May 8, 2008
Keep Admitting Immigrants, Governor Tells N.C. Community Colleges
A day after the state attorney general’s office advised North Carolina community colleges to drop their policy of admitting illegal immigrants who meet other eligibility criteria, the state’s governor is urging colleges to continue admitting immigrants, according to The News & Observer.
The earlier advice, in a letter to the system’s general counsel, suggested that the policy conflicted with federal law, but Gov. Michael F. Easley, a Democrat, said in a written statement today that federal law on the issue was not settled. He added that he was asking the attorney general to seek clarification from Washington on whether illegal immigrants were eligible to attend community colleges. —Charles Huckabee
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [17]Congressional Panel Considers Call for More Female Science Professors
Washington — For women contemplating careers as science professors, the numbers are daunting. More than half of the bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering these days go to women, but they run into a high hurdle when it comes to securing academic jobs. Fewer than one in three science and engineering professors are female, and the numbers for full professors drop to one in five. So Congress held a hearing today to consider how to raise those odds.
A draft bill introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, would promote the use of workshops “to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit,” according to a news release issued by the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education. The committee has not yet released the proposed legislation, and the details of such workshops remain unclear. The workshops would be based, at least partly, on ones organized by academic chemists and by the American Physical Society, which have in the past two years convened gatherings of federal officials and the chairs of top university departments.
The legislation, titled “Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008,” would also seek to gather better demographic data from federal grant-making agencies. But that may be a difficult endeavor. Lynda T. Carlson, director of the division of science-resource statistics at the National Science Foundation, told committee members that scientists who receive grants “are not, nor can they be, required to provide demographic information because of the Privacy Act.” Many scientists who win grants do not indicate the race and gender of the people working under their grants, she said. “NSF cannot support the proposed legislation as its requirements will be excessive as they exceed current data-collection capabilities,” according to a statement submitted by Ms. Carlson.
Although the hearing was devoted to the issue of female academic scientists, the witness list contained no practicing scientists, male or female. The lone academic was Donna K. Ginther, an associate professor of economics at the University of Kansas, who has studied gender differences in academic science. In her statement, she endorsed the idea of gender-bias workshops for academics and grant reviewers, but she cautioned that the sessions should be tested for effectiveness. While past workshops have focused on department chairs, Ms. Ginther said that it would be important to reach principal investigators who oversee postdoctoral fellows. Her data indicate that most women leave academic science during the postdoctoral years.
The best way Congress could help women in academic science, she said, would be to improve their access to child care. She proposed allowing universities to support child-care facilities with the indirect costs that they take from research grants made to faculty members.
At today’s hearing, Congress itself inadvertently showed how far the nation has to go in promoting the success of women in academe. Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers of Michigan, the top Republican on the subcommittee, said in a statement that “effective institutional change must be systemic since bias may hide behind even the simplest language used in recommendation letters.”
His Republican colleague Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland demonstrated the power of language while smiling at the trio of female Ph.D.’s who were testifying. Mr. Bartlett hailed them as “effective representatives,” but then proceeded to call them “three very attractive women.” —Richard Monastersky
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [10]New Chancellor Named at U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced this afternoon that Holden Thorpe, dean of its College of Arts and Sciences, will be its new chancellor, according to a report in The News & Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.
Mr. Thorpe, 43, is not only a North Carolina native but also an alumnus of the Chapel Hill campus. He has climbed the ranks there, beginning as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1993 and becoming chairman of the chemistry department before being named dean last summer. If Mr. Thorpe is appointed, he would succeed James C. Moeser, who announced last fall that he would step down at the end of this academic year. —Eric Kelderman
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [3]May 7, 2008
House Spending Bill Leaves Out Money for Physical Sciences
Washington — Advocates for scientists have lost their bid to persuade Congress to raise spending on physical-sciences research during the remainder of the 2008 fiscal year. The money is not contained in a war-spending bill that the U.S. House of Representatives is to consider on Thursday.
Universities had lobbied to increase money specifically for the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Congress provided both agencies with minimal increases for 2008, far less than the amounts authorized by the America Competes Act, a law enacted last year to bolster technology development and the economy. As a result, layoffs are planned at Energy Department laboratories that serve academic researchers.
