February 29, 2008
Cuomo Subpoenas Sallie Mae, Questions Textbook and Snack Deals
Washington — More details are emerging about the renewed campaign by New York State’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, to investigate financial conflicts of interest on college campuses.
In an annual regulatory filing, Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan company, said Mr. Cuomo had sent it a subpoena, dated February 11, seeking “documents and information relating to our direct-to-consumer Tuition Answer product.”
Sallie Mae said it began offering Tuition Answer loans in 2004, marketing them to students and their families through “targeted direct-mail campaigns and Web-based initiatives.” Students and parents can borrow up to $40,000 per year for college expenses through the program, which had $3.3-billion in outstanding loans as of December 31, Sallie Mae said.
The company announced recently that it was putting a greater emphasis on private loan offerings, like Tuition Answer, following cuts by Congress in subsidies for lenders in the government’s program of federally guaranteed loans. Sallie Mae said in its regulatory filing that it planned to cooperate with Mr. Cuomo’s investigation, without describing what the attorney general was seeking.
A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo said today that the attorney general was investigating whether colleges were taking fees from vendors in exchange for the rights to sell textbooks, snacks, and financial services on campuses. The spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner, told the Associated Press that students might not be getting full value for their money if their colleges chose vendors on the basis of how much money the companies were willing to pay to do business. No subpoenas have been issued in that investigation, Mr. Lerner said.
Benjamin M. Lawsky, a deputy counsel to the attorney general, told Newsday earlier in the week that Mr. Cuomo was broadening his series of investigations into financial improprieties on college campuses. Institutions including Dartmouth College also received subpoenas this month from Mr. Cuomo, asking about contracts with banks for college-branded credit cards. —Paul Basken
Protests Heat Up at Michigan Over Tenure Case of Expert in Native American Studies
Students and faculty members at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have started an e-mail campaign to protest negative decisions in the tenure bid of Andrea L. Smith, who is interim director of the campus’s program in Native American studies.
Ms. Smith is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in Michigan’s American-culture program and women’s-studies department. The two programs split on her tenure bid, with American culture voting yes and women’s studies voting no. Then, last week, a panel in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts sided with women’s studies and voted to reject Ms. Smith’s bid. The decision now goes to the provost, Teresa A. Sullivan.
The e-mail in support of Ms. Smith asks people to send letters to the provost protesting the negative decisions. The message says Ms. Smith is “one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time.” The message does not name the students and professors who are supporting Ms. Smith, nor does it detail why her tenure bid was turned down. The message is circulating on several academic e-mail lists, including one for women’s studies, and has been echoed in the blogosphere at places like ThinkGirl.net and La Chola.
Valerie Traub, who leads women’s studies at Michigan, declined to talk about Ms. Smith’s bid or the department’s decision. “It’s a process internal to the University of Michigan,” she said.
Ms. Smith could not be reached for comment. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide (South End Press, 2005) and Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances, which is being released next month by Duke University Press. She is also a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, which calls itself a “national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color.” —Robin Wilson
British Government's Review of Higher Education Could Demand 'Radical Change'
Britain’s secretary of state for innovation, universities, and skills said today that the government planned to conduct a wide-ranging review to produce a “10- to 15-year framework for the expansion and development of higher education” — a process that could call for “radical reform and change.”
Warning that “excellence today is no guarantee of excellence in 10 or 15 years’ time,” the official, John Denham, said in a speech before representatives of the higher-education sector that “plenty of other countries, developing and developed, will challenge our position.” Mr. Denham identified a range of areas that will be reviewed to explore how British universities can maintain their competitiveness.
The areas include intellectual property, the student experience, and the relationship between academe and policy makers. Drummond Bone, vice chancellor of the University of Liverpool and a former president of Universities UK, has been asked to review the “international dimension” of the challenges facing British universities. Universities UK, an umbrella group representing vice chancellors, and the National Union of Students both issued statements welcoming the review. —Aisha Labi
Northwestern U. Panel Finds 'No Evidence' That Medill Dean Fabricated Quotes
A committee appointed by the provost of Northwestern University has found “no evidence” that John Lavine, dean of the university’s Medill School of Journalism, fabricated quotations in a column he wrote for the school’s alumni magazine.
Mr. Lavine has faced intense criticism from students and alumni of Medill for using quotes from anonymous students in the column, which praised a marketing class at the school.
Students at the journalism school are generally instructed to avoid using unnamed sources in their reporting — a longstanding trope of old-school journalism. According to many observers, the dustup over Mr. Lavine’s column telegraphs a larger conflict at Medill between such traditional journalistic values and a set of new emphases, spearheaded by Mr. Lavine, on marketing and audience research.
Last week Daniel I. Linzer, the provost, announced that he had appointed an ad hoc committee of three Medill alumni to look into the matter of the disputed quotes. In a statement today, Mr. Linzer reported the committee’s finding that, “although a record of the student statements that were quoted cannot be found … sentiments similar to quotes had been expressed by students.”
The committee said it had found “no evidence to point to any likelihood that the quotes were fabricated.”
Last week Mr. Lavine apologized for what he called his “poor judgment” in using a quotation, though he did not name its source. He said the quote had come from either lost notes or an e-mail message he had erased.
The ad hoc committee said that, in the future, “meticulous archiving might be desirable.” —John Gravois
Berkeley Professors Are Harassed by Animal-Rights Demonstrators
Several professors at the University of California at Berkeley have been the targets recently of animal-rights demonstrations that resemble protests staged at the homes of researchers at the university’s Santa Cruz campus, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today.
Some of the Berkeley professors said there had been protests at their homes every Sunday of this year, with activists yelling into bullhorns, chalking their sidewalks, and trespassing. The demonstrations are similar to those at Santa Cruz this month. One of those last Sunday turned violent, when protesters, possibly students, struck the husband of one biology professor at her house. Police officers in Berkeley and Santa Cruz are looking into whether there is any connection between the incidents.
