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Higher Education News

World & Nation
Black men are vastly underrepresented at the nation’s flagship universities, according to a report issued by a commission headed by former U.S. Representative Ronald Dellums. In 2004, the report notes, Black men were just 2.8 percent of undergraduate enrollments across the 50 flagship universities, while representing nearly 8 percent of the nation’s population.

“Black Male Students at Public Flagship Universities in the U.S.: Status, Trends, and Implications for Policy and Practice,” recommends affirmative action in admissions to help increase the number of African-American men at public flagship universities, as well as an increase in institutional, state, and federal financial support for college-readiness programs geared toward black male students. The report is available at www.jointcenter.org.

The University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit higher education provider, has agreed to buy naming rights for the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals’ new stadium for $154 million dollars. The 20-year deal, which requires a $7.7 million a year payout, according to analysts, represents only about 3 percent of its annual $250 million advertising budget.

After a year of hearings and policy reviews, a committee set up by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to investigate charges that professors were discriminating against conservative students, seems to have decided that political bias is rare at Pennsylvania’s public colleges and universities, so a policy governing college students’ academic freedom was unnecessary.

The Pennsylvania Select Committee on Student Academic Freedom is expected to validate testimony of faculty and students, including NEA and Pennsylvania State Education Association higher ed leaders, provided at hearings across the state.

The committee recommended that higher ed institutions have policies to ensure protection of student rights, but, in the end, Pennsylvania is expected to join more than 20 states in rejecting the “Academic Bill of Rights.”

Faculty & Staff
The University of Michigan has vowed to continue its commitment to diversity, following a setback at the polls in November. University president Mary Sue Coleman told students, following the election, that the university will “consider every legal option available” to overturn the referendum in which Michigan voters approved a ban on affirmative action in the state’s public colleges and universities.

Voters in six states approved ballot measures this November that raise their state’s minimum wage and link it to annual cost-of-living adjustments. This January the minimum wage will rise to $6.75 in Arizona, $6.85 in Colorado and Ohio, $6.50 in Missouri, $6.15 in Montana, and in Nevada $6.15 for employers who don’t provide health benefits.

There were some exceptions for smaller employers in some states. Approval margins for the measures ranged from 53 percent in Ohio to 76 percent in Missouri.

Professional News
Wireless networks now reach fully half (51.2 percent) of college classrooms compared to a third (31.1 percent) in 2004, according to new data from the annual Campus Computing Survey. Additionally, more than two-thirds of campuses participating in the annual survey have a strategic plan for deploying wireless as of fall 2006. The proportion of classrooms with wireless access ranges from 31.7 percent in community colleges to 58.0 percent in private research universities.

The 2006 survey also indicates that campus IT officers continue to view network and data security as the “single most important information technology issue confronting their institution” over the next two to three years, the third consecutive year that IT security has been the leading issue for campus IT officers. This stands in striking contrast to the focus on the “instructional integration of information technology” which was the top IT issue from 2000–03.

A full report of the survey is available at www.campuscomputing.net/.

Source: Measuring Up 2006. The National Report Card on Higher Education,
http://measuringup.highereducation.org/nationalpicture/