May 15, 2008
Top Official in Education Dept. to Lead Business-School Consortium
Washington — Diane Auer Jones, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, is leaving office at the end of the month to become president of the Washington Campus, a consortium of university business schools.
Ms. Jones told her staff on Wednesday of her plans to leave the department, only a year after being nominated to the post by President Bush.
Ms. Jones said she had hoped to remain through the end of the Bush administration, in January 2009, but decided to leave early after receiving an offer to replace the Washington Campus’s president, who is retiring. The consortium was founded in 1978 to help business schools train corporate executives in the process of policy making in Washington.
The opportunity was a case of the perfect job coming at not the perfect time, Ms. Jones told The Chronicle.
Although the Bush administration still has eight months remaining, Ms. Jones said she would be leaving at an appropriate time in the Education Department’s calendar. Several critical regulatory processes have been finished, and all of the department’s major grant competitions, for which she is responsible, have now been completed, Ms. Jones said. —Paul Basken
Posted on Thu May 15, 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comment [1]GAO Report Says Community Colleges Are Crucial in Training the Work Force
Community colleges continue to meet the needs of local industry through specific technical training, according to a report issued today by the Government Accountability Office.
In the report, the GAO surveyed 20 community colleges and found that they met the needs stipulated in the Workforce Investment Act through customized training of workers from specific employers, teaming up with small businesses, and specifically modeling their educational programs to suit their local populations. Money for the programs has come from both the Education and Labor Departments.
According to the report, community colleges operate 11 percent of one-stop centers for employment assistance started under the Workforce Investment Act, and will continue to be key players in training future employees. —Hurley Goodall
Posted on Thu May 15, 05:31 PM | Permalink | CommentAcademic Capital Flows: U. of Chicago Plans $200-Million Milton Friedman Institute
A decade ago, officials in Mongolia reportedly considered building a statue in honor of Milton Friedman, who was one of the 20th century’s most influential proponents of laissez-faire economics.
Today the University of Chicago announced its own monument to Mr. Friedman, who died in 2006 at the age of 94. The university plans to invest $200-million in a research center to be known as the Milton Friedman Institute.
In a proposal completed in January, a faculty committee at Chicago said that the new institute would “ensure that the singular position of Chicago economics over the last century would serve as a foundation for continued leadership in shaping fields of thought as well as economic and social policies throughout the world.”
The institute will be housed in a building now occupied by the Chicago Theological Seminary. The department of economics might also move to the building. The university will pay for a new structure for the seminary, which will remain in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
Mr. Friedman did much of his graduate course work at Chicago, though he finally earned his doctorate from Columbia University. He taught at Chicago from 1946 to 1976 and maintained ties there until his death. —David Glenn
(Photo by the Flickr user Gabriel M. Used under a Creative Commons license.)
Posted on Thu May 15, 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comment [10]Medical School for Physician-Scientists Will Offer Free Tuition
The Cleveland Clinic’s medical school will offer full-tuition scholarships to all of its students in an effort to encourage more people to pursue careers in academic medicine, the clinic announced today.
The free-tuition offer, which will begin with the class that enters in July, will initially be supported through endowment income and clinical revenues. The clinic hopes eventually to pay for it entirely through endowment income. Students will still pay about $22,000 a year for living expenses, fees, books, and equipment.
“The average debt for students graduating from private U.S. medical schools, such as the Lerner College of Medicine, is more than $150,000, making many graduates less likely to pursue careers in academic medicine,” said Delos M. (Toby) Cosgrove, president of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western University. “By providing full-tuition support, we want to ensure that debt does not hinder the ability of our graduates to pursue academic careers as physician scientists.”
In 2002 the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Case Western Reserve University announced that they were opening a new medical school to train physicians and scientists for clinical-research careers. The school accepted its first students in 2004. —Katherine Mangan
Posted on Thu May 15, 12:45 PM | Permalink | CommentStudy Finds Varying Community-College Enrollments Among States
Enrollment in two-year colleges varies widely from state to state, according to a report being released today.
In some states, a higher share of the population is enrolling in community colleges than in other states, by as much as five to one, the report says.
The report, based on a study conducted by David F. Shaffer, a senior fellow at the State University of New York’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, urges researchers and policy makers to study the differences.
“The data indicate that the differences are real, and important,” wrote Mr. Shaffer, the report’s author. “What remains to be learned is what explains them.”
The report describes a link between lower tuition and higher percentages of students enrolled in two-year colleges. But tuition doesn’t tell the whole story, the report says, because some states offering low tuition at two-year colleges don’t have especially high rates of enrollment.
On average in the United States, tuition at a two-year college takes 3.6 percent of median family income, the report says. It points out that while states with the highest rates of adults enrolled in two-year colleges have the cheapest tuition, many states that have low two-year enrollments also offer low tuition.
