The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opinion: Going to college still worth it despite growing doubt
Get Schooled Blog
By Maureen Downey
For decades, parents and teachers have advised students, “Go to college. The degree assures you a good job.” Today, that assertion is losing ground, as evidenced by data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Campuses enrolled 662,000 fewer undergraduate students this spring than they did a year ago. That 4.7% drop is being seen as a signal that more Americans are questioning the cost and value of a college degree. While National Student Clearinghouse Research Center executive director Doug Shapiro acknowledges the pandemic depressed enrollment, he also told reporters in a media call, “There’s a broader question about the value of college and particularly concerns about student debt and paying for college and potential labor market returns.” The enrollment decline was not as dramatic in Georgia, where there were 467,000 students in the state’s public and private colleges and universities during the spring semester, a 1.4% decline from last year… Two contradictory factors are at play, according to labor economist Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The marquee fact here is that the median economic value-added of a bachelor’s degree doubled over the value of a high school degree after 1983,” he said. “But what has changed even more has been the increasing variation in earnings by college program or field of study. The level of degree you get matters, but there is much more variation by field of study than by level of degree. You have to pick the right program.”
TiftonCEO
Staff Report
Dr. David Bridges began his 17th year as the president of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College on July 1. He’s counting on it being the shortest year of his tenure. “I have done all I can do, and I don’t have any regrets,” Bridges, who retires on July 31, said. “It will be up to the members of the next leadership team to keep ABAC moving. I am confident that they will. Dr. Tracy Brundage, now president at Keystone (Pa.) College, will take over as ABAC’s 11th president on Aug. 1. Bridges will become the Director for the Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation. He has been the Acting Director since it was established in 2018. “The Center has a statewide mission to support economic development and prosperity in rural Georgia,” Bridges said. “Rural communities face many challenges, hurdles, and obstacles as they attempt to revitalize and strengthen their communities.”
Albany Herald
Reggie Christian one of the faces of Albany State University
By Carlton Fletcher
While discussing Albany State University, there are alumni and supporters who will gladly tell you all the memorable events that have elevated the historically black university’s rich history. They’ll talk about the chimney on the lower campus, the impact of the Flood of ‘94, of founder Joseph Winthrop Holley’s brave efforts to offer a higher education to a population that had no such options, of the Jones brothers and their basketball prowess, of the post-flood move to the “upper campus,” of the consolidation with Darton State College, of students’ involvement in the civil rights movement, of alumni who have gone on to bigger and better things. But the people who know the ins and outs of the university well will, to a person, tell you there’s a behind-the-scenes face of ASU that for the last 30 years has been just as vital and memorable a part of the institution as some of those more heralded personnel, landmarks and events. Anyone who has ever attended an event at the university, be it on-campus, an athletic competition, a community happening, will, if they’re paying attention, have noticed the same gentleman at all things ASU, taking photographs to record the university’s history. That man, Reginald Christian, is the keeper — the chronicler — of Albany State’s history, an individual whose passion for the college runs as deep and as fully as the Flint River that flows along the university’s eastern campus.
Gwinnett Daily Post
PHOTOS: Georgia Gwinnett College students take field trip to Chattahoochee
Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) students majoring in environmental science and English participated in a field trip to study, explore and understand the Chattahoochee River. This unique watershed, which runs from North Georgia to the Florida border, offers a chance for students, whose majors are very different to understand how their areas of study can align to benefit this natural resource.
EdScoop
University of Georgia invests more than $2M to expand high-performance computing center
By Emily Bamforth
The University of Georgia plans to spend millions upgrading and expanding its high-performance computing resources to support hiring 50 new faculty skilled in artificial intelligence and data science. UGA’s Enterprise Information Technology Services announced Wednesday the university is investing more than $2.3 million over the next year into the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center. But building out the high-performance computing system to support researchers isn’t as simple as just adding more hardware, Chief Information Officer Timothy Chester told EdScoop. Though a portion of the money is planned to build that technical capacity and address a “dramatic” need for more storage, Chester said accommodating new researchers and encouraging existing faculty to take advantage of resources is rooted in communication. Faculty require specific software or hardware to run their projects, he said, and they also need training and support for their research teams and postdoctoral students.
The Barnesville Herald-Gazette
Gordon names new provost, vice-president
By Walter Geiger
Gordon State College names Joanne Ardovini, Ph.D. as the institution’s new Provost and Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs effective July 1, 2022. Ardovini’s career and experience spans around 28 years in leadership, strategic planning and initiatives, program development, budgeting and mentoring professional relationships. Before joining GSC, Ardovini was the Dean of the Audrey Cohen School for Human Services, Education, Public Administration and Affairs, Community Health Education, and Emergency and Disaster Management at Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY). She holds the status of full professor and joined MCNY in 2004.
The story also appeared The Griffin Daily News and The Barnesville Dispatch.
