July 3, 2008

U. of Evansville President Arrested on Drunken-Driving Charges

The University of Evansville’s president was arrested last night for driving while intoxicated, and in a statement released today by the university, he acknowledged making “a very serious mistake,” apologized, and pledged to “take every necessary action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

The president, Stephen G. Jennings, who is 61, will participate in a special program for first-time drunken-driving offenders. He also will face charges that include operating a vehicle while intoxicated and refusing a chemical test, the newspaper reported.

According to an affidavit filed by the police officer who made the arrest, Mr. Jennings weaved among lanes, drove over a median, and almost hit several barrels marking off a construction site. When he pulled the car over, the officer said Mr. Jennings responded to questions with slurred speech, initially stating he had not consumed alcohol, but later saying he had drunk two beers. Mr. Jennings then failed three physical tests of his sobriety, the police officer said, and a breath test indicated a blood-alcohol content of 0.14 percent, nearly twice the legal limit in Indiana.

Mr. Jennings, who has been president of the university since 2001 and previously was president of Oklahoma City University, was released from custody this morning. —Andrew Mytelka

Petitions Are Filed for Arizona and Nebraska Referenda on Affirmative Action

State organizations affiliated with Ward Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute said today they had gathered more than enough signatures to get measures limiting affirmative-action preferences on the November ballot in Arizona and Nebraska.

With petitions having been submitted on behalf of a similar ballot measure in Colorado in March, there appears to be a good chance that three states will vote this fall on the proposals, all of which would bar public colleges and other state and local agencies from granting affirmative-action preferences in employment, contracting, and decisions related to education. Mr. Connerly, the institute’s chairman, had hoped to put similar measures on the ballot in Missouri and Oklahoma as well, but his organizations in those states failed to gather enough signatures before deadlines earlier this year.

Mr. Connerly’s Arizona organization, the American Civil Rights Initiative, announced today that it had submitted more than 330,000 petition signatures to state officials, well over 100,000 more than required under state law. His Nebraska organization, the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative, announced that it had submitted more than 167,000 signatures, or at least 54,000 more than required.

A group that has opposed Mr. Connerly’s efforts in several states, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary, announced on Sunday that it would file a lawsuit — as well as complaints with various state officials — alleging that the petition signatures in Arizona had been gathered fraudulently. The group, known as Bamn, has filed a similar legal challenge to the signatures submitted in Colorado, which state officials certified in March. —Peter Schmidt

Oklahoma's Matching-Gift Backlog Booms Despite Moratorium

Instead of helping to clear Oklahoma’s $225-million backlog of matching-gift obligations, a July 1 moratorium enacted by the state Legislature on the program has set back the state even more.

That’s because the June 30 deadline for gifts to qualify for matching funds spurred $128-million in new donations to the state’s universities, The Oklahoman reported today. Now the backlog stands at $353-million.

In the two months after the moratorium was enacted, the University of Oklahoma raised $61-million for endowed chairs. Oklahoma State University raised more than $66.8-million, not counting a $100-million gift this spring from the billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens.

The backlog could take years to clear, the newspaper reported. Until it is fulfilled, the moratorium will remain.

“At some point, you just can’t keep up with it,” said Rep. Ken Miller, chairman of the state’s House Appropriations and Budget Committee. —Kathryn Masterson

Italian-American Groups Rally to Save Advanced Placement Test in Italian

Italian-American groups and the Italian ambassador to the United States are working to save the Italian Advanced Placement test, The Washington Post reported this morning.

The College Board announced this spring that it would eliminate the test after the 2008-9 academic year, along with the exams in French literature, Latin literature, and computer-science AB, because of low participation. While other AP tests are available in French, Latin, and computer science, there is only one Italian test. It has been offered since 2006.

The Italian ambassador, Giovanni Castellaneta, and the College Board’s president, Gaston Caperton, announced in June that a task force had been formed to attempt to raise the money needed to continue the test, according to the Post. Italian Embassy officials told the newspaper they expected to learn this month how much money was needed. They said the money would have to be raised by October. —Beckie Supiano

U. of Chicago Students Scramble After Lender Pulls Out

The University of Chicago is offering cash advances and other assistance to thousands of its graduate students after losing one of its major lending partners, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission.

The state-chartered commission has found itself unable to renew its line of credit, due to the current economic conditions, the Chicago Tribune reported today. That’s forced an end to its “school as lender” relationship with the university, leaving some 3,000 students, or about a third of its graduate enrollment, suddenly needing a new lender, the newspaper said.

“The majority of our students will be able to get loans from other providers,” the university’s dean of students, Kimberly Goff-Crews, told the Tribune. But, she said, “they will probably have to pay fees.”

School as lender is an option in which graduate schools lend money directly to their students, then quickly sell the loans to a partner loan company for a profit. The federal government has already been phasing out the program, in response to concerns that it constitutes an improper kickback to colleges by lenders to the disadvantage of the students.

University of Chicago officials have said that students who have difficulties finding new loans before the start of the fall semester can obtain a cash advance from the university to cover living expenses, the Tribune reported. —Paul Basken

Indian Students Spend $2.3-Billion on Coaching for Some Entrance Exams

New Delhi — An Indian industry group has estimated that students here spend $2.3-billion annually on coaching to prepare for the entrance tests to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and other engineering colleges, The Times of India reported today.