Professors at the University of California at Los Angeles have also drawn the attention of animal-rights protesters this month. An incendiary device was left at the door of one professor’s house, the third such attack on a UCLA staff member in two years. Following that incident, the university sued and later obtained a temporary restraining order against several individuals and organizations. —Richard Monastersky
5 States Spend More on Prisons Than on Higher Education, Report Says
While one of its findings made more headlines — that about one out of every 100 U.S. adults is behind bars — a recently released report from the Pew Center on the States also shows that increases in states’ corrections budgets are far surpassing those for higher education.
From 1987 to 2007, the amount that states spent on corrections increased 127 percent, more than six times the 21-percent increase that states directed to higher education over the same period, according to the report.
The report also showed that for the first time, five states spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. Those states are Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon, and Vermont. However, the average state spends about 65 percent more on higher education than on corrections. —JJ Hermes
No, It's Not the Cold Medicine: Daytime Talk Shows Do Draw Lots of Career-College Ads
If you think you saw a lot of ads for career colleges when you were watching daytime TV talk shows while home with the flu, you’re right.
Even as the Web grows in importance as a marketing tool for colleges, daytime talk shows — think Tyra — remain stalwarts for colleges pitching career training in health care, business technology, and life as a crime-scene technician.
“The Jerry Springer Show remains a consistent, sure-fire lead machine,” according to an article in Career College Central Magazine, which is published by the marketing company PlattForm.
The “judge shows” are big draws as well. Apparently, Judge Judy and the others strike a chord with those inclined toward a career in criminal justice.
“You want to know who’s watching these shows? The exact demographic our career colleges are targeting,” says Katie Tomlinson, director of media resources at PlattForm, in the article. “It’s the coveted 18-to-34-year-olds who -– pardon the expression -– need to get a life.”
The genre, known crudely as “nuts and sluts,” attracts advertisements from colleges because — well, let’s face it — tawdry does often translate into ratings. Or at least that’s what the article says. —Goldie Blumenstyk
Philip Morris Shuts Down Grant Program for University Research
The tobacco company Philip Morris has ended a controversial program that supported research at dozens of American universities, Science magazine reported today.
The decision apparently was made last fall, amid growing public attention to the debate at universities over industry-sponsored research. In September the regents of the University of California rejected a proposal to ban university researchers from accepting tobacco money, but adopted a policy that calls for special reviews of any studies to be conducted with such funds. The reviews must verify that a proposed study “uses sound methodology and appears designed to allow the researcher to reach objective and scientifically valid conclusions.”
The company notified grantees last September that it would no longer support new research through the Philip Morris External Research Program, according to Science. But that news spread to academics at large only this month, after the University of California’s president, Robert C. Dynes, sent a letter to chancellors of the system’s campuses, reminding them to enforce the review policy. That letter mentioned that Philip Morris had shut down its external-research program.
A critic of research sponsored by the tobacco industry characterized Philip Morris’s move as a step away from negative publicity, but William Phelps, a spokesman for the company, defended the quality of the academic research it sponsors. He told the magazine that future support would focus on studies on “reducing the harm of smoking.”
How the decision will affect many academic research projects was unclear, but one antitobacco crusader, Stanton Glantz, a bioengineer at the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that tobacco money was not going away.
He cited the $6-million Philip Morris grant won by Edythe D. London, the researcher at the university’s Los Angeles campus whose home was flooded by animal-rights extremists in October and who was the target of a firebomb attack this month. Her grant was not awarded through the external-research program, Mr. Glantz told the magazine. —Charles Huckabee
February 28, 2008
Congress Asks Education Secretary to Prepare for More Lender Departures
Washington — The chairmen of two Congressional education committees sent a letter to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today asking her to take steps to protect student borrowers in the “unlikely” event that a large number of lenders withdraw from the guaranteed-loan program.
The letter, which is signed by two Democrats, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California, comes amid a growing credit crunch that is making it harder for lenders to obtain financing for their student loans. In recent weeks, several lenders, including four of the nation’s largest, have left the program or scaled back their operations. Some fear that if the departures continue, students could have difficulty obtaining loans for the next academic year.
“While we are hopeful that overall credit-market conditions will soon improve … it is only prudent to prepare now to ensure that these conditions do not negatively impact students’ ability to access federal student loans,” the letter reads.
The lawmakers specifically urge the secretary to update plans to put in place a “lender of last resort” program to provide loans to students and to ensure that the federal government’s direct-loan program is prepared to handle increased loan volume.
Ms. Spellings has said she has been monitoring the loan industry for signs of trouble but is not yet convinced that there is a looming crisis in student lending. Sara Martinez Tucker, the under secretary of education, told The Chronicle on Wednesday that the department saw no need to begin considering lender-of-last-resort provisions yet. “We think we’re far, far, far from getting to this point,” she said.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Mr. Miller said he planned to hold a hearing in the next couple of weeks to examine the effect of credit-market turmoil on the availability of federal student loans. —Kelly Field
College-Educated Young People Are Much More Likely to Vote Than Their Peers
Young voters are participating in the 2008 primaries in record numbers, but those who have been to college are much more likely to do so, reports the Center for Information & Research on Civil Learning & Education, known as Circle.
Half of Americans age 18 to 29 are enrolled in college, but 79 percent of the voters in that age group on Super Tuesday had some college experience, according to Circle. One in four of 18-to-29-year-olds with college experience voted, compared with one in 14 of their peers without college experience.
“The overall rise in young American voting this primary season has been remarkable, but it’s disproportionately well-educated young people,” said Peter Levine, director of the center, in a news release. “Campaigns and interest groups mobilize youth on college campuses, but it’s harder to reach noncollege youth, whose membership in unions, religious congregations, and community groups has fallen since the 1970s.”
Young voters are shaping the Democratic Party’s race in particular, which could work in its favor come November, The Wall Street Journal reported today. —Beckie Supiano
A Third of Public-School Students in Mass. Need Remediation at College, Report Says
More than one out of three students at public high schools in Massachusetts who go on to a public college or university in the state require remedial preparation, according to a report released today.
