Advocate Online

Higher Education News

World & Nation
According to “The Condition of Education 2006,” the U.S. Department of Education’s annual compilation of education statistics, total college enrollment will continue to set new records each year through 2015, with women leading the way and widening the gap over the next decade.

Women now earn more degrees than men in a number of fields once predominantly male, including business, and women earn as many degrees as men in such previously male-dominated disciplines as medicine and law, the report says.

The report, prepared by the department's National Center for Education Statistics, is at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006071.

State spending on student financial aid rose by more than 8 percent in 2004–05, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, or NASSGAP.

The 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico awarded a total of $7.9 billion in grants and scholarships in 2004–05, up from $7.3 billion the previous year. The majority of the 2004–05 assistance, about 85 percent of all state-based student aid, was in the form of grants, which do not have to be repaid.

But spending on programs that award aid based on academic merit has been on the increase during the past decade, climbing 348 percent between 1994–95 and 2004–05, the NASSGAP study shows. By contrast, need-based aid increased 99 percent during the same 10-year period.

The International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR) has produced a world map showing each nation’s level of support for the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining. The United States ranks with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia as countries NOT ratifying either ILO Convention 87 (Freedom of Association) or Convention 98 (Collective Bargaining).

The ICTUR, a nongovernmental organization based in London, works to defend the rights of trade unions throughout the world.

Faculty & Staff
A group of scholars and students have sued the U.S. Treasury Department in federal court in an effort to force the Bush administration to rescind rules changes made in 2004 that halted most academic travel to Cuba.

Under the Bush rules, licenses to send students or scholars to Cuba are issued only for programs lasting a minimum of 10 weeks. To participate, students must be enrolled in a full-time degree program at the institution holding the license, and only full-time tenured faculty members from the same institution may teach in such programs. Many existing programs are for less than 10 weeks and include students from more than one school.

Also, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, challenging the constitutionality of the recently signed state law banning Florida’s public universities from using private, state, or federal funds for travel to Cuba and certain other countries.

Professional News
New welfare rules announced by the Bush administration would require states to limit the ability of welfare recipients to attend college and have it count as work.

Higher education and social-policy experts say the new rules are unnecessarily restrictive and will swell the ranks of the working poor.

“It’s denying the opportunity to go to a community college or other technical institution to the people who need it most,” said David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

Under the new rules, up to a year of vocational training at a college would count as work, but baccalaureate and other degree programs won’t count. The regulations also disqualify most language-instruction courses, such as English as a Second Language, unless they are embedded in a vocational program.

The rules would mandate that 50 percent of a state’s adult welfare recipients be participating in work activities by the start of the 2007 fiscal year, which begins October 1.