University System News

Douglas County Sentinel

University system waiving standardized test scores for admission to most campuses

By Dave Williams

The University System of Georgia will waive SAT and ACT test requirements at most of the system’s 26 institutions for another year, system Chancellor Sonny Perdue announced Thursday. The university system didn’t include the tests as an admissions requirement for the fall semester this year at all schools except the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia College & State University.

 

Albany Herald

Emory, UGA, Georgia Tech make U.S. News list of top universities

By Dave Williams

Emory University ranks as the 22^nd best university in the nation, while the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are among the top 20 public universities, U.S. News & World Report announced Monday. Many of the schools ranked ahead of Emory on the magazine’s annual list are Ivy League colleges and other universities with long-standing reputations for academic excellence, including Duke University, the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University. Emory tied at the 22^nd spot with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

 

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Patch

Georgia Schools Ranked Among U.S. News’ 2022-2023 Best Colleges

 

Albany Herald

Report ranks Georgia 14th nationally for educational freedom

By T.A. DeFeo

Georgia ranked 14th in the nation for its educational freedom, according to a new index from the Heritage Foundation. The Peach State ranked in the middle of its neighboring states. Georgia performed better than Alabama (No. 16), North Carolina (15) and South Carolina (23) but trailed Florida (1) and Tennessee (10). “The Heritage Foundation Education Freedom report card shows that some progress has been made in empowering parental choice in Georgia. But there is much more that can be done,” Buzz Brockway, the vice president of public policy for the Georgia Center for Opportunity, said in a statement.

 

Tifton Gazette

Valdosta Symphony Orchestra kicks off ABAC Presents!

The Valdosta Symphony Orchestra presents the first of five events in the ABAC Presents! Performing Arts Series from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. The VSO is scheduled to perform 3 p.m., Sept. 25, at the Tift County High School Performing Arts Center, college officials said in a statement. Winner of The American Prize for Orchestral Performance, the orchestra, conducted by Howard Hsu, returns to Tifton with a concert featuring Dvorak’s bright and energetic “Carnival Overture, Op 92” as well as Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite,” based on contemporary fairy tales. Also featured in the concert will be the orchestral adaptation of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which ends with a flourish with the magnificent movement, “The Great Gate of Kyiv.”

Other News

Augusta CEO

Governor & First Lady Kemp Dedicate Funding to Statewide Causes

Governor Brian Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp have been hard at work ensuring funding is distributed statewide to continue Georgia’s recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Funds have been dedicated to essential areas such as education, public safety, housing, and other services, all focused on building a safer, stronger Georgia.

 

Albany Herald

Gov. Brian Kemp outlines education priorities for second term

By Dave Williams

Reversing learning loss stemming from the pandemic, boosting the education workforce and stepping up school safety measures will be Gov. Brian Kemp’s top education priorities if he wins a second term in November, Kemp said Monday. At an elementary school in Oconee County, the governor announced he will ask the General Assembly for a $25 million grant program in the mid-year state budget to help schools pay for additional tutoring and other steps to supplement existing learning loss services. Just 63% of third graders are reading at or above grade level this year, down from 73% in 2019, the year before the outbreak of COVID-19 prompted schools to close their doors and switch to online instruction, Kemp said.

Higher Education News

Inside Higher Ed

‘Radical Level of Change’

By Katherine Knott

A new report argues that high enrollment of out-of-state students at public flagship universities has increased costs for those students and led to more student debt. All but two public flagship universities nationally increased the percentage of out-of-state students in their freshman classes from 2002 to 2018, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. The share of out-of-state students rose 55 percent, on average, after 2002, while the percentage of in-state students dropped 15 percent on average, the report showed. Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economics studies at Brookings, analyzed data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the federal government’s primary higher ed database, comparing incoming freshman classes in 2002 and 2018.

Inside Higher Ed

Transfer Enrollments Continue Pandemic-Driven Decline

By Liam Knox

Transfer enrollment from two- to four-year institutions, already down in 2021, continued to fall through the second year of the pandemic, the National Student Clearinghouse finds. Transfer enrollment from two-year institutions to four-year bachelor’s degree programs continued to decline during the 2021–22 academic year, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Transfer enrollments had already experienced steep decline during the pandemic’s first year, and the new report shows that trend continued into its second. Doug Shapiro, the clearinghouse’s executive director, called the report a “two-year retrospective” on the pandemic’s full effects on transfer rates. The results are concerning—transfer enrollments fell by nearly 14 percent during the pandemic, nearly twice as much as general enrollments fell during the same period—but, Shapiro said, not necessarily surprising.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Transfer-Student Enrollment Tanked During the Pandemic. Historically Black Colleges Were the Exception.