The “School-to-College Report,” the first of its kind in the state, is a joint effort of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and Department of Education. The report, to be officially presented to the board on Friday, shows that 37 percent of the public-school students took at least one remedial course during their first semester of college.
The report, which is not yet posted online, was made possible by a new database linking elementary, secondary, and higher education in the state. It used data for students who completed high school and entered college in 2005. —Beckie Supiano
Clausen Named Higher-Education Commissioner in Louisiana
The Louisiana Board of Regents today named Sally Clausen, president of the University of Louisiana, as the state’s new higher-education commissioner. This is Ms. Clausen’s second time in the job.
She succeeds E. Joseph Savoie, who was known for his political savvy in advocating for the public universities, especially after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He was named president of the University of Louisiana’s Lafayette campus in December.
Ms. Clausen, who led the University of Louisiana for more than six years, had been considered a contender to become president of Louisiana State University. That job went to John V. Lombardi, a former chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. —Karin Fischer
Universities Are Chosen for 5 New Homeland-Security Research Centers
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security financed this week five new university-run research centers. The projects, which involve 11 universities, join a list of existing centers chosen by the agency through merit-based competitions. The institutions and their research topics are:
- The University of Arizona and the University of Texas at El Paso — border security and immigration.
- Northeastern University and the University of Rhode Island — explosives detection, mitigation, and response.
- The University of Hawaii-Manoa and Stevens Institute of Technology — maritime, island, and port security.
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Jackson State University — natural disasters, coastal infrastructure, and emergency management.
- Texas Southern University, Tougaloo College, and the University of Connecticut — transportation security.
The Chronicle's News Blog Turns 2
People in higher education are making more news than ever before, and they’re talking about it more vigorously than ever as well. No surer sign of both trends is The Chronicle’s News Blog, which started two years ago today. Since then, we’ve posted more than 4,000 news items — 2,300 in the last year alone — and readers like you have responded with nearly 12,000 comments. Thank you for reading us. Keep the comments coming!
A Disputed Patent on Embryonic Stem Cells Is Upheld
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has upheld one of the three disputed University of Wisconsin patents on a technique for isolating and maintaining embryonic stem cells. But the two groups that have challenged the patents say they will continue their efforts to overturn that patent, and the two other related ones.
The patent office ruled preliminarily against the patents in April, saying that they had been initially issued in error because the process they described for isolating and maintaining a line of embryonic stem cells would have been obvious at the time to people in the field because of other scientists’ published work. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the patenting arm of the university’s Madison campus, then filed amendments to the patents to respond to those critiques.
The foundation, known as WARF, issued a news release today that called the patent office’s latest decision an affirmation that the “breakthrough discoveries” of James A. Thomson had been indeed worthy of patent protection.
The news drew a quick response from critics of the patent.
“The battle is hardly over,” said the Public Patent Foundation of New York and the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in California, in a statement released today. —Goldie Blumenstyk
Troubled California College Loses Accreditation and May Be Forced to Close
The beleaguered New College of California is losing its accreditation and could be forced to close, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The experimental liberal-arts institution had been on probation since last summer, when its accreditor, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, issued a scathing report, faulting the college for numerous problems, and stated in a letter that it had a “culture of administrative sloppiness and arbitrariness.” The institution’s president of five years resigned in the wake of those actions.
The college’s Board of Trustees had disputed some of the Western Association’s criticisms last summer, but said it would comply with the agency’s accreditation standards. Those efforts apparently were not enough. According to the San Francisco newspaper, Ralph A. Wolff, president of the accrediting association’s senior-college division, wrote to college officials on Tuesday that his agency “could no longer validate to the public” that the institution had “a basic infrastructure of academic, operational, financial, and governance systems, structures, and policies.”
Without accreditation, the college will not qualify to receive federal student aid, a potential financial death blow. It has some options, “none of which are good,” one of its trustees, Tedd Corman, told the newspaper. Those include appealing the accreditor’s decision, applying for accreditation through another agency, or continuing as an unaccredited institution. But Mr. Corman seemed doubtful about pursuing those options. “I’m not sure it makes sense to continue,” he said. —Charles Huckabee
Student Newspaper and Student Government at Montclair State Will Separate
Attempts to mediate the dispute between the student newspaper and the student government at Montclair State University have failed, and the institution’s president said on Wednesday that the university would work with both groups “to achieve a formal separation of the two organizations effective no later than July 1.”
The student government, which provides a large portion of the budget for The Montclarion, temporarily froze the newspaper’s funds last month after the paper hired a lawyer to challenge the government’s tendency to meet behind closed doors. The government later restored the funds pending mediation of the dispute. Those talks broke down this week.
The president, Susan A. Cole, stressed in a written statement that the decision to separate the two groups was “not an admonishment of either organization or any individual students.” She added that the university would “assure that The Montclarion has adequate funds to publish for the remainder of this academic year,” regardless of any action taken by the student government. —Charles Huckabee
February 27, 2008
NCAA Penalizes Lane College for Rules Violations
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has placed Lane College on probation for four years after finding that the institution’s former athletics director allowed 32 ineligible athletes to practice, compete, and receive financial aid over a six-year period.
A report released today by the NCAA’s Division II Committee on Infractions said the former athletics director at the historically black college, in Jackson, Tenn., was running the department without a support staff and had misapplied NCAA eligibility rules from the 2001-2 through the 2006-7 academic years.
The report noted that Lane’s athletics department has since made “substantial improvements” to its administration, including the addition of a compliance officer.
In addition to the four-year probation, Lane will have to vacate wins in games in which any of the ineligible athletes participated. The college must also reduce the dollar amount of scholarships in football and men’s and women’s basketball until 2011.
The former athletics director will also be required to appear before the infractions committee if he seeks employment at another NCAA institution within the next four years.
Lane officials could not be reached for comment.