Valdosta Daily Times
Copeland African American Museum expanding
Staff Reports
The Copeland African American Museum at Valdosta State University will soon undergo renovation and expansion, “an effort to bolster its steadfast promise to preserve and uplift the stories of African American history,” university officials said in a statement. The museum will remain closed to visitors until the project is completed. “This expansion is very exciting because it helps us become an even better community resource,” said Dr. Amy Watson, interim museum director. “We really want to be the first place teachers and community organizations think of when they are planning field trips and outings. This expansion gives us the space to comfortably host programmed tours and activities for larger groups that can range in age from 3 to 93. Additionally, it allows for more of the collection to be on display at the same time.”
Albany Herald
UGA Engineering teams with Nature Conservancy to protect Georgia’s coast
By Stacia Pelletier The University of Georgia
How much is a salt marsh worth? That’s one of the questions the University of Georgia and The Nature Conservancy will try to answer as they launch a pilot study funded by Georgia Sea Grant to determine the socioeconomic value of salt marsh ecosystems in Georgia. Experts estimate that 70 percent of all salt marshes already have been lost across the eastern seaboard, largely due to human development. Sea level rise from climate change also threatens their continued existence.
Times-Georgian
UWG to host high school ‘Volleyball Elite Camp’
By Tucker Cole
The University of West Georgia will be hosting a three-day summer “Elite Volleyball Camp” for high school players looking to show off and develop their skills with the help of college coaches. The camp is designed to help current volleyball players deepen their skills and knowledge about the game. Campers will continue to hone their talents in the tenants of the sport: serving, passing, setting and hitting, while also developing their proficiency in systems, strategies, and their overall volleyball IQ. It is highly recommended that campers have experience at the high school or club level. This camp is available to those currently in or entering high school (grades 9-12).
Gwinnett Daily Post
By Collin Elder
The summer season is synonymous with vacationing. People travel all over the world to soak in sunshine and splash in salt water, but what kind of vacations are best to recuperate? Dr. David Ludden, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College, says it boils down to science. …Ludden says that stress is a very important factor in the human life. It’s important as a safety measure, but allowing it to fester without treatment can lead to anxiety, insomnia and depression. Vacations are a primary way to work on releasing some of that pent-up stress.
Griffin Daily News
Gratzek to serve as UGA FoodPIC director
Food technology entrepreneur James Gratzek will serve as the next director of the Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center on the University of Georgia Griffin campus, according to the Department of Food Science and Technology at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The Moultrie Observer
Colquitt County’s Thompson chairs Georgia Farm Bureau Hay Committee
Staff Reports
Colquitt County Farm Bureau (CCFB) member Harry Thompson is serving as the chairman of the Georgia Farm Bureau (GFB) Hay Committee. Thompson leads the committee in shaping GFB’s policy relating to hay production in Georgia. The 10-member committee, made up of producers from each of GFB’s 10 districts, gathered during the GFB Spring Commodity Meetings in March. The committee, one of GFB’s 20 commodity advisory committees, will meet again in August at the GFB Commodity Conference… Thompson attended Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and the University of Georgia, where he earned a master’s degree in agricultural education.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GOP congressmen pressure UGA over ‘pregnancy centers’ website
By Ty Tagami
Two Republican congressmen from Georgia are pressuring the University of Georgia to end what they say is its involvement in a website that identifies the locations of centers that counsel pregnant women. U.S. Reps. Jody B. Hice and Andrew S. Clyde say the site exposes “crisis pregnancy centers” nationwide to violence by making them targets for terrorist groups. Their July 7 letter to UGA President Jere W. Morehead cites a Fox News report in late June that said “far-left radicals” were targeting centers using two UGA professors’ map of “pro-life clinic addresses.” Hice and Clyde are demanding immediate “corrective action,” writing that they don’t want university resources used in a “reckless and irresponsible” way. They note that the professors’ website refers to the centers as “fake women’s health centers.” Nearly a hundred are listed in Georgia.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State of Georgia ends fiscal year with $6 billion increase in revenue
By James Salzer
Another record surplus is possible
Georgia tax collections soared in the recently completed fiscal year, raising the likelihood the state will see another record revenue surplus. Revenue collections — mostly from income and sales taxes — were up 14.2% in June. They ended the fiscal year June 30 about 23% — or $6.19 billion — ahead of a then-record 2021. The likely giant surplus leaves Gov. Brian Kemp — who faces a tough political battle for reelection — and lawmakers with a lot of decisions to make about what to do with the extra money. And the surplus is on top of $2.4 billion the state recently received in federal COVID-19 relief money, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charles Barkley dunks $1 million into Spelman College coffers
By Ernie Suggs
Charles Barkley, the NBA legend who has already made major donations to two local colleges, is adding Spelman College to his philanthropic portfolio. Barkley said this past week that he is donating $1 million to Spelman, after seeing the impact that the Atlanta-based historically Black women’s college has made on Jordyn Hudson, the daughter of his business partner, John Hudson. “John has been a great mentor, a great friend and a great business partner,” Barkley told Alabama news site al.com. “I was ready to do another HBCU and with his daughter doing great things at Spelman, so I told him, ‘Why not there?’”
