Category Archives: Equity

Palm Beach Post: State campuses swell with Hispanics

FAU junior Leidy Aponte’s parents never got a college education in their native Colombia, so when they moved the family to South Florida 14 years ago, getting their children a four-year degree was a priority.

“In my family, I had to go to school,” said Aponte, 21, who is president of the Hispanic sorority Lambda Theta Alpha. “There was no other option. It is why my parents came here.”

Tallahassee Democrat: Hispanic student numbers grow—FSU’s Hispanic enrollment numbers triple in 15 years

An explosive growth in Hispanic students is happening at Florida’s universities.

One of every 10 students wearing Florida State University garnet and gold is Hispanic. FSU’s 3,756 Hispanic students in 2005 were more than triple the number 15 years ago.

Follow

The New York Times: CUNY Seeing Fewer Blacks at Top Schools

he enrollment of black students at three of the most prestigious colleges of the City University of New York has dropped significantly in the six years since the university imposed tougher admissions policies.

New York Post: Black setback at key CUNY schools

Five years after the City University of New York introduced stricter admissions standards, the number of black undergraduates attending three of the system’s premier four-year colleges has sharply declined. Enrollment of black students across the system’s 11 senior colleges climbed a total of 1.3 percent over the same period, but that increase was smaller than the growth for any other ethnic group, according to data culled by the university and provided to The Post.

Follow

The Chronicle Newsblog: Journal Questions Black Enrollments at CUNY’s Senior College

Enrollments of black students at the four-year colleges of the City University of New York have dropped by 6 percent since 1997, and the declines have been even more severe at Baruch and Hunter Colleges, two of the more selective of the campuses, according to a report this month in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

Follow

Seattle Times: Tacoma college to settle claims on transfer credits

Crown College of Tacoma will pay more than $87,000 to settle claims by six students who said the school misled them about whether their credits would transfer to other colleges.

The settlement involves the third lawsuit against the school on similar grounds.

Follow

The Chronicle: Female Life Scientists Earn 40 Percent of the Patents That Male Life Scientists Do, Study Finds

Female life scientists in academe secure patents at less than half the rate of their male counterparts, three researchers report in an article published in today’s issue of the journal Science. Although the gender gap in patenting has narrowed over time, the findings show, it remains large.

Follow

Duluth News Tribune: Unions line up to oppose ban on gay marriage, civil unions

Labor unions are joining forces to fight a proposed ban on gay marriage and civil unions in what could become a powerful force in the Nov. 7 referendum.

The groups, representing employees ranging from teachers to prison workers, say they are worried the amendment will take away their ability to bargain for benefits such as health insurance for the domestic partners of gay and straight employees.

They are making donations, organizing volunteers and educating their members as part of their attempts to make Wisconsin the first state to defeat a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

AFSCME, which represents 44,000 public service and health care workers in Wisconsin, became the latest to join the cause on Monday with a strong denunciation of the ban from its political arm and a vow to get its message out.

Follow

The Chronicle: Civil-Rights Commission Debates Affirmative Action and Diversity in Public-School Enrollments

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights heard testimony on Friday about whether race should be considered in assigning elementary and high-school students to public schools. The commission will prepare a report in advance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of two cases on that issue this fall.

Follow

The Chronicle: Lawsuit Accuses Delaware State U. of Racial Bias in Promotion of White Worker Over Black One

An employee of Delaware State University has accused the historically black institution in a lawsuit of passing him over for a promotion because he is black.

In a complaint filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del., the employee, Rory Lewis, said that a less-qualified white worker, Charles Dougherty, had been promoted instead to be in charge of the university’s machine and carpentry shop. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and court costs. Mr. Lewis is still employed at the university, while Mr. Dougherty is not.

Follow

The Gainesville Sun: Florida’s Hispanic population surges; few work as UF faculty

She remembers the day all too well.
In her final year as an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, Jessica Klahar was asked to name the Hispanic faculty member who’d had the greatest influence on her while she was a student. Klahar, a Miami native and the child of Colombian parents, racked her brain. Then she racked it some more.

Nothing came to her.
After a career at the largest university in the state of Florida, where the Hispanic population is booming, Klahar couldn’t think of a single Hispanic faculty member she’d had in a classroom, much less one she admired for teaching.

“It really amazed me,” said Klahar, 22. “I couldn’t think of someone . . . That really just goes to show that they’re not out there.”