The full report is available on the NCAA’s Web site. —Libby Sander
Better Than the Impact Factor?
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new way to rank scientific journals. They say it indicates the quality of the publications better than does the impact factor, the widely used score distributed by Thomson Scientific, a large publisher.
The team reports on its ranking method in the February issue of the journal PLoS One.
The impact factor is calculated as the number of citations averaged over the number of papers in a given journal. It is widely used in decisions on hiring and tenure. But it has been criticized as unrepresentative or misleading.
Luis A. Nunes Amaral, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern, and his colleagues developed their ranking scheme by searching the citations in nearly 23 million papers published since 1955, in more than 2,200 journals. They established a mathematical formula that takes into account the speed with which papers accumulate citations to work out a measure of the average impact of each journal.
The researchers assert that their measure is more accurate than the impact factor and can be used to estimate the number of citations — and thus predict the influence — that a new paper will have. —Lila Guterman
International-Education Group Announces 'Internationalization' Awards
Five colleges were singled out today by Nafsa: Association of International Educators for their “outstanding and innovative efforts in campus internationalization.”
Goucher College, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Valparaiso University are the recipients of this year’s Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization.
The institutions will be featured in a report published this fall called “Internationalizing the Campus 2008: Profiles of Success at Colleges and Universities” and will be recognized at the annual Nafsa conference in May.
Programs at Miami Dade College, Colorado State University, and Webster University (Mo.) will also be highlighted in the report.
The award, named in honor of the late Senator Simon of Illinois, has been given since 2003. —Aisha Labi
Historically Black Colleges Are Not in Compliance With Title IX, Study Finds
A study by an advocacy group for men’s sports has concluded that athletics departments at most historically black colleges and universities are out of compliance with Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, and that the law’s requirements prevent those colleges from luring more male students.
Seventy-two of the nation’s 74 coeducational historically black institutions with athletics programs fail to comply with Title IX’s “proportionality” requirement, according to the study, released today by the College Sports Council.
Title IX’s proportionality requirement calls for the ratios of male and female athletes to be similar to the overall male and female undergraduate population. The study cites data from the U.S. Department of Education showing that enrollment at historically black colleges and universities is 61 percent female.
Wade Hughes, former head coach of the wrestling team at Howard University, a program that was terminated in 2002, said in a statement that this “proportionality” requirement was preventing historically black institutions from adding more men’s sports teams that could, in turn, attract more male students.
“Many HBCU’s are struggling financially,” Mr. Hughes said. “Adding sports teams for male athletes will not only attract more students to their campuses, but help to achieve a more balanced undergraduate-student ratio. If these schools are forced to comply with Title IX’s proportionality test, then adding sports teams to attract more male students is not an option.”
The report is available at the sports council’s Web site. —Libby Sander
Student Killed by Rocket at Israeli College
Jerusalem — An Israeli student was killed today in a Palestinian rocket attack on Sapir College, in Sderot, in southern Israel.
Ron Yichia, a 47-year-old student, died after suffering chest wounds when a rocket fell near his car in the parking lot of the college. The campus had been hit at least twice before, but Mr. Yichia was the first campus fatality and the first person to die in Sderot since May 2007, following daily rocket barrages from the nearby Gaza Strip.
Hamas said it had fired the rocket. The Palestinian group said the attack was a response to Israeli security measures that have wreaked havoc on the Palestinian territories, including the killing of five Palestinian militants this morning.
David Brennan, chairman of the Sapir College Student Union, called on the Israeli government to do more to stop the attacks, which have left Sderot and surrounding communities close to economic collapse. A statement issued by the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused Hamas and other Palestinian groups of committing war crimes by taking aim at civilian installations like Sapir College. —Matthew Kalman
U.S. Labor Dept. Sues Knoxville College Over Lapsed Retirement Contribution
Knoxville College and a former president are being sued by the U.S. Department of Labor for failing to make required contributions to employees’ retirement accounts for nearly a year, beginning in August 2003.
The college said it was not contesting the charges, which were filed this month in a federal district court in Knoxville, Tenn. In fact, college officials said they believe they owed more than the $15,000 that the government cited. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, college officials believe the amount that was not forwarded to the retirement plan is closer to $23,000, including interest and penalties.
The complaint alleges that the college and the former president, Barbara R. Hatton, violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by failing to make the contribution. It maintains that they allowed the college to mingle money slated for retirement contributions with the institution’s general accounts. Ms. Hatton was fired in 2005.
Knoxville College has struggled since it lost accreditation, in 1998. —Goldie Blumenstyk
William F. Buckley Jr. Dies at 82
William F. Buckley Jr., a major force in shaping modern American conservatism and a spirited critic of academic culture, died today at his home, at the age of 82.
Mr. Buckley’s 1951 book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom,” famously condemned his alma mater for abandoning free-market and religious orthodoxies. Despite their self-proclaimed intellectual tolerance, he argued, Yale’s professors actually operated within a narrow range of liberal conventions. He called on his fellow Yale alumni to agitate for a return to the university’s core principles, which (in his account) were Christian and individualist. And he defended Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to purge Communists and other leftists from government jobs and academic positions.
The university did not respond warmly to the book. In the introduction to a 25th-anniversary edition, Mr. Buckley recalled warning Yale’s president at the time, A. Whitney Griswold, about the impending publication:
A week or so later, I had a telephone call from an elderly tycoon with a huge opinion of himself…. He advised me that he knew about the manuscript and had splendid tidings for me: namely, that I could safely withdraw the book because he … had got the private assurance of President Griswold that great reforms at Yale were underway and that conservative principles were in the ascendancy, so why bother to publish a book that would merely stir things up? … I was not yet as conversant as I would quickly become with the ease with which rich and vain men are manipulated by skillful educators.
God and Man at Yale brought Mr. Buckley fame at the age of 26 and set a template for many subsequent right-wing critiques of academe, including Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Ross Douthat’s Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005).
