Higher Education News

World & Nation
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has joined student groups in supporting a bill by Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass) that seeks to overturn a 1998 federal law denying financial aid to students that have been convicted of drug offenses.

Resistance to the law heated up when the Department of Education announced last month that it would withhold financial aid from students who don't answer a question about prior drug conviction that appears on their financial-aid applications.

Financial aid professionals say the law discriminates against poor students who rely on financial aid while not penalizing affluent students with past drug offenses.

The National Association of Student Grant and Aid Programs reports that state student aid spending rose by 12.6 percent in the 1999-2000 academic year, one of the largest increases in the past two decades, and that appropriations have continued to rise at a comparable rate this year, about 12.5 percent.

Much of the increase in student aid spending, the association estimates, came in funding for merit-based scholarships, which accounted for 22 percent of student aid in 1999-2000, up from 15 percent in 1994-95.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that the job outlook for new graduates is strong, with employers planning to hire 18 percent more new graduates this year than last year.

But nearly half the employers surveyed said they've lowered their projections made last August. At that time, employers projected hiring 23.4 percent more grads this year.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has urged colleges and universities to stop using American Indian nicknames and mascots because such symbols create racially hostile educational environments.

"Stereotypes of American Indians teach all students that stereotyping of minority groups is acceptable, a dangerous lesson in a diverse society," the commission said.

Faculty & Staff
Campus union organizing efforts have gone into high gear across the nation this spring. At the University of Vermont, faculty voted 301-266 to be represented by United Academics, a joint affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.

Issues important to the faculty: salaries that lag behind comparable institutions and contract language that protects the independence of the faculty senate.

Teaching assistants at the University of Michigan have also voted for union representation. The graduate employees are concerned about salaries and having a greater influence on workload issues.

At Boston's Emerson College, where part-timers outnumber full professors two to one, the part-time faculty has voted to unionize, becoming the first northeastern private college part-time faculty to form a bargaining unit..

Professional News
A federal court has ruled recently that a university professor can be fired for refusing to change a student's grade. Such an action does not violate the professor's First Amendment rights, said a three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals in a case involving California University of Pennsylvania.

Faculty advocates said the court's ruling infringed on academic freedom by taking away a professor's right to assign grades.

The court decision said in part: "We therefore conclude that a public university professor does not have a First Amendment right to free expression via the school's grade assignment procedures."

"The message from the court is clear," says NEA assistant general counsel Michael Simpson. "This is the latest in a long line of bad court decisions rejecting the argument that professors have a First Amendment right to academic freedom."

Simpson advises higher ed advocates to promote and protect academic freedom through collective bargaining.

Percent of All Faculty Not on Tenure Track, 1992-93,1998-99

Source: Tenure, NEA Higher Education Research Center