University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democratic lawmakers propose in-state tuition for all Georgia students
By Eric Stirgus
Five Georgia House Democrats have proposed legislation aimed at allowing immigrants with temporary permission to stay in the United States to pay in-state tuition at any of the state’s public colleges and universities. Those students currently pay out-of-state tuition, which is at least three times higher than the in-state cost to study at University System of Georgia schools. House Bill 896, introduced Wednesday, would change the tuition restrictions in Georgia, with some conditions. The student must be enrolled at a Georgia high school for at least three years, have filed paperwork seeking legal immigration status and have a high school diploma or GED.
WGAU
UGA names Early Lecture speaker
By: Tim Bryant
The University of Georgia lines up a speaker for this month’s Mary Frances Early Lecture, the address named in honor of the first black graduate of UGA: Marion Fedrick is president of Albany State University. She will speak March 25 at the University’s Hodgson Hall. From Hayley Major, UGA Today… Marion Ross Fedrick will deliver the 20th annual Mary Frances Early Lecture at the ceremony naming the College of Education in Mary Frances Early’s honor. The event will take place Feb. 25 at 2 p.m. in Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall at the University of Georgia Performing Arts Center. “I am honored to provide the keynote address for such a special occasion,” said Fedrick. “Ms. Mary Frances Early paved the way for myself and many others at the University of Georgia. Her courage and bravery continue to serve as an inspiration.”
Yahoo Finance
Carnegie Foundation recognizes UWG for commitment to community engagement
The University of West Georgia has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation for its institutional commitment to community engagement through teaching, research and public service with the Community Engagement Classification. UWG is one of only 119 U.S. colleges and universities to receive the elective classification in 2020 and will join the ranks of only 359 institutions nationally. Additionally, the university is one of only 44 institutions nationwide that received the classification for the first time.
Savannah Tribune
Cuyler Community Improvement Association, Inc. Awards The 2020 Ursuline B. Law Medical Scholarship
By Savannah Tribune
On Saturday, February 1, 2020 the Cuyler Community Improvement Association held its annual scholarship luncheon at the historic Pirates House Restaurant in Savannah, GA. The luncheon was hosted by CCIA, Inc. officers; Mrs. Rebecca Joiner, President, Mrs. Ursuline Dickey, vice-president, Mrs. Pamela Bryant-Jones, secretary and Mrs. Clara Elmore-Bain, advisor. The well-deserved recipients for the 2020 scholarship season were: Ms. Michara Chataigne, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus, Ms. Hannah Harris Georgia Southern University Statesboro campus and Ms. Andrien Wilson; Georgia Southern University, Savannah, campus.
Clayton News-Daily
Clayton State offering tax assistance program
For the last 30 years, Clayton State University has offered tax preparation assistance for eligible taxpayers to ease the process of filing taxes. The university’s College of Business continues its mission of supporting the community this year by serving as a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance site, a program through the Internal Revenue Service that offers free tax assistance to eligible individuals. “The VITA program at Clayton State is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
WTOC
GSU offering free tax filing to help train students
By Dal Cannady
Tax season can be stressful if you don’t know all the rules and what you can or can’t claim. Accounting students at Georgia Southern’s Statesboro campus may be able to help. This marks the first tax season in 20 years that Georgia Southern students could go through IRS training and help prepare your taxes for free. Students are going over some of the deductions they could see as people bring their records for preparing taxes. It’s part of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, or VITA. These students have all passed an IRS certification exam to be able to help people with their taxes. Faculty say it helps students get ready for their careers.
Henry Herald
Piedmont Henry opens new teaching simulation lab
By Heather Middleton
Piedmont Henry Hospital has opened a one-of-a-kind Simulation and Training Lab. The new facility will give current and future nurses an opportunity to learn and experience any number of medical situations from a heart attack to the birth of a baby. Chief Nursing Officer Paula Butts said she and her staff are excited about the new lab. …
District Administration
Georgia Southern expanding STEM lending library for local students
By: Ariana Fine
Georgia Southern University is expanding its STEM lending library to serve 16 counties. It’s a program that helps bring teaching materials directly to students. Michelle Thompson teaches Scientific Research at Effingham College and Career Academy.