Mr. Buckley’s long career included the creation of National Review, in 1955; many years as host of the talk show Firing Line; and dozens of books, including 11 spy novels.
In 1997, The Chronicle looked at Mr. Buckley’s support for Yale University Press’s Annals of Communism series. In a Chronicle essay in 2006, Mark Bauerlein echoed the complaints in God and Man at Yale about the status of conservatism in academe. And last year, we looked at the history of conservative campus activism since Mr. Buckley’s days at Yale. —David Glenn
(Video: Mr. Buckley debating U.S. foreign policy with Noam Chomsky on Firing Line in 1969.)
Reversal of Head-Scarf Ban in Turkey Faces Legal Challenge
Turkey’s main opposition party filed an appeal today with the country’s constitutional court, seeking to overturn two amendments, approved this month by parliament, that eased a ban on the wearing of head scarves at universities by observant Muslim women, the Reuters news agency reported.
The party had pledged to take legal action to overturn the amendments, which were signed into law last Friday by President Abdullah Gul, the Associated Press reported.
There were scattered reports of students’ wearing scarves on campuses in the immediate aftermath of the measures’ passage, and since Monday women across the country have attempted to do so, despite confusion about whether the constitutional changes alone are enough to legalize such actions. Even the government, which orchestrated the new policy, initially urged students not to force the issue until all applicable laws had been changed, referring to anticipated revisions in the Higher Education Law.
In Istanbul, especially, some universities have continued to prevent women wearing scarves from entering their campuses, leading to some protests.
The new chairman of Turkey’s Higher Education Board, a government body that oversees all of the country’s universities and is responsible for the higher-education law, said that no further legal actions were required to allow students to wear head scarves. Nine members of the board, which has historically been a staunchly secular supporter of the head-scarf ban, issued a statement contradicting the chairman.
In an interview, the chairman “said he will take legal action against university rectors who insist on upholding a ban on head scarves at universities and refuse to allow covered women to attend classes,” the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported. —Aisha Labi
Northern Illinois U. Will Tear Down Building Where Students Were Shot
The classroom building at Northern Illinois University where this month a gunman fatally shot five students before killing himself will be torn down, state and university officials announced today.
In its place, the university will use state funds to construct a “state of the art” classroom building, to be named Memorial Hall, said Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and Northern Illinois’s president, John G. Peters.
The two officials were scheduled to hold an afternoon news conference with state lawmakers in front of the building, Cole Hall, where Steven P. Kazmierczak, a former student, shot 22 students on February 14 before turning the gun on himself.
Though students resumed classes this week after a 10-day closure, Cole Hall, which sits in the center of the university’s DeKalb campus, has remained shuttered since the shooting. —Libby Sander
Florida Colleges May Charge Fee for More Mental-Health Services
Florida’s 11 public colleges are weighing a new student fee to pay for more mental-health counselors, The Orlando Sentinel reported today.
The International Association of Counseling Services, a nonprofit accrediting organization, recommends that colleges have a ratio of one counselor for every 1,500 full-time-equivalent students. All but one of the state’s institutions — New College in Sarasota — have student-to-counselor ratios higher than that average.
To reach the international average, the state would have to spend $5-million annually to hire 83 more counselors, according to the newspaper.
At a meeting on Tuesday, university officials said they would calculate amounts for a fee that the university system’s governing board could consider at a meeting in late March. Creating a new fee would require approval from the state legislature.
An article in The Chronicle last week pointed out that mental-health services remain understaffed at many colleges, particularly at public institutions. —Jeffrey Selingo
Former Student Pleads Guilty in Large-Scale Grade-Changing Scheme
A former student at Diablo Valley College has pleaded guilty for his part in a large-scale grade-changing scheme at the California institution.
Liberato Rocky Servo, a former student employee in the college’s records office, agreed to help prosecutors in exchange for the reduced sentence of one year in jail, The Argus, a local newspaper, reported.
Mr. Servo is the third ringleader to plead guilty, the newspaper said. The scheme’s mastermind pleaded guilty last September.
Prosecutors have charged dozens of former students at Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College with felonies related to academic fraud.
The students changed their own marks and made thousands of dollars by changing as many as 400 grades for other students. An A went for as much as $600. —Jeffrey Selingo
February 26, 2008
Pheaa Temporarily Suspends Federal Student Loans
The acting chief of Pennsylvania’s student-loan agency told state legislators on Tuesday that his agency would temporarily stop making new loans through the federal guaranteed-student-loan program, the Associated Press reported.
James L. Preston, acting president of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, or Pheaa, said the agency had decided two weeks ago to suspend loans made outside the state, and now had decided also to suspend in-state loans, effective March 7.
The decisions stem from a credit crunch that has created turmoil in the bond markets. “Right now, it’s not profitable for us at all to finance” federal student loans, Mr. Preston told state lawmakers in Harrisburg, Pa., during a hearing on Pheaa’s budget. Instead, he said, the agency will steer prospective borrowers to banks that are still participating in the federal program.
A number of student-loan companies, including the College Loan Corporation, Nelnet Inc., and Sallie Mae, have either left the federal program or scaled back the types of loans they offer. In those decisions, lenders have cited both the credit crisis and cuts in the federal subsidies paid to lenders in the government-backed program. In addition to those problems, Pheaa is contesting a decision by the U.S. Department of Education that it should repay $15-million in subsidies it received in the past. —Charles Huckabee
College Board and Test-Prep Company Agree to Keep Mum on Lawsuits
A Dallas-based test-preparation company and the College Board have agreed not to comment on the lawsuits they have filed against each other. According to a legal document signed by lawyers for both sides today, “… all parties to this lawsuit are prohibited from communicating with nonparties to the lawsuit, including but not limited to members of the news media….”
Before the agreement, representatives of both the College Board and the test-preparation company, Karen Dillard’s College Prep LP, had talked extensively about their lawsuits.
In litigation filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Dallas, the College Board alleged that Karen Dillard’s company had illegally obtained copies of SAT and PSAT tests before they were available to the public. The College Board also said the company had violated copyright laws by using questions from former SAT tests in its test-preparation materials.