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Admissions Without Applications
Movement grows with a second company offering a service in which students create profiles and colleges admit them.
By Scott Jaschik
Davis & Elkins College is a small institution (a little more than 700 students) in a beautiful part of West Virginia, surrounded by the Allegheny Highlands. Like most colleges, it admits most of those who apply. This year, the college admitted about 700 students of the 975 applicants, aiming for a class of 250 to 300.
In the fall, the college plans to consider some students who haven’t actually applied for admission at all. They will be students who have created profiles through Sage Scholars, which has offered a service since 1995 to help students afford college. This year, in addition to presenting students whom colleges might want to recruit to apply, Sage will also offer some of its several hundred members the chance to look at the profiles (which will contain the interests, grades and test scores of students who have them) and admit students directly.
Hechinger Report
The new labor market: No bachelor’s required?
More workers without degrees are landing jobs they’d have been shut out of before. Will it last?
By Lawrence Lanahan
Troy Groom, of Hyattsville, Maryland, was browsing social media this spring when he read something that made him perk up: Gov. Larry Hogan announced in March that the state government would strip bachelor’s degree requirements from thousands of job listings. Groom, who was once enrolled at Bowie State University, left college when his first daughter was born. That daughter now has a college diploma. Groom still does not. But he had gained experience and credentials: a two-decade rise in retail from Giant cashier to CVS store manager, and a suite of computer networking certificates that led him to three years of information technology contracting gigs.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Thinking Beyond “Summer Melt” Enrollment Declines
By Rebecca Kelliher
Given COVID-19 pandemic-related student enrollment declines, many colleges are seeking not only to tackle the seasonal “summer melt” but longer-term drops in student enrollment. Summer melt refers to what happens when high school graduates who accept a college admissions offer do not matriculate by the end of the summer before fall classes start. This can happen if students miss deadlines for completing housing paperwork, financial aid verification forms, or taking other required enrollment steps. “What we’ve seen in the last two years is a much bigger concern than just summer melt,” said Dr. Doug Shapiro, vice president of research and executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nonprofit that provides educational reporting, data exchange, verification, and research services. “The declines in the number of freshmen overall have been quite staggering since the pandemic.”
Inside Higher Ed
Justice Department Backs Antitrust Lawsuit
Biden administration is the third to find that antitrust law applies to colleges and universities.
By Scott Jaschik
The U.S. Justice Department has backed key arguments made in an antitrust suit against 16 private colleges and universities. In a brief filed Thursday, the department did not seek to join the suit but said it was stating “the interest of the United States.” Specifically, the brief is an answer to a motion by the colleges to dismiss the case. The colleges accused of violating antitrust law defend their action by citing the “568 Exemption” for colleges that admit all their students in a need-blind way. But the Justice Department says that “an agreement between schools that admit all students on a need-blind basis and schools that do not is beyond the scope of the 568 Exemption. Thus, to the extent that at least some of the defendants do not admit all students on a need-blind basis, the 568 Exemption would not apply here.”
The targets of the suit are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale Universities; the California Institute of Technology; Dartmouth College; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the Universities of Chicago, Notre Dame and Pennsylvania. All these colleges say they are need blind.
Higher Ed Dive
U.S. News removes Columbia U from this year’s rankings amid investigation
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
U.S. News and World Report delisted Columbia University from this year’s Best Colleges rankings, saying the Ivy League institution failed to validate data it submitted to the publication that it uses to construct the influential database. The magazine said Thursday that Columbia had not responded to multiple requests to confirm the veracity of certain data points, including its student-faculty ratios and undergraduate class sizes. U.S. News’ move follows Columbia announcing late last month it will not participate in next year’s rankings amid an internal investigation into its data submissions. One of Columbia’s professors earlier this year publicly alleged data in the university’s rankings profile did not match that from other sources.
Inside Higher Ed
Studying Medicine in a Post-Roe America
Medical students in states where abortion is criminalized are already facing restrictions to their education, with major implications for the future of reproductive health care.
By Liam Knox
For years, aspiring ob-gyns at Louisiana State University’s School of Medicine have driven four hours from the New Orleans institution to Shreveport for an intensive two-week training at the Hope Clinic, one of the only practices in the state where students can observe and gain hands-on experience with surgical abortion procedures. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, the Hope Clinic is likely in its final days of operation, awaiting the almost certain end of a temporary court injunction that’s currently preventing Louisiana’s trigger abortion ban from taking effect. Now, LSU must find new ways to give medical students the training they need—and with the legality of abortion-related medical education murkier than ever, they are exploring their options carefully. “It’s going to be a big challenge to figure out how to train our residents, which I’m very worried about. But I’m also upset about the impact it’s going to have on all of our patients in our community,” said Nicole Freehill, director of the clinical residency program for ob-gyns at LSU’s Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. “The big question mark is, what do we do now?” Freehill is far from alone in asking that question. From Louisiana to Texas, Ohio to Florida, medical schools and students are coping with the sudden implosion of their reproductive health-care training.