“The amount of money which goes to these institutions is enough to open 30 to 40 IIT’s with lots of seats that can ensure admission to average candidates,” Sajjan Jindal, president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told the newspaper. Mr. Jindal urged the deregulation of Indian higher education, saying that the chief beneficiaries of the current system are big coaching centers.

A spokesman for the industry group said its figures were based on the assumption that 600,000 students attend coaching classes every year and that the average cost per student is $3,950. At least half the students who sit for the exams use coaching centers to beat the cutthroat competition, the spokesman said. A record 320,000 applicants took the entrance exam for the elite IIT undergraduate engineering program in April.

Some 80,000 to 90,000 students go abroad for higher education, leading to a high foreign-exchange outflow, the industry group said. “If quality institutions are provided, a large number of students will stay back and contribute to the nation,” the group said, adding that private players and big industrial groups should be allowed to contribute to higher education. —Shailaja Neelakantan

Provost of North Carolina State U. Defends Big Raise for Governor's Wife

The provost of North Carolina State University is defending a pay increase of nearly $80,000 awarded this week to Mary Easley, who is the wife of Gov. Michael F. Easley and has been an “executive in residence” and senior lecturer at the university for three years. The increase, which comes with new responsibilities and a five-year commitment to the institution, brings her pay to $170,000, according to The News & Observer.

“Her salary is within the range of similar management and law faculty and administrators at N.C. State and other universities,” the provost, Larry Nielsen, said in a written statement, the Raleigh newspaper reported.

Ms. Easley previously was a law professor at North Carolina Central University, in Durham. At N.C. State, she has directed the university’s principal speakers program and run a spring-semester course called “Public Law for Public Administrators,” among other duties. Her new responsibilities will include directing and expanding a Public Safety Leadership Initiative, and helping develop partnerships with legal professionals and law schools in the area.

According to the Carolina Journal, which first reported the pay raise, Ms. Easley’s new salary is substantially higher than the university’s average for full professors, and nearly $35,000 more than her husband makes as governor. She rejected the criticism of her new contract, telling the television station WRAL that “negative stories and exaggerations and partial stories go with the territory, and that’s part of public life.” —Charles Huckabee

July 2, 2008

Diploma-Mill Operator Is Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison

One of the operators of a notorious diploma mill, Dixie E. Randock, was sentenced today to three years in prison, according to the federal prosecutor’s office in Spokane, Wash. Ms. Randock, along with her husband, Steven K. Randock, had pleaded guilty to fraud-conspiracy charges in March.

The Randocks made millions of dollars selling fake degrees online, usually issued under the name Saint Regis University. The bogus institution was based in Spokane but had ties to the government of Liberia and claimed accreditation through that country’s ministry of education. Representatives of the fake university bribed Liberian officials and created seals and stamps to make their diplomas appear authentic, according to court documents.

A good deal of the credit for bringing down Saint Regis belongs to George Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who investigates diploma mills as a pastime and helped bring the fraudulent operation to federal attention. —Thomas Bartlett

Missouri Chancellor Is Named Sole Finalist for Texas Tech Presidency

Texas Tech University has named Guy Bailey, chancellor of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, as its sole finalist for president, the West Texas institution announced today.

Mr. Bailey will take over at a time when Texas Tech’s chancellor, Kent R. Hance, is pursuing an ambitious and controversial plan to expand enrollment by 42 percent, to 40,000 students by 2020. Texas Tech’s departing president, Jon S. Whitmore, made it clear that he was uncomfortable leading an expansion that some faculty members fear could jeopardize academic quality. Mr. Whitmore will become president of San Jose State University on August 1.

Bold growth plans are nothing new to Mr. Bailey, who was provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas at San Antonio from 1999 to 2005 — a period when the enrollment jumped from 18,000 to 27,000 students, according to an article in the Kansas City Business Journal. During that time, Mr. Bailey also doubled external research support and oversaw the hiring of hundreds of tenure-track faculty members, the article noted. —Katherine Mangan

New Research Journal Focuses on Efforts to Expand Educational Opportunity

The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education has just released the inaugural issue of a peer-reviewed research journal focusing on issues related to college access and student retention.

The institute, the research arm of the nonprofit Council for Opportunity in Education, expects to publish Opportunity Matters: A Journal of Research Informing Educational Opportunity Practice & Programs once a year.

“While there has been a great deal of recent scholarly attention paid to the challenges faced by low-income and first-generation students, there is a paucity of research about which strategies can help disadvantaged students overcome the documented barriers they face,” Jennifer Engle, the editor of Opportunity Matters and the interim director of the Pell Institute, said this week in a written statement announcing the new publication.

“We want,” she said, “to provide a scholarly forum for discussion and dissemination of the latest relevant research and make that research more accessible and useful to opportunity educators.”

In an introductory note in the first issue, Ms. Engle, a senior research analyst at the Pell Institute, said the journal also would examine programs serving minority students and students with disabilities. A chief goal, she said, would be to encourage more researchers to vigorously study opportunity programs and their effects on students.

The first issue includes articles on learning communities, civic engagement, the preparation of students for graduate school, and efforts to improve the college-going rate in Britain. —Peter Schmidt