WABE
The Rialto Honors Legendary Songwriter Johnny Mercer With Tribute Concert
Summer Evans
Georgia-born Johnny Mercer is among the most successful lyricists of the American Songbook. He wrote more than 1,500 songs and won four Oscars. In 1971, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. This Friday, Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts is honoring Mercer with a tribute concert. The acclaimed trumpeter and vocalist Joe Gransden and singer Tierney Sutton will perform with the Georgia State Jazz Band. “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes spoke with Gransden and the Rialto’s new executive director Lee Foster.
SGB Media
Georgia Gwinnett College Signs Deal With Nike, BSN Sports
Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, GA signed a multi-year apparel partnership with Nike and BSN Sports for the college’s six intercollegiate teams. The agreement is part of BSN Sports Collegiate Select program, which aims to make BSN Sports a one-stop provider for all collegiate athletic, intramural, club and staff apparel, and equipment to all NCAA Division 1, Division II, Division 3, National Junior College Athletic Association and NAIA colleges.
WFXL
UGA Food eTalk aims to curb obesity and boost health
by Simone Jameson
The University of Georgia launched new mobile-friendly technology this month in an effort to improve health outcomes for low-income families, and those receiving SNAP benefits statewide. The Food eTalk platform is a mobile-friendly website that features nutritional education and obesity prevention materials. It covers all topics health and diet related, and offers calorie-conscious recipes, food safety tips and ways to control food portions. Laura Perry Johnson of UGA’s extension office in Tifton says it puts educational resources in areas where extension agents aren’t present, thereby increasing their chances to reach more people.
The Augusta Chronicle
Lawmakers push to free up lawsuits against Georgia government
A push to give Georgians the legal ability to sue the state and local governments has been revived in the General Assembly, but it might not go as far as some lawmakers would like. Legislation sponsored by Rep. Andrew Welch, R-McDonough, would ask voters whether they should be allowed to sue government agencies to overturn unconstitutional actions. As a constitutional amendment, his measure would need two-thirds approval from the Legislature before going on the ballot. Currently, Georgia law prohibits the state or local governments from being sued for most reasons under a legal protection called “sovereign immunity.”
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Landscape of State Performance Funding Policies
By Paul Fain
A new policy brief finds that 29 states currently tie some share of state funding for public colleges to student outcomes, such as graduation rates. Many of these state funding formulas also reward colleges for serving low-income students and students from underrepresented minority groups. The brief was published by InformEdStates, a nonprofit clearinghouse for policy analysis and research. Its authors include Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University; Kelly Rosinger, an assistant professor of education at Pennsylvania State University; and Justin Ortagus, an assistant professor of higher education administration and policy at the University of Florida.
Inside Higher Ed
Report on Measuring Student Outcomes
By Paul Fain
Researchers at the Urban Institute used student-level data from Connecticut and Virginia and worked with policy makers in those states to assess their data needs in measuring student outcomes and the performance of colleges. The resulting series of reports includes an effort to compare colleges’ graduation rates by adjusting for student characteristics, a case study and interactive data dashboard on college graduation rates in Virginia, an analysis of equity gaps in graduation rates, an assessment of program-level completion metrics in Virginia, an analysis of earning metrics for graduates using data from Connecticut, and a report with key lessons for policy makers.
Inside Higher Ed
Long-Term Successes, Short-Term Declines
Advanced Placement participation and exam scores have been on the rise over the last decade. But access for specific groups of underserved students continues to fall behind and in some cases has declined over the last year, College Board says.
By Greta Anderson
The Advanced Placement program continues to attract public high school students, whose participation and performance nationally in the college-level curriculum and exams increased again last year, according to an assessment of the 2019 graduating class by the College Board. When broken down by race, however, the College Board data show a decline in the number of exams taken by white, black, Native American and Pacific Islander students compared to last year’s cohort.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Poaching Enrolled Students: Once Taboo, Now OK
By Eric Hoover
If you’re already feeling jittery about enrollment trends, please put down that coffee before reading any further. The rules of competition are changing. Case in point: Thirty-five percent of enrollment leaders said they were considering trying to poach other colleges’ students, according to a recent survey by EAB, a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. How? By sending transfer incentives to students whom they previously admitted but who ended up attending other four-year colleges. Additionally, 11 percent of respondents said they were considering going after students enrolled elsewhere, whether or not they had applied or been admitted in the first place. Those findings are from a new report, “Enrollment Strategy After the NACAC Vote,” which EAB released on Wednesday. The document offers an early glimpse of how colleges are responding to recent changes in the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s ethics code.