Karen Dillard’s company then filed a countersuit on Monday, asserting that the College Board had improperly obtained proprietary information about the company from one of its former employees. The test-prep company is seeking a temporary restraining order against the College Board to protect the privacy of its clients. —Elizabeth F. Farrell
Education Secretary Faces Fire on the Hill Over Budget Recommendations
Washington — Education Secretary Margaret Spellings appeared before the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee today to deliver budget testimony, the last time she will do so in defense of a budget by President Bush. Both sides appeared to be glad it was over.
Ms. Spellings endured a full two hours of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the panel’s education subcommittee, facing complaints of insufficient funds for dozens of education programs in Mr. Bush’s budget for the 2009 fiscal year, which begins October 1.
In addition to complaining that grade-school programs such as those mandated under the No Child Left Behind law were being shortchanged, subcommittee members vented frustration over recommended cuts or minimal increases in such areas as the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education program, support for historically black colleges, and programs that help college-bound high-school students.
Democrats were harsh, with Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois calling the administration’s budget priorities “a bunch of garbage,” and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut saying she was glad today was the last time she had to hear Ms. Spellings defend the president’s priorities. But Republicans were barely kinder, with Rep. John E. Peterson of Pennsylvania saying the administration’s budget “puts a zero priority on technical education,” and Rep. Dennis R. Rehberg of Montana accusing Ms. Spellings of neglecting American Indians. “I don’t know what you guys are smoking over there,” Mr. Rehberg told Ms. Spellings, “but it just ain’t working.”
Ms. Spellings fought back by telling lawmakers that the administration, at a time of fiscal constraint, has been emphasizing larger-scale programs with a proven ability to work, such as Pell Grants, while cutting back on programs that federal analysts have found to be ineffective or too small to produce significant results.
“There is a preference toward statewide activities at the department, as we saw in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, that can be more strategic, more effective,” Ms. Spellings said, “because they are looked at in the context of state laws.” —Paul Basken
Students Are Implicated in Attack on Animal Researcher's Family
Students at the University of California at Santa Cruz reportedly participated in an attack on the home of a researcher there who uses animals in research, according to an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
The incident happened on Sunday, when six masked intruders banged on the door of a scientist who studies breast cancer and neurological diseases. When a family member of the researcher answered the door, he was struck by the protesters, who then fled. A witness took down the license plate of the car used by the assailants.
Police officers later raided a house where three Santa Cruz students were apparently residents, the Sentinel reported. The police confiscated computers and other materials but made no arrests.
George Blumenthal, chancellor of the university, condemned the attack, calling it a “criminal act that threatens, intimidates, and stifles academic freedom.”
Earlier this month, animal-rights extremists attacked the home of a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles. The university last week obtained a temporary restraining order against three organizations and five individuals.
The Chronicle covered the UCLA attack here and the granting of the restraining order here. An update on this blog posting is here. —Richard Monastersky
February 25, 2008
Uganda Officials Consider Making All University Employees' Jobs Temporary
Uganda’s Ministry of Education has proposed phasing out all permanent jobs at the nation’s five public universities in reponse to a government-appointed review committee’s conclusion that open-ended employment was failing to encourage innovation and efficiency among professors and other workers, the news Web site AllAfrica.com reported. All employees, including academic staff members, would instead be hired on a temporary basis.
Gabriel Opio, the minister for higher education, said his office was preparing a white paper on university administration that top officials in the education ministry would review and present to the cabinet.
In a report earlier this month, the review committee recommended that the “terms of employment at public universities should change from permanent and pensionable” to renewable contracts for periods of three to five years. Renewal would tied to “good performance,” it said, adding that “poor performers should not be reappointed.”
Gilbert Kadilo, a spokesman at Makerere University, in Kampala, called the proposal “revolutionary” and said it could further destabilize the deficit-plagued institution, where faculty members went on strike this month because their pay was in arrears, among other issues. And the chairman of the Makerere’s Academic Staff Association, Augustus Nuwagaba, said most lecturers would certainly “jump out” if their job security became shaky. —Charles Huckabee
Academic and International Groups Urge Bush to Ease Restrictions on Travel to Cuba
In a letter to President Bush today, Nafsa: Association of International Educators and other international groups called on the president to lift his administration’s restrictions on contacts between Americans and Cubans, including those on academic travel.
The letter, by Marlene M. Johnson, Nafsa’s executive director, was written on behalf of the association and half a dozen other organizations, including the Latin American Studies Association. It urges an easier approach to such contacts “in recognition of Cuba’s first presidential succession in nearly 50 years and as a way to increase U.S. contacts with Cuba as it now begins a transition to a new generation of leadership.”
Academic travel to Cuba has been severely curtailed by regulations issued in 2004. A coalition of academic groups challenged the restrictions in a lawsuit filed in 2006, but a federal judge rejected their case last summer. Under the regulations, institutions that want to send students or scholars to Cuba must obtain a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and study programs must meet a number of conditions to qualify for a license. Among other conditions, study programs must be for periods of at least 10 weeks, and must be provided by the institution in which a student is enrolled.
The international groups’ letter urges the administration to lift those restrictions and others, saying such “modest steps would leave in place the trade embargo of Cuba and indeed all of the restrictions on Cuba transactions that existed prior to 2003.” —Charles Huckabee
'New York Post' Deems Columbia U.'s Handling of Plagiarism Case 'Contemptible'
It’s rare that accusations of scholarly misconduct merit attention from New York City tabloids. But the case of Madonna G. Constantine, a Columbia University professor, is not your average plagiarism kerfuffle.
A law firm hired by Columbia found that Ms. Constantine had borrowed the work of two former students and a former colleague. The university asked her to resign (she declined) and then cut her salary. Ms. Constantine, who asserts there is a conspiracy against her, says that someone at Teachers College hung a noose outside her office door in October.
