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 Thursday May 15, 2008 | Permalink | CommentMedical 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 Thursday May 15, 2008 | 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 Thursday May 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [9]May 14, 2008
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 Wednesday May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [8]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 Wednesday May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]Sallie Mae Borrowers Snagged by Error in Reports to Credit Bureaus
Washington — As many as one million customers of Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan company, may be facing problems with their credit ratings after a computer error that the company has worked to fix.
Sallie Mae says it mistakenly reported to credit bureaus that thousands of its customers were delinquent in paying back their loans. That caused their credit scores to drop by 100 points or more, Bankrate.com reported today.
Sallie Mae says the error occurred last Thursday, when it reported extended repayment plans as meaning the borrower was making a partial payment. That report led Equifax, one of the three national credit-reporting agencies, to code the accounts as delinquent, Sallie Mae spokesmen said.
A Sallie Mae spokesman said the error had affected less than 10 percent of its 10 million borrowers. All affected credit reports were corrected by late Tuesday, and Sallie Mae will take corrective steps, including supplying a credit-reference letter to anyone who needs help in proving the source of the mistake. —Paul Basken
Posted on Wednesday May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [4]Grand Canyon U. Announces $230-Million Public Offering of Stock
Grand Canyon Education Inc., the privately held parent company of Grand Canyon University, plans to go public with an initial public offering of $230-million in stock, according to a filing on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a memorandum to employees, Brent Richardson, the company’s chief executive officer, said the university would become a publicly traded entity on the Nasdaq stock market. Backers of the IPO include Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch.
A group of investors purchased the financially struggling Grand Canyon University in 2004, creating the first for-profit Christian college. Since then, enrollment has increased by 10,000, most of them online, and the university’s finances have stabilized, the Phoenix Business Journal reported. —Hurley Goodall
Posted on Wednesday May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]May 13, 2008
Proposal Would Restrict Certain Gifts to Colleges That Hoard Endowments
Washington — In recent weeks, all sorts of rumors have been flying around about Congressional proposals that would penalize college endowments that hoard their assets.
The latest comes from Rep. Peter F. Welch, a Democrat of Vermont, who today proposed restricting IRA rollover contributions to colleges that don’t use their endowments to help low- and middle-income students pay for college.
In a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Welch said wealthy colleges were among the biggest beneficiaries of those IRA distributions and should not be eligible to receive them unless they started using their endowments “specifically for containing college costs” for needy students. He urged the Ways and Means Committee to modify the Internal Revenue code as part of its drafting of a tax bill under consideration.
Mr. Welch has previously proposed requiring colleges to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments every year, and to report annually on how much of their endowments had been spent. The latter proposal is part of the House’s legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. —Brad Wolverton
Posted on Tuesday May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [9]Tension Over Title IX Shows Itself in Lawsuits
A series of lawsuits filed in California and other states over the past three years reflects “ongoing tension” over Title IX, according to a package of articles about the key federal gender-equity law appearing in USA Today.
Among the many cases highlighted in the main article are the lawsuits of two coaches and an administrator at California State University at Fresno who sued that university under Title IX, alleging that the institution retaliated against them because they blew the whistle on gender inequities. —Libby Sander
Posted on Tuesday May 13, 2008 | Permalink | CommentColorado Set to Fill Hole in Higher-Education Construction
Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado stood in front of an infamous hole in the ground at the Auraria Higher Education Center on Monday to sign a bill giving colleges at least $200-million to help pay for a dozen construction projects across the state, the Cherry Creek News reported.
The hole is the site of a planned science building, where construction was briefly put on hold in March after the legislature yanked $37.5-million for the project. Lawmakers subsequently reversed course and passed a measure to raise oil and gas taxes to pay for that building as well as 11 more.
The construction money comes on top of a 9-percent increase that Colorado lawmakers doled out to higher education from the state’s general fund in next year’s budget. Governor Ritter, a Democrat, also is backing a ballot measure to raise state scholarship funds by an estimated $120-million. —Eric Kelderman
Posted on Tuesday May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]
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