktop and laptop computer stations, a waiting room for parents and a meeting room that can accommodate seating for 60 or be used for events that require open space. The center will house admissions, financial aid and personnel from the bursar’s office who will handle student accounts.
Times-Georgian
UWG holds groundbreaking for NPHC Garden
The University of West Georgia recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for its National Pan-Hellenic Council Garden. The garden, scheduled for initial construction later this summer, will be located at the UWG Oaks Amphitheater
Ozy
WHEN A SOUTHERN STATE LED THE NATION ON FREE COLLEGE
By Nick Fouriezos
A Democratic governor, flush with political capital, decided to make free college a reality. After wrangling with state lawmakers, a compromise was struck, uniting the warring factions of public and private interests. The measure ultimately helped middle-class students the most, much to the chagrin of its proponents. Yet the headlines that followed sparked national debate as experts declared it a model for educational reform. This isn’t the story of the free-tuition plan passed by New York last month, but that of another ambitious program that aimed to greatly reduce the cost for in-state students. Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship, created in 1993, revolutionized schools in the Peach State and now serves as a telling example of both the possibilities and pitfalls that await the Empire State. The appetite for free college was different in the early ’90s, and there was no progressive-led revolution helmed by Bernie Sanders. The champion of education reform in this tale? Zell Miller, aka “the establishment.” The former segregationist state senator had just clocked 16 years as Georgia’s longest-serving lieutenant governor. Despite his good-ol’-boy status, Miller realized Georgia needed to turn around dismal education rankings that had it in the bottom 10 of most national benchmarks. Free tuition became the centerpiece of his 1990 campaign for governor.
Athens Banner-Herald
UGA opening research farms for annual public tours
By Merritt Melancon
Local people can get a free sneak peek at the future of farming during the upcoming tours of two University of Georgia farms in Oconee County. At the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ Durham Horticulture Farm and J. Phil Campbell Sr. Research and Education Center, it’s a tradition to show off the research conducted at each farm. The researchers and staff at the Campbell Center, located at 1420 Experiment Station Road in Watkinsville, Georgia, will host their tour and corn boil from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday. Conceived of as a way to introduce neighbors to the farm’s research back when the 1,055-acre farm was operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the center’s annual corn boil is a feast made from the corn grown on the property. Since 2013, the center has been the hub of sustainable row crop and pasture research. Van tours of the farm will highlight the farm’s roughly 30 research projects related to sustainable farming systems. …Faculty and researchers will be at their plots to talk about their research. Topics covered include natural pest and disease control, no-till vegetable production, organic watermelon production, pollinator protection and beekeeping.
Savannah Morning News
Tourism, manufacturing help grow Savannah economy during Q1 2019
By Katie Nussbaum
Although not at the rapid pace of previous quarters, the Savannah area economy continued to grow during the first quarter of 2019, expanding at a rate of 0.4 percent, about half the rate of expansion in the previous quarter, according to the Coastal Economic Monitor. The Monitor is a publication of the Center for Business Analytics and Economic Research under the direction of Michael Toma at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong Campus. “The economy has slowed a little bit since the fourth quarter, this is true, but there are some interesting things going on in the regional economy,” Toma said. “The tourism sector is doing quite well and that has really been the sector that has really powered us along through the first quarter of the year.”
Higher Education News:
Washington Examiner
Treasury Department recommends colleges require financial literacy courses
by John Patrick
With an average student loan debt of approximately $30,000 for college graduates and a total net liability of about $1.5 trillion in student loans, officials from the Department of Treasury are calling for increased financial literacy education for individuals who take out student loans in the future. A new report from the U.S. Financial Literacy Education Commission is highlighting the importance of long-term financial stability when it comes to deciding how much student loans will be necessary to borrow to pursue a college degree. …To help alleviate and prevent some of the financial woes that come with borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to finance a college education, officials with the Department of Treasury have produced several recommendations that they hope will be more eye-opening to students when it comes to living responsibly on student loans. First, officials have called for increasing financial literacy education at the high school level to properly prepare students to begin dealing with finances once they graduate. Recent surveys have indicated that not even one in five students in high school have an acceptable level of financial literacy for their age, and that only 16% of high schools were even required to offer financial literacy education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Who Would SAT-Only Admissions Help? White, Affluent Students.
