University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New ranking places Georgia Tech in even more elite company
By Maureen Downney
Tech earns 16th place on national list of private and public universities
Georgia Tech lands in rarefied company in a new ranking released today of public and private universities. Tech came in at No. 16 on the list composed by WalletHub. In the more widely referenced U.S. News & World Report rankings of more than 1,800 schools across the country, Georgia Tech ranked #35 in 2019 among all national universities. The personal-finance website WalletHub compared more than 1000 campuses to rank colleges and universities on the costs of attendance and the return on those costs in terms of career and salary. On the list of 1,000 universities, Georgia Tech ended up a fraction below Johns Hopkins and higher than such prestige schools as UCLA, Brown, Dartmouth and Georgetown. …In part, Tech earned its elite status through its much-vaunted return on investment and its high career outcomes, coming in fourth in ROI behind MIT, Harvey Mudd and the California Institute of Technology. …On that same regional list, Emory comes in at No. 8, while the University of Georgia is ranked 14th, Wesleyan College is 27th, Georgia College & State University is 59th, Mercer is 68, Oglethorpe is 78th, Piedmont College is 82nd, Brenau is 96th and Georgia State University is 179th.
11Alive
Newly released college rankings name top-10 schools in Georgia
In side rankings, one Georgia school ranked as tied for safest in the country.
Author: Jonathan Raymond
ATLANTA — (Editor’s note: The video that appears at the top of this story is related to a list released last year.) Newly-released college rankings by the consumer research website WalletHub list the top schools in Georgia, and Georgia Tech is head of the class. Tech is immediately followed by Emory University and the University of Georgia.
The full top-10 in Georgia
Georgia Tech
Emory University
University of Georgia
Wesleyan College
Georgia College & State University
Mercer University
Oglethorpe University
Piedmont College
Brenau University
Berry College
In the overall rankings of 1,000 schools across the country, Tech ranks 16th.
Athens Banner-Herald
UGA to cut lab, art other fees on students
By Lee Shearer
University of Georgia students soon won’t have to pay extra fees for laboratory and other supplementary course materials. Beginning in the spring 2020 semester, those fees are being eliminated, the university announced this month. The move is the latest step in UGA efforts to reduce costs for students. According to UGA estimates, eliminating lab and supplementary course fess will save an average of $50 per semester for between 13,000 and 14,000 students in about 450 courses. In all, that’s $1.2 million to $1.3 million per year which the university will now cover.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
College professor: How do I argue for raise when corrections officer faces salary cut?
By Maureen Downey
Academic says strengthening higher education fortifies Georgia against economic downturn
In a guest column today, Matthew Boedy, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, talks about the governor’s decision to spare the state’s institutions of higher education from the budget ax. Boedy notes the 2020 higher education budget includes almost $54 million in merit-based pay increases and employee recruitment and retention funds in the university and technical college systems. He poses a good question: “How do I argue for a raise when a corrections officer down the street is getting a salary cut or perhaps even laid off?” Read his column to learn the answer: By Matthew Boedy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
JUST IN: Georgia Southern football player dies at 18
By Chelsea Prince
A freshman offensive lineman at Georgia Southern University has died, the university confirmed Monday night. Jordan Wiggins, 18, played at Godby High School in Tallahassee, Florida, before he enrolled at Georgia Southern to major in electrical engineering, according to the university’s football roster. No information on his cause of death was released.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Ga. Regent Dean Alford ran $6 million Ponzi scheme, suit says
By Eric Stirgus
The investors said they were assured the energy project would be profitable, and that the man behind it, Dean Alford, had exemplary credentials. Alford was a former state lawmaker and was, at the time, on the powerful Georgia Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state’s largest public colleges and universities. But a civil lawsuit filed Friday by 39 investors says Alford swindled them out of nearly $6 million in what they describe as a Ponzi scheme.
Good Morning America
13 years later, soldier meets students who wrote him letters while he was in Iraq
By Katie Kindelan
A U.S. Army brigadier general who became unlikely pen pals with a group of kindergarten students when he was deployed in Iraq drove more than six hours to surprise those students, who are now high school seniors. “It was a great relief for me to say thank you,” Army Brigadier General Vincent Buggs told “Good Morning America.” “Everyone is always saying thank you to me for my service but it meant more for me to be able to say thank you to them.” Buggs, who lives in Tampa, Florida, was deployed to Iraq three times in the early 2000s, including one deployment that lasted nearly one year. During that time, he became pen pals with a group of kindergarten students at David Emanuel Academy, a small private school in Stillmore, Georgia, a town of less than 1,000 people, through a winding path that started at his college’s alumni office.
Buggs stayed in touch with the alumni office of his alma mater, Georgia Southern University — a college about 30 minutes from Stillmore — to help maintain a sense of normalcy while he was deployed, asking about how the football team was doing and what was happening on campus. …This past weekend he was traveling to Georgia Southern for alumni weekend and decided to make a stop in Stillmore to surprise David Emanuel Academy’s senior class, which includes six students from the original kindergarten class.
