Author Archives: Nick DeSantis

Idaho State U. Will Pay $400,000 to Settle Medical-Records Case

Idaho State University will pay $400,000 to settle allegations that it violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law, known as Hipaa, that governs the privacy of medical records, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights announced on Tuesday.

The office said the settlement concerned a breach of health records belonging to roughly 17,500 patients at the university’s family-medicine clinic in Pocatello, Idaho. The university notified the department of the breach, in which patients’ records were made vulnerable to exposure for at least 10 months because firewall protections on the university’s servers had been disabled.

An investigation by the federal office found that the university’s risk assessments were incomplete. The office said Idaho State had agreed to correct the problems identified in its investigation. An Idaho State compliance officer told the Associated Press that the institution had found that none of the records made vulnerable were actually compromised.

Filed under: Government, Idaho State University

U.S. Won’t Appeal Decision on Controversial Gainful-Employment Rule

The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities said on Wednesday it had received word that the U.S. Department of Education has elected not to appeal a federal judge’s decision last year that blocked key parts of the agency’s controversial “gainful employment” rule before the regulation took effect.

Instead of continuing with litigation over the rule, the department this week convened the first of four hearings that it will hold in advance of a second round of rule making focused on fraud in the student-aid system, which is expected to begin in the fall. The rule-making process will revisit the gainful-employment issue.

The original rule would have cut off federal student aid to career-oriented higher-education programs whose graduates had high debt-to-income ratios and low loan-repayment rates, but a judge blocked key parts of the rule after the association, which represents for-profit colleges, challenged it in court.

“With the Congress expected to undertake Higher Education [Act] reauthorization in the coming months, we hope Congress will help all institutions of higher education, and the department, determine where and how we create appropriate protocols to determine outcomes for all students at all institutions,” said Steve Gunderson, Apscu’s president, in a written statement. The department did not immediately confirm that it decided not to appeal the decision.

Filed under: Accountability standards, For-profit colleges, Government

Veterans Affairs Dept. Needs to Improve Management of GI Benefits, Report Says

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs should do more to improve the management of its Post-9/11 GI Bill Program, which provides benefits to veterans who pursue a higher education, by cutting down on payment delays, working with colleges to give veterans more information about their financial-aid options, and taking advantage of outcomes data.

Those conclusions are among the recommendations in a report released on Wednesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which in 2011 also issued recommendations to the department regarding concerns about the program.

The GAO’s latest review found that, in the 2012 fiscal year, the department took an average of 31 days to process a new application, which is eight days longer than the department’s target benchmark. The department also took an average of 17 days to process a claim for benefit payment, five days longer than its target, the report says.

Student veterans faced several challenges as a result of the delays, the report says, and many said they took on more debt to cover the shortfall. Since its last report on the matter, the GAO said the department had worked on a new system to deal with such delays, though the GAO found the creation of that system had faced delays of its own.

The report says the department generally agreed with the GAO’s findings and vowed that it had taken steps to resolve problems identified by the review. It notes that the department is developing a long-term study to track veterans’ outcomes over the next two decades, and says officials expect an annual survey of Post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiaries to begin this year.

Filed under: Government, Student Debt, Student-Aid Programs, Students

Yielding to Critics, Czech President Won’t Block Professor’s Appointment

President Miloš Zeman of the Czech Republic on Wednesday abandoned his opposition to conferring the title of professor upon one of his critics, after taking issue with the scholar’s gay-rights activism. His refusal to appoint Martin C. Putna, an esteemed literary historian at Prague’s Charles University, set off a wave of criticism from students, academics, and other politicians. Mr. Zeman asked the country’s education minister to bestow the title upon Mr. Putna.


At his inauguration, Mr. Zeman said he would be a neutral unifier who doesn’t judge but brings people together.

In a unexpected twist, he may actually be doing just that. Both left and right-leaning politicians now want to strip the presidency of the power to name professors.

In a move that may signal he knows when he has been outmaneuvered, Mr. Zeman Wednesday said he would support legislative efforts to transfer the naming of professors to university deans, thereby reducing the power of his young presidency.

Read more at: blogs.wsj.com

Financial Troubles Lead NYU to End Law Program in Singapore

New York University’s law school has announced that it will shut down a legal-education program it had introduced in partnership with the National University of Singapore, saying that the program will end when its Class of 2014 graduates. In its announcement, NYU said the cost of graduate legal education had risen “significantly” in recent years, and said the program had been made possible by a grant from the government of Singapore. The two universities have agreed to end the program without seeking additional money to continue it. The move marks the second time in the last year that NYU has decided to end a program in Singapore due to financial woes. Last November its Tisch School of the Arts Asia announced that it would stop admitting new students.