By Eric Hoover
The SAT looms large in the minds of college applicants, who know that their scores could greatly determine their odds of admission to high-profile colleges. But what if the big test were an even bigger test? What would happen if the nation’s most-selective institutions ditched their holistic evaluations and considered nothing but test scores? Those campuses would end up enrolling even more white, affluent students, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. In a new report, SAT-Only Admission: How Would It Change College Campuses?, researchers there raise important questions about the fairness of the admissions system and the role of tests within it. As a “thought experiment,” the researchers examined what the effects would be if the selection process relied on a single variable — standardized-test scores.
Inside Higher Ed
Taking a Stand on Conflicts of Interest in Admissions
University of California adopts post-scandal plan, including ban on consideration of legacy status or ties to potential donors. Move comes as higher ed groups oppose federal legislation. System also tightens rules for admitting athletes.
By Scott Jaschik
University of California campuses were not as heavily implicated in the admissions scandal as were colleges such as the University of Southern California. Perhaps more embarrassing to the university system was an April report in the Los Angeles Times that in 2014 the University of California, Los Angeles, was aware of instances in which the parents of athletes made donations to UCLA’s athletics department in return for the admission of their children. After the scandal broke, the university system vowed to conduct an audit of its admissions processes to determine whether adequate safeguards were in place. Last week, the university system released the audit — which found some vulnerabilities — and pledged to adopt the recommendations. Also last week, new details emerged about the ringleader, and another parent — one of the big spenders in the scandal — pleaded guilty.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
There’s a New Pipeline to White-Collar Jobs. It Starts With Apprenticeships.
By Steven Johnson
…Research using data from Burning Glass Technologies, an employment-analytics firm, shows that many employers follow the job market: As unemployment rises, they can raise requirements for positions. When there are jobs aplenty, as now, companies hungry for workers start to look where they haven’t before. For a handful of white-collar firms, that means snapping up two-year students and other job seekers without bachelor’s degrees. What the companies save on lower wages can go toward training, including programs that pay for an associate degree or other credentials. The trends follow years of debate about a “skills gap” purportedly caused by colleges’ failure to equip graduates with job-ready skills — which, in turn, has prevented companies from filling open positions. “Earn and learn” programs for tech and administrative jobs have cropped up to fill the gap, though experts have questioned whether they can produce enough candidates to replace manufacturing as the route to the middle class.
See also:
Inside Higher Ed
What Would Change With Test-Only Admissions?
New analysis finds that if top colleges considered only SAT or ACT scores, student bodies would become more wealthy and more white. Data challenge some stereotypes about black and Latino students.
Inside Higher Ed
Sanders Will Seek to Cancel All Student Debt
By Scott Jaschik
Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to unveil today a proposal to cancel all $1.6 trillion in student debt in the United States, The Washington Post reported. In the last election for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders made the issue of free college a major issue — and he continues to back free public higher education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
A Public Executive Should Get a Public Search
By James Finkelstein and Judith Wilde
This season’s search for university presidents is winding down, and the executive-search industry is now gearing up for next year. So it comes as no surprise that one of their own has put forward yet another anecdotal defense of the industry — this time a passionate argument for keeping presidential searches secret. In fact, the author is so fervid in his position that he referred to one of our statements against secrecy as “advancing perhaps the world’s worst argument for the open search.” So allow us time to respond. The author has worked for eight years in the executive-search industry, according to his LinkedIn profile. Beyond this limitation, he’s spent less than three years working in a university — not as a faculty member but as an “outreach coordinator/academic advisor.” It’s doubtful that in this role he participated in or had an opportunity to study the search process at any level. Yet, somehow with this background, and based only on personal experience, he seems confident in speaking with great authority on the need for secrecy in presidential searches. Governing boards that use his argument to justify secrecy will do so at their own peril. Let us point to just three of the many reasons that any advice supporting secret searches should be viewed with great skepticism, specifically in the context of public universities. First, the president of a public university is a public executive.
Inside Higher Ed
Librarians Move to Take Dewey Name Off Medal
By Scott Jaschik
The Council of the American Library Association voted Sunday to remove the name of Melvil Dewey, one of the founders of the association and inventor of the book classification system named for him, from the association’s medal. A resolution passed by the Council said that “whereas Melvil Dewey did not permit Jewish people, African Americans, or other minorities admittance to the resort owned by Dewey and his wife” and “whereas Dewey made numerous inappropriate physical advances toward women he worked with and wielded professional power over,” his name should not remain on the medal.