Inside Higher Ed
Survey of four-year-college leaders finds they lack confidence in their institutions’ ability to adapt — and aren’t planning ahead in ways that would ensure success.
By Doug Lederman
Do college and university presidents believe their institutions are well prepared to adapt to the major headwinds facing higher education? And are their institutions operating in ways that suggest they are well positioned? Not really, to judge by a report and survey published Monday by the American Council on Education, Huron Consulting Group and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The report, “The Transformation-Ready Higher Education Institution,” included a survey of nearly 500 senior administrators at four-year colleges and universities, roughly half of whom were presidents and chancellors. The survey sought to gauge the campus leaders’ assessments of the most significant challenges awaiting their institutions in the next three to five years, how prepared they felt to respond to those pressures, and whether their institutions were structured and managed with agility and responsiveness in mind.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
U.S. Drops in Ranking of University Research Funding
By Elin Johnson
The U.S. has dropped its position relative to other countries in university research funding, according to a new report by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and now holds the 28th spot out of 39 countries, with just 0.2 percent of its gross domestic product dedicated to university research funding.
Inside Higher Ed
Feds’ Payment Card Pilot Moves Forward
By Paul Fain
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to begin a limited experiment with a prepaid student aid card, which would operate like a debit card for aid. Under the program, students would be able to access the funds without paying fees, and the feds would be able to learn more about how students use financial aid.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Speaking Up About Free Speech on Campus
By Peter Monaghan
When Ulrich Baer contributed an opinion piece to The New York Times in 2017 on speech on campus — the subject of his new book — the response was furious. As he does in What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth, and Equality on Campus (Oxford University Press), Baer, a professor of comparative literature, German, and English at New York University, called into question some cherished notions about free speech in the United States. He says nearly 1,200 people responded on the Times website before it closed comments. Many of them, apparently ginned up by far-right commentators, wrote in hostile tones. Comment moderators removed references to his children, which schools they attended, and his family’s home address, he said in an interview. “It’s not a pleasant experience to go viral.” The voices that assailed him were not just reactionary ones, he says. “I was very surprised that the liberal media joined in.” …University communities are struggling, he writes, to explain “where is the line between robust exchange and interference in a university.” He asks: What if students who object to invitations to polarizing speakers to deliver on-campus provocations are not “snowflakes” — overly sensitive, privileged, averse to views they oppose — but instead are objecting to being bullied, silenced, and subjected to demonstrably absurd notions that their professors would rightly never allow in classroom teaching? Students justifiably object, he says, to a silencing that has racial and ethnic dimensions and that leaves minority students and faculty voices with an empty promise of participation in public discourse.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
What Happens When Confidentiality in Sexual-Assault Reporting Is No Longer an Option?
By Katherine Mangan
…Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, mandates the reporting of sexual misconduct, but the requirements can be confusing and enforcement uneven. In recent years, colleges have sought to spell out who must report on sexual abuse they hear about, and what happens if they don’t, in mandatory reporting policies. Those who support policies that apply to nearly all employees say that they help ensure that sexual-misconduct complaints aren’t swept under the rug and that victims get the support they need. But some experts believe that in their zeal to protect themselves from liability and potential sanctions, many colleges and universities rely on a one-size-fits-all model for reporting responsibilities that refuses to make logical exceptions. “The Title IX juggernaut, in some cases, takes on a life of its own when universities enforce a formulaic set of standards where the law doesn’t require that kind of response,” said Brett A. Sokolow, chief executive of TNG, a risk-management firm that advises colleges on Title IX and other issues.
Inside Higher Ed
Professor says Goodwin College fired her for refusing to reveal the identity of a student who confided that another professor wanted sex in exchange for better grades. What kind of confidentiality does Title IX allow for?
By Colleen Flaherty
A former professor of mathematics at Goodwin College in Connecticut says she was fired for refusing to reveal the identity of a student who disclosed that she’d been sexually harassed. The professor, Laura Jean Champagne, filed a lawsuit against the college this month in a federal court, alleging wrongful termination and retaliation. The college says the complaint is misleading and that Goodwin works every day to ensure the safety of everyone on campus. Champagne’s claims nevertheless highlight how Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 defends students against harassment — but doesn’t necessarily protect their identities, or those people on campus who seek to protect them. … Title IX: Law and Spirit
Michael Dolce, an attorney with Cohen Milstein and chair of its sexual abuse practice group, said that Champagne at least appears to stand a good chance of winning her case. But that doesn’t mean that professors are supposed to protect the identity of student accusers, he said. That’s because professors are “responsible employees” under Title IX, meaning they do in fact have to disclose what they know about reports of sexual harassment on their campuses. Yet that’s assuming that all professors and other responsible employees are properly trained in how to handle misconduct reports.