Thirty-one House members in both parties signed a letter in April endorsing a spending increase for the two agencies. But House leaders have been under pressure to squeeze increased spending into the bill for a variety of other civilian programs, including veterans’ benefits.
“We’re very disappointed” about the lack of research money, said Barry Toiv, a spokesman for the Association of American Universities. He said he hoped the proposal might yet gain traction in the Senate, where eight members signed a letter in March calling for the spending bill to include $350-million for the two agencies. —Jeffrey Brainard
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [4]N.C. Community Colleges Urged by State Lawyer to Limit Enrollment of Illegal Immigrants
North Carolina’s 58 community colleges should drop their policy of admitting all illegal immigrants who meet the institutions’ other eligibility criteria and restrict access to those who meet standards outlined in federal law, the general counsel for the state’s attorney general said in an advisory letter issued today, according to the
The News & Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.
The general counsel’s advice runs counter to a directive issued last fall by the community-college system’s lawyer. In November, David Sullivan, the system’s general counsel, issued a memorandum in which he said that the community colleges should immediately begin admitting undocumented immigrants who meet the basic requirements of either having graduated from high school or being at least 18 years old. That overturned a policy of allowing the campuses to decide individually whether to consider applicants’ immigration status.
When he issued the memorandum last fall, Mr. Sullivan said his directive was based on a 1997 opinion by the state’s attorney general at the time — Michael F. Easley, a Democrat who is now governor — which said that the colleges could not impose nonacademic criteria for admission.
A spokeswoman for the community-college system was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that officials there would take today’s letter — from J.B. Kelly, the general counsel in the state attorney general’s office — under advisement. —Sara Hebel
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [11]Ward Connerly's Point Man in Missouri Loses Lawsuit Against College
It has been a rough week for Timothy P. Asher, executive director of a campaign to get Missouri voters to ban the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies.
On Sunday, Mr. Asher’s campaign organization missed a deadline for gathering enough signatures to get its measure on the November ballot.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District handed him more bad news. It upheld a lower court’s ruling against him in his lawsuit against North Central Missouri College, which he had accused of firing him from his job as admissions director in 2004 because he complained that one of its scholarship programs discriminated against white students.
The lower court had held, in a March 2007 summary judgment against Mr. Asher, that he had not technically been fired from his job because he had been a contract employee. It also rejected his lawsuit’s claim that his termination had been handled in a manner that violated the state’s open-meetings laws. The court also found that the college was shielded from lawsuits like his under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
In its ruling announced on Tuesday, the state appeals court said only that it was letting stand the lower court’s decision to rule against Mr. Asher without bringing the case to trial.
Ward Connerly, the prominent affirmative-action critic who is coordinating efforts in several states to get proposed restrictions on affirmative action on the November ballot, has said he will continue his fight in Missouri and try to get a measure on the ballot there in 2010. —Peter Schmidt
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [17]Bush Signs Student-Loan Bailout Bill Into Law
Washington — President Bush signed into law this morning legislation that aims to avert a shortfall in student loans.
The law, which the House and Senate passed swiftly and which Mr. Bush endorsed in a radio address, seeks to stem the departure of loan companies from the federally guaranteed student-loan program and to reassure families that student loans will be available in the fall. More than 50 lenders have left the federal program in recent weeks, amid a credit crunch that has spread from the housing market to the student-loan industry.
To encourage lenders to remain in the federal program, the law allows the secretary of education to buy loans that lenders have struggled to sell to investors. The law also clarifies that the Education Department has the authority to advance federal funds to guarantee agencies, so those agencies could make loans, if necessary, under a “lender of last resort” system.
The law will ease the process of applying for a student loan under such a system, allowing the secretary to designate emergency lenders of last resort on a collegewide basis, rather than student by student. —Kelly Field
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]May 6, 2008
Wisconsin Supreme Court Denies Students' Push for Cheap Drinks
Students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison won’t be raising a glass to a decision today by the state’s Supreme Court.
The court dismissed a lawsuit — filed in 2004 on behalf of students and other pub crawlers — that challenged local bars’ agreement to limit drink specials on weekends. The students had called the agreement an illegal price-fixing conspiracy and sought “tens of millions of dollars” in damages, the Associated Press reported.
