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The U.S. prison population rose nearly 6 percent last year, to more than
1.7 million, federal figures show.
 That puts 1 in every 155
U.S. residents in jail as of mid-year 1997. The number of prisoners behind bars
in state and federal institution grew by 55,198, or 4.7 percent. But the figures
for prisoners in local jails rose by 48,587, or 9.4 percent.
The Sentencing Project, a
private group advocating less imprisonment and more use of creative
alternatives, says that the United States locks up its citizens at a rate near
10 times most industrialized nations.
Thousands of students in Ontario and three other Canadian provinces
staged demonstrations recently to call for more federal student aid and a freeze
on tuition.
The protests were
organized by the Canadian Federation of Students to protest pending Ontario
government plans to make tuition increases of as much as 20 percent, spread over
this year and next.
In
Toronto, some 2,000 students from several local institutions assembled in
Queen's Park, home to the Ontario Parliament, and marched to the city's
financial district.
U.S. universities should rethink their roles in nuclear-weapons
research, says a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Five universities helping
the U.S. Department of Energy create computer simulations for evaluating the
country's nuclear arsenal should rethink the moral implications of their work,
notes the report.
The
Council is a nonprofit organization working to protect the environment. Its
report, Explosive
Alliances, written by M. McKinzie, T. Cochran, and C. Paine, may be found on
the Web.
Chabot College, a community college in California, plans to lay off all
its top administrators.
In a cost-cutting move, the
college will not renew the contracts of 24 administrators at the end of June.
The restructuring plan,
expected to save $300,000 a year, calls for the college to employ 10 deans
instead of 15 and one vice-president instead of two. The terminated employees
can apply for new jobs.
Part-time instructors at Rutgers University have a tentative agreement
with the university.
If the agreement is
ratified, part-timers would receive a 3.5 percent salary increase this academic
year and a 3.25 percent increase next year. The deal would also raise the
minimum salary for teaching a typical undergraduate course from $1,950 to
$2,250.
The National Science Foundation may be barred from spending $23 million
to connect colleges and universities to the Internet.
A federal judge
has enjoined the National Science Foundation from using the money in an "Intellectual
Infrastructure Fund" that receives fees paid to register Internet
addresses.
The
ruling came in a lawsuit filed by four companies and two individuals who
maintain that the portion of the fee that goes to the fund is an illegal tax.
Higher-education leaders met with officials from President Clinton's "Initiative
on Race" last month.
The result: Special campus
events this spring on the question: "What should higher education be doing
to prepare graduates to address the legacies and challenges of race and racism
in the United States?"
Source: National Education Association 1998 study of part-time
faculty in four states. | 