In an editorial with the headline “Contemptible Columbia,” the New York Post weighed in on the controversy:
By retaining Constantine as a tenured professor, and by keeping the alleged “sanctions” applied against her secret, Teachers has demonstrated that it cares as little about its reputation as Columbia cares about its own.
A columnist for Newsday doesn’t seem to buy Ms. Constantine’s claim that she’s a victim:
If Constantine is such a victim, how did she get to be a full professor, with tenure, the head of an annual conference, and the former chair of her department?
Read The Chronicle’s coverage of the case here and here. —Thomas Bartlett
Thousands Could Lose Out on Larger Pell Grants, Analysis Suggests
Washington — Thousands of students who received Pell Grants last year may be denied them this year, a new analysis suggests. But students who continue to receive the grants will see their awards increase substantially.
The analysis, by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid, a Web site about student aid, estimates that the $69 cut in the maximum Pell Grant, contained in a 2008 spending bill that was signed into law last month, will result in roughly 100,000 students with incomes close to the cutoff losing their eligibility for the grants. That’s because the cutoff is tied to the Pell maximum in the discretionary portion of the Education Department’s budget.
Students who are disqualified from receiving Pell Grants will also be ineligible for Academic Competitiveness and Smart Grants, which go exclusively to Pell recipients.
But another bill enacted last year will result in students who hold onto the grants receiving much more aid than last year. That bill, a budget-reconciliation measure that slashed subsidies to student lenders, provided enough mandatory funds for the Pell program to provide for a $490 increase in the grant, bringing the maximum award to $4,731. —Kelly Field
College-Prep Company Sues College Board Back
A Texas-based test-preparation company filed a lawsuit against the College Board today, in a countermove in an unusual legal clash.
Last week the College Board filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against the company, Karen Dillard’s College Prep LP. That action, filed in the U.S. District Court in Dallas, asserted that the company had illegally obtained copies of SAT and PSAT tests, which the board owns, before they were available to the public. The lawsuit also accused the company of violating copyright-protection laws by circulating and selling materials that included test questions owned by the College Board.
In its countersuit, Karen Dillard’s College Prep LP said that the College Board had improperly obtained proprietary information about the company from one of its former employees. The test-prep company seeks a temporary restraining order against the College Board to protect the privacy of its clients. —Eric Hoover
New Orleans Colleges See Surge in Applications
Applications to New Orleans colleges are soaring this spring, The Times-Picayune reports.
Many of the students who are applying came to the city as volunteers to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
Applications have jumped nearly 100 percent at Tulane University compared with this time last year, the paper reports. They’re up 85 percent at the University of New Orleans, 43 percent at Our Lady of Holy Cross College, 28 percent at Xavier University of Louisiana, and 24 percent at Loyola University New Orleans.
After receiving nearly 34,000 applications, Tulane decided not to accept any more. “We have too many students to deal with, and there’s no use accepting a student we can’t accommodate,” said Earl Retif, registrar and vice president for enrollment management.
No one knows how many of these students will end up attending college in the Big Easy, but higher-education officials are nonetheless heartened about the colleges’ recovery.
“They’ve got a ways to go, but they’re making significant improvement,” said E. Joseph Savoie, the state’s commissioner of higher education. —Katherine Mangan
Big Sports Programs Bank on Fight Songs
Athletics departments looking for extra cash — and who isn’t these days? — need look no further than their school fight songs.
A New York company has bought the rights to fight songs at Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and about 95 other universities, according to the Associated Press.
Fans can buy pens, ties, video games, phones, and — if they’re really crazy about their alma mater — socks that play their favorite tune. —Brad Wolverton
6 Months After His Last Lecture, a Dying Professor Continues to Dream Big
Some six months ago, doctors told Randy Pausch that he had about three months of good health left, until the pancreatic cancer in his body started to drain the life from him more aggressively. But this past weekend, Mr. Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of its Entertainment Technology Center, sent an e-mail message to friends and family members saying that he is beating the odds and remains in relatively good health.
Mr. Pausch became an unexpected celebrity after he gave an inspirational “last lecture” at the university that hundreds of thousands of people have watched online.
The talk, called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” was meant to recap the professor’s many achievements and provide some advice along the way. It did that, and it has also led Mr. Pausch to achieve a few more dreams, as he has documented on a blog that he has run since he received the cancer diagnosis. Here are a few of them:
- Mr. Pausch wrote a book based on the talk, with the help of Jeffrey Zaslow of The Wall Street Journal, by dictating stories and ideas to Mr. Zaslow via cellphone during a daily bike ride. (The publisher, Hyperion Books, reportedly paid $6.7-million for the right to publish the book.) The book is expected to come out in early April.
- He flew to Los Angeles to appear as an extra in the new Star Trek film, after getting an unexpected e-mail invitation to do so from the film’s director, J.J. Abrams. He said he was donating his acting pay to charity.
- He traveled to Washington to try to persuade U.S. senators to pass legislation giving more money for research on pancreatic cancer.
“This won’t last forever (the doctors measure ‘winning’ this game in months, not years),” Mr. Pausch wrote in his e-mail message. “But I’ll take every day I can get!” —Jeffrey R. Young
February 24, 2008
Philanthropist Who Helped Start Microsoft Leaves $60-Million to Stanford
Richard W. (Ric) Weiland, a friend of Bill Gates and Paul Allen who helped launch the Microsoft Corporation and who died in 2006, left $160-million, the majority of his estate, to charity, The Seattle Times reported. His bequests include $65-million for gay-rights groups and a gift to Stanford University estimated to be worth $60-million, which a university official told the newspaper was the largest bequest it had ever received.
Mr. Weiland, who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1976, was one of the first five Microsoft employees. He committed suicide in 2006 at age 53, and it has taken more than a year to sort out his estate. The Seattle newspaper described him as a quiet philanthropist, adding that the full scope of his giving was just now starting to emerge. Other bequests disclosed today included $65-million to the Pride Foundation in Seattle and 10 other nonprofit organizations that support the rights of gay and lesbian Americans. The money will support antidiscrimination campaigns, programs to help young people, and scholarships.