But the pact — which began in 2002 and banned drink specials at more than 20 bars after 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays — was actually an effort to reduce binge drinking. The bars drew up the voluntary arrangement under pressure from university officials and city regulators, who had considered an all-out ban on drink specials in Madison.
“The defendants entered into their agreement as a direct response to the city’s increasing regulatory pressure,” exempting them from state antitrust law, Justice David Prosser wrote for a 3-to-1 majority. The dissenting justice said that the bars could have controlled binge drinking by, for example, not serving drunkards.
As for the ban’s effectiveness, the university was initially optimistic. In May 2003 it reported “declines in liquor-law violations and disorderly-conduct incidents during the first six months of the program.” But in March 2004 the university said that alcohol-related crime was on the rise and that the results of the ban were “inconclusive.”
For the past four years, while the lawsuit was pending, the ban was suspended. So this year’s seniors had plenty of chances to exercise their right to cheap beer. —Sara Lipka
Posted on Tuesday May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [13]Sallie Mae Predicted to Gain Market Share From Student-Loan Crunch
Student-loan crises may come and go, but apparently the profitability of Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan company, remains.
Less than a week after Congress approved legislation designed to ensure that student-loan companies continue to issue federally subsidized student loans, a Wall Street research firm, Lehman Brothers, has issued a report analyzing the bill’s effects on Sallie Mae.
Lehman’s conclusion: The bill, which awaits President Bush’s signature, appears to guarantee that Sallie Mae and some other student-loan companies will not only remain profitable but “potentially gain considerable market share,” given that some competitors have withdrawn from the marketplace.
Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation last week, strengthening lenders by letting Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pay cash for their loan portfolios, after some loan companies said they could not afford to participate in the government-backed student-loan program.
The bailout legislation was written by the chairmen of the House and Senate education committees, Rep. George E. Miller of California and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. After Democrats won control of Congress, in November 2006, Senator Kennedy railed against profit levels at Sallie Mae, promising to “take the money-changers out of the temple in terms of student loans,” The Washington Post reported at the time.
But Lehman, in its report today, says the Miller-Kennedy bill should let Sallie Mae “sell loans to the government at a premium” while maintaining its loan-servicing relationships. It also predicts that Sallie Mae could pick up “as much as 7 to 8 percentage points of market share,” giving the company roughly 38 percent of all loan originations in the government-subsidized program. —Paul Basken
Posted on Tuesday May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [4]May 5, 2008
U. of Florida Plans Layoffs and Enrollment Cuts as State Funds Fall
Facing a cut in state appropriations, the president of the University of Florida announced a plan today that would trim $47-million from the university’s budget for the 2008-9 fiscal year by laying off 20 faculty members and 118 staff members and leaving 290 other positions unfilled, among other steps.
President Bernie Machen’s proposal also calls for reducing the university’s undergraduate enrollment by 4,000 over the next four years, cutting back on research, and eliminating some degree programs. The plan will be presented to the faculty later this week and to the trustees next Monday.
“Our priority is to protect the quality and education at the University of Florida,” Mr. Machen said in a message posted on the university’s Web site. “But clearly, we cannot take reductions this large without making difficult choices.”
Mr. Machen also said that the university’s goal of becoming one of the top 10 research institutions in the nation may be delayed by its budget woes and that he fears qualified faculty members may leave for greener pastures after going two years without a pay raise.
The proposal comes in response to a state budget, approved late last week, that slashed $4-billion from education, health care, and other areas of state spending, according to The Tampa Tribune. State agencies, including public colleges and universities, were asked to trim their budgets by 6 percent. They have until July 1, when the new budget year begins, to figure out how to deal with those cuts.
Universities have been bracing for the cuts since the legislative session began, in March. Other institutions may also resort to student and personnel reductions, the Associated Press reported today. Florida State University officials told the AP that they had not yet decided whether layoffs would be necessary, but that the institution was not filling vacant positions.
Officials at Florida International University said they were planning to lay off as many as 200 people, shut down several academic centers, eliminate some degree programs, and accept fewer students. —Sara Hebel
Posted on Monday May 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [35]
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