During Klahar’s senior year at UF in 2005, Hispanic faculty made up about 3.8 percent of the full-time faculty. There was, however, growth among the cohort during Klahar’s years in Gainesville. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of full-time Hispanic faculty at UF grew from 107 to 167 – an increase of 56 percent.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: How a Search Can Change an Institution

wasn’t looking to move. A bioengineering professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she had a great job, a lab pulling in seven-figure grants and a partner who was doing a postdoc.

But Louisville doesn’t give up easily. The university is pushing for increased national visibility — particularly in science and technology. Bertocci’s work focuses on tools that help children who have been the victims of child abuse and other physical injuries, and her lab is considered a leader in a field that combines child welfare, medicine, and engineering. So officials kept on coming back, offering her an endowed chair, a nice salary, help for her partner in locating a job. One day, Bertocci asked if her partner could be covered by domestic partner benefits and the officials recruiting her (academics, not HR folks) said that they assumed so, but would need to check.

As they found out, no such benefits existed for unmarried partners. Bertocci said she would make the move — but only with the understanding that the university would move toward offering benefits for domestic partners, something no university in Kentucky had done. Last week, Louisville fulfilled its end of the deal, when its board adopted a domestic partner program. In fact, the human resources division at the university had been meeting with gay and lesbian faculty members previously to talk about benefits issues so there was already interest before Bertocci’s recruitment.

Louisville trustees — clearly aware of the state political environment — stressed that they were not taking a stand on gay marriage or, in the words of one, “endorsing any lifestyle.” Officials have stressed issues of fairness and of competitiveness.

Follow

The Chronicle: Alabama’s College-Desegregation Case Set to Return to Court in October

The federal judge overseeing Alabama’s 25-year-old college-desegregation lawsuit has set a trial date for October to resolve several outstanding issues in the case, such as calls to increase need-based aid and faculty diversity.

Follow

The Chronicle: Daily News Blog: Court Reinforces Ban on Partner Benefits at Nebraska Universities

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld on Friday an amendment to the Nebraska Constitution that bans gay marriage and also prohibits the University of Nebraska and other arms of the state government from offering health and other benefits to the partners of gay employees. The unanimous ruling, which reversed a lower court, will not have an immediate effect on the university because it does not offer such benefits to gay employees.

Follow

The Olympian: State settles equal-pay lawsuit

The state has agreed to settle a long-standing lawsuit over unequal salaries between state workers in higher education and general government by paying $30 million to 9,000 employees.

The Chronicle: Washington State Will Pay $30-Million to Settle Unequal-Wages Claims by College and Other Workers

The State of Washington has agreed to pay $30-million to settle a six-year-old class-action lawsuit that said workers at the state’s public colleges and other state-government employees who performed the same duties were not paid the same wages.

Follow

College Enrollment Gender Gap Widens for White and Hispanic Students, but Race and Income Disparities Still Most Significant New ACE Report Finds

The gender gap in higher education is widening among certain student populations, but is most striking among white and Hispanic traditional-age undergraduates, a new gender equity study conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE) concludes. The gap is due primarily to a larger female share among low-income whites and Hispanics which has led to an overall decline in the male share of traditional-age students (age 24 or younger) from 48 percent in 1995–96 to 45 percent in 2003–04.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Religious versus gay rights

In the continuing battle between Christian groups and public universities over anti-bias policies, the religious students won a key round Monday. In a strongly worded, 2-1 decision, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit made permanent an injunction barring Southern Illinois University from enforcing its anti-bias rules with regard to the Christian Legal Society. The society maintains that it should be entitled to bar from its group anyone who engages in certain activities, including gay sex, and the university has said that this policy violates its rules against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Is the Schoolhouse Door Open?

Forty-three years ago this month, George Wallace fulfilled his campaign promise to stand “in the schoolhouse door” to keep black students out of Alabama’s schools and colleges. Wallace made his stand in the doorway of Foster Auditorium of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

Wallace failed to keep black students out, but whether the state’s colleges are desegregated remains an open question, even after all these years. A federal judge on Thursday ordered a new trial to take place this fall on whether the state has sufficiently removed vestiges of the segregated system. Alabama officials say that it has, and that the state no longer needs court supervision. The plaintiffs in the case — black citizens — argue that the state has failed in key ways to bring about equity in higher education.

Follow