Nationally, enrollment in community colleges in the United States grew more slowly than enrollment in public four-year colleges from 2000 to 2005, the study found. But in several states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Georgia, New York, and West Virginia, community colleges are outstripping public four-year colleges’ enrollment rates. —Kate Moser
Posted on Thu May 15, 12:27 PM | Permalink | CommentSouthern Cal Names Hindu as New Dean of Religious Life
The University of Southern California has chosen Varun Soni as its new dean of religious life — an appointment that makes him, according to the university, the first Hindu to hold such a position in the United States. —Thomas Bartlett
Posted on Thu May 15, 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comment [9]May 14, 2008
Scholar of Asian Art Is Found Dead in U.S. Detention Center
A university museum director and prominent scholar of Asian antiquities, who had traveled to the United States to attend a conference, was found dead of an apparent heart attack today in a federal detention center, the Associated Press reported.
Roxanna Brown, director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University, in Thailand, was arrested on Friday in Seattle, where she was scheduled to speak at the University of Washington. Ms. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was accused of wire fraud in connection with an antiquities smuggling case and had been awaiting transfer to Los Angeles to face charges there. During her detention she complained of being ill and missed a court date.
The charges against Ms. Brown stemmed from a federal investigation of two Los Angeles art dealers who were suspected of looting Southeast Asian artifacts. Authorities said they had found her electronic signature on appraisal forms listing inflated values for antiquities.
Bangkok University officials denied that they or Ms. Brown had any involvement in looting antiquities, according to the Bangkok Post. “To us, she has always been a dedicated scholar with a passion for ancient ceramics,” said Mathana Santiwat, the university’s president. —Martha Ann Overland
Posted on Wed May 14, 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comment [2]President Who Left Texas Tech Lands Top Job at San Jose State
Jon S. Whitmore, who stunned faculty members and students at Texas Tech University in February when he announced his resignation from that institution, has landed a new job as the leader of San Jose State University.
His appointment at San Jose, announced by the California State University system today, is effective August 1. He will succeed Don W. Kassing, who is retiring.
Mr. Whitmore has been popular with faculty members at Texas Tech, but he has taken some heat this year after the university’s accreditor put it on probation in December. He also has hinted that he was uncomfortable with leading a plan to expand the university’s enrollment by 42 percent, to 40,000, by 2020. Some faculty members have questioned the expansion plan, but the chancellor who oversees Texas Tech and two other institutions believes it is necessary. —Charles Huckabee
Posted on Wed May 14, 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comment [8]Key Higher-Education Official Is Leaving Education Department
Washington — Diane Auer Jones announced her resignation today as the U.S. Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, one year after taking the job.
“She did let her senior staff know today that she will be leaving,” said Samara Yudof, a department spokeswoman. Ms. Yudof said she had no immediate details on the reasons for Ms. Jones’s departure.
Ms. Jones was nominated by President Bush in May 2007. She had served as a science-policy adviser in the White House, and as director for government affairs at Princeton University. She also served as a program director at the National Science Foundation and as an associate professor at the Community College of Baltimore County.
That combination of experiences made her valued in the college community, said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.
“Diane brought enormous skill and knowledge to the assistant-secretary position,” Mr. Hartle said, citing her efforts to draft regulations governing loan and grant programs for students, and to oversee their implementation. Her departure “is disappointing but not totally surprising,” given that appointed government officials often seek new career opportunities toward the end of an administration, he said. —Paul Basken
Posted on Wed May 14, 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comment [5]State Budgets for Higher Education Look Up in California and New Jersey
State budgets in two prominent states that promised a grim fiscal year for higher education just a few months ago have taken a turn for the better.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California announced today a new budget plan with a smaller fiscal shortfall of $15-billion and a proposal to borrow that amount against future state-lottery profits, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Earlier this month the governor, a Republican, was warning of a $20-billion budget gap.
Borrowing against lottery proceeds, a plan that would have to be approved by voters in November to go into effect, could allow the Golden State to avoid some of the painful budget cuts that the governor had proposed in January, including a 10-percent reduction in higher-education spending. The California State University system issued a news release saying that the revised plan would restore nearly $98-million to its budget for next year, but $288-million in cuts were still possible.
In New Jersey, lawmakers got welcome news that the state had collected $533-million more in tax revenue in 2007 than anticipated, according to The New York Times. Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, recommended earlier this year that higher education take only a 3.5-percent budget cut, and he has suggested that the latest infusion of tax dollars be doled out in aid to towns and state parks — areas that were slated for more-severe cuts under his budget proposal.
The news of state spending on higher education was not uniformly upbeat, however. The University of Florida’s Board of Trustees today approved $47-million in budget cuts that will reduce enrollment by 1,000 students a year for four years and cut more than 400 staff and faculty members, reported the Associated Press. The Florida Legislature cut higher-education funds by 6 percent this month. —Eric Kelderman
Posted on Wed May 14, 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comment [1]
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