By Katherine Mangan

Transfer rates to historically Black colleges and universities rebounded last year, jumping nearly 8 percent after an 11 percent drop the previous academic year. That finding, released on Tuesday in a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, was a glimmer of good news in an otherwise gloomy assessment of transfer enrollment among colleges nationwide. In the 2019-20 academic year, before the pandemic upended students’ college plans, nearly 2.2 million students transferred to another higher-education institution to continue their college careers. During the pandemic’s first year, in 2020-21, those numbers dropped by 9 percent, and the second year, by 5 percent more. The continued decline took some by surprise.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Ask the Chair: What to Do When a New Hire Bails

A new monthly column offers advice on the challenges of running a department.

By  Kevin Dettmar

Question: Since this is a once-a-month column and not a hotline, by the time you answer this — should you choose to answer this — I will have figured something out. Or not. But maybe for next time, or posterity, or the benefit of others: I write on the last Friday of the summer break at my institution. Classes begin on Monday. And today I got an email from a new tenure-track hire informing me that she had decided against taking the job. Fortunately, she was only scheduled to teach one course this semester. Unfortunately — though typically I’d be crowing to the dean about my department’s healthy enrollments — the course was full.

Higher Ed Dive

Supreme Court says Yeshiva University does not have to recognize LGBTQ student club for now

By Rick Seltzer 

Dive Brief: Yeshiva University will not be required to recognize an LGBTQ student club while it appeals a trial court’s ruling in a case that pits New York City’s human rights law against religious protections. A New York court ruled in June that the city’s human rights law required the university to recognize the club, reasoning in part that the 5,500-student institution, historically affiliated with Orthodox Judaism, does not explicitly have a religious purpose under its organizing documents. Yeshiva appealed the decision within the state’s court system, then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case quickly because the fall semester’s club application process was slated to wrap up Monday. Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday blocked the New York court’s order, meaning the university does not have to recognize the club at this time. Sotomayor addresses emergency appeals for a region including New York.

Diverse: Issues In Higher Education

Shifting Priorities: Black Women and Higher Education Career Decisions

By Monica Guient

On the heels of the great resignation, some postulate that more Black women now have additional motivations to seek emancipation from their roles due to a decreased debt burden. The Biden administration announced plans to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loans. With women holding two-thirds of America’s $1.7 trillion student debt, the erasure of up to $20,000 may shift the career-making decisions of many, especially Black women in higher education. But an important question to consider is, how? As a Black woman with a life-long career in higher education, I understand the precarity of career decisions. Navigating through the labyrinth of career advancement as a Black woman with student debt compelled me to make some intentional turns early in my career that I may not have made had I not faced the heavy load of student loan debt.

 

Diverse: Issues In Higher Education

Eastern Michigan University Reaches Tentative Agreement with Faculty Union

By Arrman Kyaw

Eastern Michigan University (EMU) has reached a tentative contract agreement with its faculty union, M Live reported. The tentative agreement – which ends a strike that began last week – must be ratified in a vote by the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (EMU-AAUP) at a coming union meeting, where contract details will be discussed. EMU made the announcement Sept. 11, after a “marathon bargaining session” between the school and the union.

 

The Washington Post

The movies most often assigned in college, and more!

By Andrew Van Dam

The single-most-assigned film on college syllabuses silently depicts everyday life in Ukraine and Russia almost a century ago. For more than an hour, it shows people sunbathing, riding in ambulances, brushing their teeth, leaping hurdles, operating a smelter and doing calculations on an abacus. Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera” claims top honors over more widely celebrated fare, including Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” Rounding out the top five are another Eastern Bloc fan favorite, Sergei Eisenstein’s “The Battleship Potemkin,” and Fritz Lang’s futuristic sci-fi drama, “Metropolis.” (Vertov, formerly known as Denis Kaufman, is said to have chosen the first name Dziga because it recalled the sound of cranking an old-fashioned movie camera.)

 

The Washington Post

Wanted: Teachers. No training necessary.

By Moriah Balingit

When students returned to class this year, a growing number of them were greeted by adults with no teacher training and, in some cases, no more than a high school diploma. States desperate to fill teaching jobs have relaxed job requirements. Public officials are openly challenging the idea that a degree in education should be a prerequisite for getting into the classroom and are aiming to undo long-standing license rules. Some states now permit people to teach without finishing college in certain cases, and many increasingly rely on substitutes — who are usually not required to have college degrees — to fill teaching jobs full-time.

The Washington Post

U.S. News college rankings draw new complaints and competitors

By Nick Anderson