Roundup. (Because nothing is better than higher ed on a Saturday night).

Here, have this … bike?: In that never-ending quest for campus sustainability, colleges and universities have started giving students bikes along with their dorm keys and student ID. An article from the New York Times Monday featured a number of these institutions, including the University of New England and Ripon College in Wisconsin, who provided bikes for incoming students, as well as those institutions starting bike-sharing programs.

Ripon spent $50,000 on the program, according to the article, which bought 200 Trek mountain bikes, helmets and locks. About 180 freshman signed up for the program.

This is the kind of thing colleges and universities should look into if they want to transform their campus to one that is sustainable. Hosting speakers and lectures is one thing — buying bikes so your students don’t have to drive is another.

You can buy your way green?: You sure can. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week captured the struggle some colleges and universities face when buying credits that supposedly make them carbon neutral.

Renewable energy credits — RECS –  help cover the additional cost of green-energy production and  encourage providers to set up additional sources of renewable energy. For example, institutions buy credits from another organization with less carbon emission, so what they emit balances from the organization they buy RECS from.

(Still with me?)
The confusion comes in how effective these energy credits are. While they reduce carbon emissions, they’ don’t offset them completely, according to Michael Gillenwater, a greenhouse-gas researcher at Princeton University. The thinking is “energy is energy” — once it “hits the grid,’ it’s out there.
Read the article for all of the point-counterpoints, but I’m on the side of Christophe Bornand, sustainability coordinator at St. Mary’s:

“Why send “rent” to a wind farm in Oklahoma when you can put solar panels on the roof of a campus building?”

Shameless self-promotion: For all the election fanatics out there, check out this article I wrote about higher education issues in the presidential election. The synopsis? Higher ed needs some attention — fast.

I read about more than just tenure. Honest.

This commentary from the Chronicle of Higher Education was just very thoughtful … I couldn’t resist sharing.

The author, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, is chairman of the higher-education practice at Korn/Ferry International and a president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University.

He doesn’t focus solely on academic freedom and tenure, as I have the past few weeks. He proposes a plan to reform tenure by way of making it a 30-year contract, allowing colleges and universities to take on (what he thinks is a much-needed) salary reform, and make changes in specific departments more easily.

“I do not want to abolish tenure or harm academic freedom. I want to assure the vitality and future of both, and both are threatened now and could soon be under outright assault.”

- Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Students to professors: It’s okay. We know your political views, anyway.

Since the role of politics and academic freedom in the classroom has been on my radar following all of the tenure cases earlier this fall, I found this interesting.

The Chronicle of Higher education just published an article detailing two studies which, apparently, contradict charges that professors let their political views mix with their teaching.

The last few weeks have revealed support for a few different arguments about politics in higher education — one of them a charge from conservatives that U.S. campuses are filled with liberal professors “trying to indoctrinate ” their students.

That position is challenged in “Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities,” a book released by three George Mason University professors last month. The book is based (in part) on a 2007 study of 1,270 professors at 169 research universities. Ninety-five percent of professors said they were “honest brokers” of contrasting viewpoints; 61 percent said politics don’t often come up in their classroom, and 28 percent said they share how they feel about certain political issues with their students.

The authors, A. Lee Fritschler, director of executive education at GMU’s School of Public Policy; Jeremy D. Mayer, an associate professor at the school; and Bruce L.R. Smith, a visiting professor at the school, identify themselves as a Republican, a moderate Democrat, and a more-liberal Democrat, but don’t identify who is who.

What do the students have to say?

April Kelly-Woessner and Matthew Woessner, a husband-wife team of professors, conducted a study to find out. “I Think My Professor Is a Democrat: Considering Whether Students Recognize and React to Faculty Politics,” monitored 1,603 students , whom the Woessners interviewed during a semester-long political science course. Three-quarters of them were able to identify their professors’ political leanings, even if the professors kept them out of the classroom, anyway.

But where I think this study (which will appear in the next issue of P.S.:Political Science and Politics) makes its mark is what it found next.

Over the course of a semester-long political science course, students generally shifted slightly toward the Democratic side — BUT, the shift happened to students of professors who identified as both conservative AND liberal.

In summary: Professors aren’t sharing their viewpoints often. And even if they aren’t, students are figuring it out anyway. Students are generally shifting Democratic, regardless of what the political affiliations of their professors may be.

So why all the fuss? The authors cite a “generations-long shift” away from political debate on campus as the cause for a wide-spread fear of confrontation in the classroom. When there is a disagreement, students ( and some professors) don’t know how to handle their own points of views, an insecurity others often mistaken for professor intimidation of students. And so the tenure-politics-in-the-classroom-snowball continues.

The article did say many professors told Chronicle reporters the 2008 presidential race has reignited a long-absent political spark in their classroom. Let’s hope it’s one that continues past November.