Unfortunately, the programme did not become self-financing in the way we had hoped it would; continuing it in its present form would entail a significant diversion of financial resources on the part of both NYU and NUS. With regret, therefore, our two institutions have now arrived at the mutual decision to allow the programme to conclude and not to seek a further extension.

Read more at: www.law.nyu.edu

Longtime Official at Northern Illinois U. Will Retire After FBI Inquiry

Eddie R. Williams, Northern Illinois University’s executive vice president for finance and chief of operations, will retire at the end of this month, shortly after returning from a two-month leave of absence. His leave began when FBI agents executed a search warrant indicating that they were investigating whether he had used campus police officers to respond to crimes reported at a housing development he owns. Mr. Williams has worked at the institution for more than four decades.

Williams’ attorney has said his client did not use campus police for private security needs, and NIU officials praised Williams in a 1,500-word news release.

At NIU, Williams oversaw everything from the budget to human resources and building operations and was paid more than $300,000 a year. During his tenure he oversaw the development of 21 new buildings and facilities and avoided employee layoffs and furloughs, the statement said.

Read more at: www.chicagotribune.com

Education Dept. Releases New Data on College Tuition Across Sectors

The National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s statistical arm, on Tuesday released a “first look” report at new data on college pricing across sectors, finding that tuition and required fees for in-state students at four-year, public institutions rose by 6.7 percent from 2010-11 to 2012-13. That increase outpaced the rise in tuition for out-of-state students over the same period, which the report said was 4.1 percent. Four-year, private nonprofit institutions saw an increase of 3.1 percent. At four-year, private for-profit colleges, tuition and fees dropped by 2.2 percent. The report also includes data on 2011-12 enrollments as well as degrees conferred.

Filed under: Government, Students

3 NYU Researchers Are Accused of Secretly Sharing Information With China

Three medical researchers at New York University have been charged with commercial bribery for allegedly trading information about their magnetic-resonance-imaging research for payments from a Chinese company, according to The Wall Street Journal and a news release by federal prosecutors.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said in the news release that two of the researchers, Yudong Zhu and Xing Yang, were arrested on Sunday. The third, Ye Li, was believed to have flown to China before charges could be brought. All three were charged with one count of commercial bribery. Mr. Zhu, an associate professor of radiology, was also charged with falsifying records in connection with a National Institutes of Health grant that financed the research. The three were accused of concealing ties to a Chinese medical-imaging company and a research institute sponsored by the Chinese government.

A spokesman for NYU’s Langone Medical Center said the institution was “deeply disappointed” by the researchers’ alleged misconduct. He said the university became aware of possible irregularities in the research, and notified prosecutors after conducting its own investigation. He said the three researchers had been suspended and added that the university was continuing to cooperate with the investigation.

Lawyers for Mr. Zhu and Mr. Yang did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment.

Filed under: Legal, Research, New York University

Czech President Draws Fire for Refusing to Appoint Professor

President Miloš Zeman of the Czech Republic is drawing criticism for refusing to grant one of his critics a university professorship, after hinting that he objected to the scholar’s gay-rights activism. Martin C. Putna, a literary historian at Charles University, in Prague, supported Mr. Zeman’s rival in the January presidential election. According to Radio Prague, Mr. Zeman said he respected Mr. Putna’s sexual orientation but took issue with a sign Mr. Putna carried in a 2011 gay-pride parade. Czech presidents customarily appoint the country’s professors after they are nominated by their universities, in a process that is usually a formality.

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  • Source: Go
  • Via: The Associated Press

Charles University rector Vaclav Hampl was to meet with Zeman on Wednesday. Unless a “really serious moral wrongdoing” is behind Zeman’s refusal to appoint Putna, Hampl said, his action would constitute “nothing other than an absolutely unacceptable political interference.”

The government has already approved a slate of 65 candidates to be appointed at a ceremony on June 11, the Education Ministry said. Zeman’s predecessor, conservative Vaclav Klaus named more than 1,500 professors and rejected not a single one.

Read more at: abcnews.go.com

Federal Cuts to Force Closure of Fusion Project at MIT

A long-running research experiment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that explores nuclear fusion as a possible source of energy will close after a series of cuts in its federal financing, resulting in layoffs for 70 employees unless Congress moves to avert the shutdown. The closure will leave two fusion experiments in the United States. The U.S. Department of Energy is increasing its support of fusion research, though money is being shifted to an international project, known as ITER, that is being built in France. Another fusion-energy experiment, at Princeton University, was terminated in 2008.


Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, said the loss of the program will hurt the country’s position in a critical field — one that won’t be producing energy in the short term, but could be critical in helping to diversify energy production over the next two decades.The European project is “terribly behind schedule and egregiously over budget, and they’re being rewarded,” Zuber said.“I think as a country, we need to be worried about the risk of losing our preeminence in this area and our technical expertise.”Already, one faculty member is planning to leave for a job in Europe.

Read more at: www.bostonglobe.com