No further details of the Stanford gift were available today, but university reports show that Mr. Weiland was a major contributor to Stanford over the years. He endowed professorships in the names of both of his parents, the Martha Meier Weiland Professorship in medicine and the Richard Herschel Weiland Professorship in physics. He also established a Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and contributed support for various research programs, as well as unrestricted gifts. —Charles Huckabee
Maryland Lawmakers Question Morgan State U. Construction Spending
Morgan State University officials faced tough questioning from state lawmakers on Friday over an audit faulting the institution’s construction-spending practices, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Members of the State Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee, which held the hearing on the audit, told the newspaper they felt frustrated that hours of questioning did not provide them with more answers as to how the money had been spent and why. The State House of Delegates is expected to hold hearings on the audit in the coming week, and the auditors have referred their findings to the criminal division of the state attorney general’s office.
The legislative audit found that the university had padded a $4.3-million contract with the Whiting Turner Construction Company with a $3.1-million cushion and now cannot account for part of that money. The audit also found that Whiting Turner had been overpaid $825,250 in duplicate billings, and that two university employees had been simultaneously paid as both regular and contractual workers, resulting in overpayments of $121,400 that were not discovered for months.
The university’s director of design and construction management resigned last month, just before the audit’s findings were made public. —Peter Schmidt
Bombing at University in Southern Thailand Injures 2 Staff Members
Two staff members were injured on Friday when a bomb was detonated at Yala Rajabhat University, in Thailand’s violence-racked southernmost province, a Thai military official said. The bomb was placed outside the staff offices and detonated by remote control at 10 a.m., the official said. A second bomb on the campus exploded a few minutes later, but no one was hurt, he said.
Other news reports listed the number of injured at three, and stated that a total of four bombs had been detonated in the region.
Kraisorn Sritrairat, dean of the university, told The Bangkok Post that he believed Islamic militants had been responsible for the bombs. The attacks, he said, may have been in retaliation for the recent arrest and interrogation of several students.
Last month, officers from the Special Forces Unit entered the Yala campus and arrested nine students after searching dormitories and confiscating evidence, according to news reports. The students, who were taken to a military camp for interrogation, were suspected of having links to separatist groups that are accused of trying to infiltrate universities in Thailand’s Muslim-majority southern provinces.
Several of the students have said they were tortured during their detention. One student said he had been beaten. Most said they had been forced to stand in the sun all day. The military has denied knowledge of any human-rights abuses. The Yala Students Federation said it was preparing to file a lawsuit against the military. —Martha Ann Overland
February 23, 2008
Indiana U. Men's Basketball Coach Resigns in Wake of NCAA Charges
Kelvin Sampson, the Indiana University men’s basketball coach, resigned Friday night, accepting a $750,000 buyout in the wake of alleged NCAA recruiting violations, according to The Indianapolis Star.
The university said an anonymous donor had provided $550,000 of the buyout and $200,000 was coming from athletics-department funds. The buyout agreement blocks Mr. Sampson from suing the university. —David L. Wheeler
February 22, 2008
Government Needs More Foreign-Language Speakers, Panelist Says
Washington — The federal government needs more professionals who can speak multiple languages and are familiar with more than one culture. But limited funds and government priorities for such work often dictate who gets hired and what on-the-job language training employees receive, a panelist at an international-education conference here said today.
Robert Slater, director of the National Security Education Program, said that some languages, such as Chinese or Farsi, take priority over others.
Mr. Slater spoke as part of a panel discussion on the need for international expertise in government security. Some audience members also lamented the lack of financial support for foreign-language programs on college campuses.
Government and industry have called on universities to produce more graduates fluent in “critical languages.”
The panel was part of a two-day forum, sponsored by the International Education Programs Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The event brought together educators and leaders of state education departments and college language institutes to share programs, ideas, and solutions to the challenges posed in international education. —Hurley Goodall
Bush Library Seals Deal With Southern Methodist U.
Southern Methodist University and the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation cemented their partnership this afternoon, as the university’s president, R. Gerald Turner, and Don Evans, chairman of the foundation’s site-selection committee, signed thick binders of documents during a public ceremony at the university.
“This is a great day for SMU,” said Mr. Turner during the ceremony. “It’s a day to be savored and a day to be celebrated.”
Southern Methodist will be the host institution for Mr. Bush’s presidential library and museum. Like all other modern-day presidential libraries, the facilities will be administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, a federal agency. The university will also be the site of a conservative public-policy institute administered by the Bush foundation. The planned institute has been criticized by some members of Southern Methodist’s faculty and by liberal activists in the United Methodist Church.
Mr. Evans, a former U.S. secretary of commerce, said during a news conference after the ceremony that he expected construction of the facilities to begin in 2009 and to be completed within five or six years.
The library, museum, and institute “will be important institutions and centers for scholars to research the times in which President Bush served and the initiatives of his presidency,” Mr. Evans said.
At the news conference, Mr. Turner was asked about an activist campaign to challenge the library plans at a regional governance meeting of the United Methodist Church in July. Last year a body known as the Mission Council of the church’s South Central Jurisdiction granted the university permission to lease land for the library. The activists hope to win a vote to rescind that permission. If the activists do so — an unlikely prospect, in most observers’ eyes — then the matter might be turned over to the church’s judicial council. Southern Methodist’s charter requires that any uses of its land be approved by the church.
“In our understanding of the relationship between the university and the church,” Mr. Turner said, “we feel that in getting approval of the Mission Council, we got the necessary and sufficient approval to go forward with the lease. We’re proceeding on that basis.”
In a news release, the university said that it would have the right to appoint two members of the library foundation’s Board of Directors and at least one member of the policy institute’s Board of Directors.
A spokeswoman for Southern Methodist said that the full text of the agreements between the university and the library foundation would be released on Monday. —David Glenn