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Higher Education News

World & Nation
Employers expect their hiring of college graduates for 2005-06 to surpass that of 2004-05 by 13.8 percent, according to a new study published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Overall, more than 60 percent of the employers responding to the survey said they will hire more new college graduates in 2005-06, while 22.5 percent reported plans to maintain hiring at last year’s levels.

Service sector employers expect to hire  16.4 percent more new college graduates, manufacturers 11.1 percent, and government/nonprofit employers 9 percent.

By region, the Northeast projects a 24.8 percent increase in new graduate hires, the South a 13.8 percent increase, the Midwest 9.8 percent, and employers in the West plan to increase college graduate hiring by 5.8 percent.

The United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a report from Save the Children, an organization that works for change for children in need.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland, or Norway.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births. An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide.

High school dropout rates for Black and Hispanic students are not as high as have been reported, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Its study shows that about 75 percent of Black and Hispanic students graduate high school, whereas other studies put the number at about 50 percent. About 82 percent of white students graduate high school, the report states.

The gap between graduation rates of white and Black students has narrowed over the past 40 years, but researchers note there has been little progress in the last 10 years.

Faculty & Staff
After a sit-in, hunger strikes, and a nine-week walkout, janitors at the University of Miami have returned to work, as the university’s cleaning contractor reached a settlement with the Service Employees International Union that allows workers to indicate their preference for a union by signing union authorization cards rather than through a National Labor Relations Board election.

Twelve women were among the 72 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year, down from the record 19 women in 2005.

With the newly elected members, 199—or about 10 percent—of the academy’s 2,013 active members are women, up from about 7 percent in 2001. The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.

A list of the new members is available at http://nationalacademies.org/.

Professional News
A half-million students could be eligible next year for two new federal programs aimed at increasing the flow of low-income students into college.

Many college officials applauded the grants, but others are concerned that the grants are only for full-time college students who just graduated high school and that students must maintain a 3.0 grade point average in college, instituting a merit-based component into programs that have been based on financial need.

Leaders of the Internet2 academic computing consortium have announced that a new national academic fiber-optic network will become operational in about 18 months. The network would replace Internet2’s Abilene high-speed network and provide researchers with massive amounts of extra bandwidth.

The new network would carry data on 10 different wavelengths of light, each of which could handle 10 gigabits of data per second—or the total capacity of Abilene—at a time.