Bright Side of the Bailout, continued

I did more research after the last post and turned up even more news about aid during the bailout on U.S. News and World Report.

Check it out.

The upside of the bailout …

… is how it’s re-igniting discussion around student aid — on a university by university basis, but also on the Federal level.

At George Washington University, administrators are trying to add millions of dollars to financial aid for continuing students, and make accommodations for families having trouble paying GW bills.

The estimated allocation is $8 million — conservative, said a senior VP for Student and Academic Support Services, in light of the University’s standing $118 million budget for financial aid grants.

They’ll present the plan to the board later this week, but many administrators say it will take years of allocating additional funds to the financial aid budget to help students and families recover from this economic period.

What would have an even greater impact is federal financial aid reform, an issue that’s legislation has been a long time (read:years) coming.

Especially considering that last month, U.S. News and World Report published an article detailing (what else) “New Ideas for College Financial Aid Reform,” a report based on the findings of the “Rethinking student aid” study group, composed of  college presidents, policy makers, economists and other experts.
The group offered several suggestions, including:

While there is bi-partisan support in Congress for many initiatives, others are pretty deeply divided. Many economists and higher education professionals are concerned about proposals that would allow students to borrow more money from the federal government, or would eliminate the interest rate break given to low income students. Other potential red flags noted by the article foreshadow an unwillingness from the IRS to share information, and small colleges fighting to hold on to certain grants (the article cites Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants as an example).

College Ave Prediction: The U.S. is now 10th in the ranking of countries with college-educated young adults, according to the Organization for Economic Development, a significant drop considering we stood at the top of that list a few years ago. Unless students can get more aid to earn undergraduate degrees, that’s a number that will continue to get lower.

Money, men and fire: Roooundup.

Get out your ladders: As if tuition hasn’t skyrocketed enough during the past three years, experts are now telling us increases during the next few years may be larger than they have in the past.

Huh?

A report released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Education say the recent downturn in the economy will force American Colleges and Universities to implement steeper tuition hikes. To give you an idea of how damaging this is going to be to student debts and the loan industry, increases from 2006-07 to 2007-08 already averaged 5.3 percent at public universities, and 6.7 percent at public universities.

And that doesn’t include increases for textbooks, on-campus housing and dining. Community colleges are sounding more and more appealing.

It’s (not) raining men: The National Center for Education Statistics released it’s enrollment data for 2006-07 yesterday and showed, among other things, that more women are earning degrees at two- and four- year colleges and universities than men.

At four year institutions, 42 percent of degrees were awarded to men and 58 percent to women. At two-year institutions, 37 percent were awarded to men and 63 percent to women.

I’m not even a feminist and I still want to say: Rock on.

Next time, try lighter fluid: A Portland state University student was arrested Monday for trying to light a campus dormitory on fire … with newspapers and a telephone book.

Authorities responded around 4:30 a.m. and found the paper burning (pathetically) at the bottom of a stairwell. It’s safe to say he can eliminate arsonist as a career path.

Student entrepreneurs like this make us all look bad: Three students have created a Web site that would allow college students to share DVDs safely — and legally.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Mark G. Rosenberg and David R. Garson, from Grinell College, and Daniel F. Turcza, from Yale University, modeled the site, PenguinShare.com, on the same premise as textbook-sharing sites: Register on a college network, view titles and meet up in person to exchange the video.

But the best part? This is free. The site already has 400 users on 16 campuses.

Eat your heart out, RIAA.

Tenure Round Two: Adjuncts Speak Out

When push comes to shove, we do not have academic freedom. We can be fired for what we say or what we teach.”

Since I last wrote about tenure  three days ago,  the issue is still hitting newsstands — from the New York Times to the Chronicle of Higher Education. (The hot-button thing? I wasn’t kidding).

One of the Chronicle articles tells the  story of Steven Bitterman, a former adjunct  at Southwestern Community College in Iowa until last fall, when he got a phone call from one of the college’s vice presidents. The Vice President told Bitterman he was fired.

According to the article,  Bitterman, who taught courses in Western civ, offended three students in his class when he said people could more easily appreciate the biblical story of Adam and Eve if they considered it a myth.

“She said the students and their parents had threatened to sue the school, and sue me, and she said: ‘We don’t want that to happen, do we?’” said Mr. Bitterman. “She told me I was supposed to teach history, not religion, and that my services would no longer be needed.”

The article goes on to list a number of other adjuncts in similar situations, but more interesting are the number of national organizations now mobilizing to protect faculty and adjuncts who discuss “hot-button issues” like “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, religion, and homosexuality.”

They include:

For another perspective, read this article by Roger Bowen, a former professor and former president of SUNY-New Paltz.