Inside Higher Ed
NACAC guidelines changed in September. Now, new research suggests a substantial minority of enrollment officers are considering more aggressively recruiting students from other institutions.
By Lilah Burke
The National Association for College Admission Counseling, which has long been responsible for governing how colleges compete with one another for students, has reluctantly opened the doors to more aggressive student recruiting. As the result of an antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice last year, the association struck from its code provisions that banned colleges poaching students from another institution. While years ago one might have been the subject of a NACAC complaint for sending materials to or increasing the financial aid offers of students committed elsewhere, those practices are now ostensibly fair game. But whether or not colleges will take part in them, and to what degree, has yet to be seen.
Inside Higher Ed
New Data on Veterans’ Education Benefits
By Paul Fain
About 6 percent of undergraduate college students in 2015-16 were veterans of the U.S. military, active-duty service members, in the reserves or the National Guard, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. That number was 7 percent for graduate students. The total amount the federal government spent on military education benefits and aid that year was $14.3 billion, up from $12.1 billion in 2010-11.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Johns Hopkins Ditched Legacy Admissions to Boost Diversity – And It Worked
by Sara Weissman
In 2014, Johns Hopkins University got rid of legacy as a factor in admissions, hoping to increase its student diversity. Six years later, its president, Ronald J. Daniels, wrote about the decision in The Atlantic. In sum, it worked. Over the past decade, the percentage of Pell-eligible students at Johns Hopkins rose from 9% to 19%, and the percentage of students on financial aid climbed to over half of the student body, from 34%. Now, more than a quarter of Johns Hopkins undergraduates are from minority backgrounds, up more than 10 percentage points since 2009. Conversely, the proportion of students with legacy ties to the university dropped from 12.5% to 3.5%.
Inside Higher Ed
Gender Gap in Grade-Change Requests
New research finds male college students are more likely to ask for grade changes.
By Marjorie Valbrun
Are male college students more likely than female students to ask for a grade change, and do they do so more frequently when they receive a grade they don’t like? Do male students have more favorable outcomes as a result of asking? The answer to these questions is yes, according to new research by two university economists. Male students are 18.6 percent more likely than female students to receive favorable grade changes when they ask for a grade change or challenge a grade, the researchers report.
Inside Higher Ed
Misleading Student Loan Site Settles With FTC
By Kery Murakami
The operators of LendEDU agreed in a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission to stop misleading consumers into believing their website contains objective information about student loans and other financial products. The Delaware-based company would also pay $350,000 under the proposed settlement released Monday.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Industry Connecting Students With Real-World Challenges Is Growing
By Goldie Blumenstyk
The dovetailing of real-world experiences into higher ed is growing.
New companies and nonprofit organizations that collect, curate, and deliver course-related projects based on real-world challenges are popping up with increasing frequency. The visibility of these new ventures, which facilitate the use of projects and apprenticeships, was what struck me most during the LearnLaunch Across Boundaries conference last week in Boston. I won’t name-drop here, but you can get a sense of what I mean from this conference listing, which includes several ventures that help connect students with projects and capstone experiential learning as part of what defines college.
Inside Higher Ed
While giving to colleges and universities reached a record high this past fiscal year, signs point to a slowing pace of growth, according to the latest Voluntary Support of Education Survey.
By Madeline St. Amour
Donations to institutions of higher education grew for the 10th consecutive year, but the gifts were not evenly distributed among the types of institutions, and totals were inflated by some large gifts from mega-donors like Michael Bloomberg. The latest report on voluntary giving to higher education, from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE, found that donations in the 2019 fiscal year reached $49.6 billion, an all-time high since the numbers have been reported. The total is up 6.1 percent from $46.7 billion in 2018. Donations grew by 7.2 percent between 2017 and 2018. The report covered information from 914 institutions. Of those, 872 institutions also reported information in fiscal year 2018.