Higher Education News

World & Nation
Despite being outspent by business by a 17-1 margin, the American labor movement had a huge impact on last fall's election campaigns.

The AFL-CIO reports that some 100,000 union members volunteered their time during the election period. Union activists registered 2.3 million new union household voters, made 8 million phone calls, and distributed more than 14 million leaflets.

Exit polls show that one in four votes came from union households. In one key state, Michigan, 42 percent of the voters came from union households, while in Pennsylvania the figure was 30 percent.

Overall, 63 percent of union members supported the Gore-Lieberman ticket and 32 percent voted for George Bush, according to pollster Peter Hart.

A 10-week strike by teaching and graduate assistants at York University in Canada has produced a tentative agreement providing tuition protection for teaching assistants and a wage and benefit increase for graduate assistants.

"This is a victory for every university student planning to attend graduate school in the future. And it's also a victory for accessible, public post-secondary education for everyone," said Joel Harden, spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, the grad students' union.

York, a public university with 33,000 undergraduates, wanted to rescind tuition indexing for teaching assistants as part of the new contract, but did not achieve that goal.

The 1,130 teaching assistants held out long enough to keep the plan that provides reimbursement for tuition increases over the 1995 level.

Foreign enrollment in U.S. colleges is up 5 percent this year. Over half a million international students came to the United States in 2000, with the growth in foreign student enrollment in community colleges outpacing growth in other types of higher education institutions.

The number of American students studying abroad increased by 14 percent.

Faculty & Staff
Seventeen former Bennington College professors will receive a total of $1.89 million and an apology from the Vermont institution that fired them in 1994.

The professors were among 27 faculty members Bennington dismissed as part of what the college called a "reorganization."

At the time they were fired, the majority of the professors held contracts with the college that were supposed to be similar to tenure.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System has agreed to pay at least $830,000 to settle a class action suit brought by women faculty members at St. Cloud State University. The women claimed they had been paid less and overlooked for promotions because of their sex.

The university agreed to provide back pay to about 250 women who were faculty members between 1992 and 1998 and make 60 current women faculty members eligible for raises totaling $170,786. The settlement is subject to final court approval.

Professional News
A study by the Harvard University School of Public Health finds that the proportion of students who frequently binge drink and the proportion of those who do not drink at all are both rising.

The survey, which included responses from more than 14,000 students, identified 23 percent of students as frequent binge drinkers and 19 percent as non-drinkers.

For the purposes of the study, binge drinking means five or more drinks in one sitting for a man and four or more drinks for a woman. Frequent binge drinkers reported binge drinking at least three times in a two-week period.

Frequent binge drinkers, researchers report, were four times more likely than their fellow students to get behind in their school work and had other difficulties associated with drinking.

Colleges and universities need to convince local leaders and bar owners in college communities to reduce student access to cheap alcohol, said the project's leader.

Educational Attainment and Income Comparisons, 1957-1997
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. March Current Population Survey. Income Statistics Branch/HHES Division U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington D.C. in the NEA 2001 Higher Education Almanac.