All Articles Tagged "universities"
City Officials Claim Ignorance of UDC Deficit
(Afro) — Controversy over a budget deficit announced by the District’s only government-run university is steadily brewing, causing anxiety among students. City officials say they were surprised by the University of the District of Columbia’s recent request for an additional $8 million to $10 million to offset the expense of operating the fast-growing Community College for the District of Columbia (CCDC), which the D.C. City Council approved two years ago. The request comes at a time when the local government is facing a projected $400 million deficit.
Alan Etter, a UDC spokesman, said university President Allen L. Sessoms told city officials that the university is overwhelmed by the cost of providing courses and services to students who enroll at the community college. “The great demand for a community college added more expenses than anticipated,” said Etter. For two years, UDC covered the cost of partially renovating a location in southeast Washington along with opening up locations in downtown and northeast to accommodate the more than 4,000 students enrolled in the community college. Since then, enrollment has dropped to less than 2,000 students at the main campus. UDC officials said they were forced to spend more than $18 million from reserve funds.
Most New York Students Are Not College-Ready
(New York Times) — New York State education officials released a new set of graduation statistics on Monday that show less than half of students in the state are leaving high school prepared for college and well-paying careers. The new statistics, part of a push to realign state standards with college performance, show that only 23 percent of students in New York City graduated ready for college or careers in 2009, not counting special-education students. That is well under half the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a number often promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as evidence that his education policies are working. But New York City is still doing better than the state’s other large urban districts. In Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers, less than 17 percent of students met the proposed standards, including just 5 percent in Rochester. The Board of Regents, which sets the state’s education policies, met on Monday to begin discussing what to do with this data, and will most likely issue a decision in March. One option is to make schools and districts place an asterisk next to the current graduation rate, or have them report both the current graduation rate and the college ready rate, said Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents. The move parallels a decision by the Regents last year to make standardized tests for third through eighth graders more difficult to pass, saying that the old passing rates did not correlate to high school success.
Atlanta Area College Students Adjust to Get into Slim Job Market
(AJC) — College seniors Larry Heath, Jr., and Jason Gantt have both absorbed one crucial lesson, and it reshaped their educational strategies. “It’s the economy,” said Heath, a Georgia State University political science major. “There aren’t enough jobs.” Heath and Gantt are among a growing number of students who, faced with reports of double-digit unemployment and bleak job prospects, are taking sometimes drastic measures to increase their odds of graduating with meaningful employment. Some switch majors; others pursue dual degrees; others seek opportunities to combine study with work; and some even interrupt an established career to get the degree that once seemed superfluous. Gantt, 30, who had skipped college, left a job as a network administrator in Palm Beach, Fla., to enroll at Kennesaw State University. “My brother asked me, ‘What happens if you lose your job?’ ” he said. “It would be harder to get another job without a degree. I got scared.” In addition to pursuing a business degree while at Kennesaw State, he has chased numerous internships. Heath completed his political science degree early and added a second one –- non-profit management –- that offers more practical skills. He’ll complete it this fall. “I didn’t want to drop my major, because I loved what I did,” he said. “But I came to the conclusion that poli sci is really theoretical, and doesn’t give you the skill set to be competitive for a job.”
Paying for Grad School
(Wall Street Journal) — When 24-year-old Kristi Roybal was choosing between graduate programs in social work and international studies, she picked one at the University of Denver, which offered her a $20,000 annual scholarship. But with a $53,000 total annual tab, she had to figure out how to cover the rest. So Ms. Roybal found a work-study position that pays $5,000 a year. She gets $1,000 per quarter as a teaching assistant. She has taken out four federal loans and has a grant from her time working in an AmeriCorps program. Getting an advanced degree isn’t cheap. But as Ms. Roybal can attest, there are a lot of options for financial assistance out there — whether you’re continuing your education right after graduating college, or if you’re going back to school after a few years in the work force.
Will Online Universities Replace Brick-and-Mortar?
(Businessweek) — In an ideal world, with unlimited funds, all students would have access to the best educational systems we could design. But our world is not perfect. And our traditional model for undergraduate education costs too much and delivers too little. Over the past 25 years, higher education costs, at our more modest institutions as well as at elite schools, have been skyrocketing. And many question whether the majority of today’s graduates are well prepared for the world of the future.
Howard University Rethinks Academic Legacy
(NPR) — Howard University is under scrutiny for a rigorous academic overhaul proposed by university president Sidney Ribeau. The school is not only one of the country’s premiere historically black institutions, it has also played a critical role in the nation’s culture and scholarship. The university, which is located in Washington, D.C., is considering whether to slash or reduce 20 of its nearly 200 academic programs.
Minority B-School Faculty Growing—Slowly
(Businessweek) — American business schools, much like American businesses, have some catching up to do when it comes to minority hiring. Stymied by a lack of minorities in the PhD pipeline and growing competition for minority faculty, progress in hiring African American, Hispanic American, and Native American faculty at U.S. B-schools has been slow. Bernard J. Milano, president of the PhD Project, an organization based in Montvale, N.J., that aims to increase the diversity of corporate America by increasing the diversity of business school faculty, says just 3.5 percent of B-school faculty and administrators come from such underrepresented minority groups. “When you think about the changing demographics of this country,” Milano says, “that’s tragic.”
UDC Says Community College Risks Cuts unless it Gets $8 Million from District
(Washington Post) — Officials at the University of the District of Columbia say they might have to scale back its recently launched community college unless it immediately receives $8 million from the D.C. government, putting new pressure on city leaders struggling to close a growing budget shortfall. The request, which is shining light on a deal struck last year between D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) when he was council chairman, raises questions about whether taxpayers can sustain the university’s rapidly expanding mission.
Another HBCU Merger Considered
(Inside Higher Education) — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, on Tuesday ordered a study of the feasibility of merging two neighboring New Orleans universities that have both struggled to fill classrooms and graduate students. A combined institution might provide stronger services to the students of the universities and of another nearby institution, Delgado Community College, which lacks space for all of its students, the governor said. Governor Jindal’s statement only alluded, however, to the issue of race. He is proposing to merge historically black Southern University at New Orleans with the predominantly white University of New Orleans.
The Financial Aid Information Gap
(Inside Higher Ed) — The last two presidential administrations have focused significant attention and energy on trying to simplify the process by which would-be college students apply for and receive federal financial assistance, given the prevailing view that the complexity of the system deters some young people from higher education, A study to be released during an event on Capitol Hill today shows just how large the information gap is. The report from the College Board’s Advocacy and Policy Center, “Cracking the Student Aid Code,” finds that many parents have little understanding of how much it costs to attend college and of financial aid options — and that the knowledge deficit is biggest for those who already have the least access to higher education: students from Latino families and from low-income backgrounds.
