Category Archives: Government

Inside Higher Ed: Good Showing for Higher Ed Ballot Measures

With the economy in a downward spiral, voters in states across the country still showed some tolerance Tuesday for funding higher education projects.

Higher education officials in Massachusetts breathed a collective sigh of relief last night to find that their state will maintain its income tax. A rejected ballot measure, brought by two former Libertarian candidates for state and national offices, would have cut the income tax for 2009 and completely eliminated it in 2010. Higher education officials throughout the state expressed concern about the measure and the possibility that it might pass, especially considering a similar proposed revocation of the income tax in 2002 received almost 45 percent of the vote. This time, however, the vote was nowhere near as close.

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Houston Chronicle: Workers press administrators to restore UTMB

Hospital officials say lack of funds means fewer beds

TEXAS CITY — A group of employees is unionizing, circulating petitions and organizing in an effort to pressure elected officials and administrators to rebuild the oldest medical school in Texas.

Hurricane Ike caused about $700 million in damage to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the employees say they want to see it restored to pre-storm condition.

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BBC: MPs to hold universities inquiry

The degree classification system has been under scrutiny

MPs are to investigate some of the most controversial issues surrounding students and universities in the UK.

The Commons innovation, universities and skills committee will look at a wide range of issues from student support to university admissions.

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Inside Higher Ed: Helping Out With the Short List

What with figuring out the economy and Iraq, drape-measuring and reaching across the aisle, Wednesday could be a full day for whoever is president-elect. In an effort to be of service to the new administration, Inside Higher Ed asked some experts of a variety of political persuasions who should make the short list for education secretary.

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The Chronicle News Blog: 3 States Agree to Transform Education, One Small Step at a Time

Washington — Education officials from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Utah announced here today that they were moving, in principle, to adopt a sweeping set of education reforms laid out two years ago by the National Center on Education and the Economy.

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The Australian: ‘Activist’ academics black list under fire

ACADEMICS named as militant left-wing ideologues in a black list tabled in federal parliament claim they are victims of a Young Liberals “witch-hunt”.

While many of the black-listed academics admit that humanities and social science faculties are dominated by progressives, they say bias is not a serious problem in Australian universities.

The list of more than 30 academics who are described as “unashamed activists for political and ideological causes such as radical feminism, animal rights and gay rights” has been published on the Young Liberals’ website.

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CounterPunch: Quoting Friedman All the Way …

Bailing Out the Foes of Public Education

By TODD ALAN PRICE
We live in dubious times when staunch deregulators howl for vigorous and immediate regulation.

Lessons from the past

In 1983, the release by the Reagan administration of the report A Nation at Risk, launched over two decades of attacks on public education by right wing foundations and corporate pundits. Teachers and students were ill equipped to defend against the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute, just a few of the many shock troops aiming their sights on the public schools.

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The Chronicle: Anti-Intellectualism Enters Canadian Campaign, but Will It Fly?

Is “professor” a political insult? The Conservative Party in Canada seems to think so. It is portraying its main opponent in next month’s early election, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, as a nerdy, out-of-touch professor.

“I think they’ve spent too much time reading the U.S. Republican playbook,” said James Turk, executor director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

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Vancouver Sun: World Trade University only serves up degrees of embarrassment

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, August 08, 2008

VICTORIA – On the eve of the last election, the B.C. Liberals put their own judgment and the province’s prestige behind a project that has turned out to be a supreme embarrassment.

The so-called World Trade University caught the governing party at a receptive time.

Four years into their first term, they wanted to show results in the drive to put us on the map, economically speaking.

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The Chronicle: U.S. Revokes Visas for 3 Palestinian Fulbright Scholars

The State Department has abruptly revoked the visas of three Palestinian Fulbright Scholarship recipients just two months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intervened personally with Israeli officials to ensure that the three scholars, along with four other Fulbright awardees, would be able to study at American universities.

One of the three arrived last week in the United States after being assured that his visa was in order, only to be asked to leave the country on the next flight. The students, all residents of the Gaza Strip, were awarded the prestigious grants financed by the U.S. government but were then notified in May that the scholarships were being withdrawn because Israeli army policies restricting movement from Gaza meant that the money would go to waste (The Chronicle, June 13).

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The Brownsville Herald: UTB-TSC: DHS violated settlement

The UTB-TSC has accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of violating a March lawsuit settlement that gave officials permission to survey campus land.

Under the compromise, DHS was required to assess alternatives to the border fence and consider the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College’s “unique status as an institution of higher learning.”

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