Sabtu, 02 November 2013

Protests Halt Kelly’s Speech at Brown University


By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS
Published: October 29, 2013
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A speech by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly at Brown University planned for Tuesday was canceled after protesters against the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics disrupted the event with shouting and chants.

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Officials at the university, in Providence, R.I., ended the event and cleared the auditorium after the protests continued for almost half an hour, preventing Mr. Kelly from speaking. He had been scheduled to deliver a speech titled “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City.”
The university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, said that it was “a sad day for the Brown community” and that she would contact Mr. Kelly to apologize for the way he was treated on campus.
Mr. Kelly declined to comment about the canceled speech.
In a video of the event posted on YouTube, protesters shouted complaints about the policy as Mr. Kelly stood behind a lectern waiting to speak. A campus official told audience members that they would have time to comment during a question-and-answer session after the speech.
But a protester responded, “We’re asking you to stop stopping and frisking people.”
Many of the protesters, who also marched outside the event, appeared to be students, but the event was also open to the public.
In August, a federal judge ruled that New York City’s stop-and-frisk practices violated the rights of minorities, and she designated an independent monitor to oversee changes.
Communities United for Police Reform, a group that has criticized the policy, issued a statement saying that it was not surprised by the criticism of Mr. Kelly.
“It’s not shocking that after directing policing that violates New Yorkers’ civil rights and the U.S. Constitution without any remorse that Commissioner Kelly would be poorly received,” the group said in a statement, “and it’s unfortunate that New York City has become known for political and police leadership that defends discriminatory and abusive policing, and seeks to fight accountability.”
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Are You Competent? Prove It.


Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went

By ANYA KAMENETZ
Published: October 29, 2013 205 Comments
IN 1893, Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, introduced to the National Education Association a novel concept: the credit hour. Roughly equivalent to one hour of lecture time a week for a 12- to 14-week semester, it became the basic unit of a college education, and the standard measure for transferring work between institutions. To be accredited, universities have had to base curriculums on credit hours and years of study. The seat-time system — one based on the hours spent in the classroom — is further reinforced by Title IV student aid: to receive need-based Pell grants or federal loans, students have had to carry a certain load of credits each semester.
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Students in Capella University's FlexPath program can see how many criteria they must complete to achieve each competency. Colors indicate how well the student is doing.

FLEX DEGREES

Online self-paced programs, based on demonstrating competence in required skills and knowledge.
CAPELLA (FLEXPATH)
Tuition: $2,000 per three-month term
Degrees: B.S. in business administration; M.B.A. ($2,200 per term)
Started: October 2013
SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY (COLLEGE FOR AMERICA)
Tuition: $1,250 per six-month term
Degrees: A.A. in general studies
Started: September 2013
NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY (PERSONALIZED LEARNING)
Tuition: $2,500 per six-month term
Degrees: B.A. in liberal arts, business, computer/information technology
Started: May 2013
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN (FLEXIBLE OPTION)
Tuition: $2,250 per three-month term
Degrees: B.S.N. in nursing; B.S. in diagnostic imaging, information sciences, technology; A.A.S. in general education; certificate in technical communication
Starts: January 2014
WESTERN GOVERNORS UNIVERSITY
Tuition: $2,890 per six-month term
Degrees: B.A., M.A., M.S. in education; B.S., M.S. in information technology; B.S., B.S.N., M.S.N. in nursing ($3,250-$4,250); B.S. in business; M.B.A. ($3,250)
Started: 1997

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After more than a century, the system equating time with learning is being challenged from high quarters.
In March of this year, the Department of Education invited colleges to submit programs for consideration under Title IV aid that do not rely on seat time. In response, public, private and for-profit institutions alike have rushed out programs that are changing the college degree in fundamental ways; they are based not on time in a course but on tangible evidence of learning, a concept known as competency-based education.
The motivation for ditching time is money. This August, at Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pa., President Obama issued a call to improve college affordability that went beyond boilerplates about loans and Pell grants. He proposed a rating system that would attach federal higher education dollars to a college’s cost effectiveness and student performance. “Colleges have to work harder to prevent tuition from going up year after year,” the president said. “We’re going to encourage more colleges to innovate, try new things, do things that can provide a great education without breaking the bank.”
A new wave of innovators is following his injunction. College leaders say that by focusing on what people learn, not how or when they learn it, and by taking advantage of the latest technology, they can save students time and lower costs. There are 37 million Americans with some college but no degree, and political leaders at the local, state and national levels are heralding new competency-based programs as the best way to get them marketable diplomas.
The Lumina Foundation has been one of the champions of the approach. Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive, says the rationale is not just lower cost but better education. “The time-centered system says if you take the coursework, get passing grades and meet our academic standards, you get the degree,” he said. “Competency is a student-centered, learning-outcome-based model. Where you get the education is secondary to what you know and are able to do.”
To help develop a blueprint for other universities, Lumina just announced a $1.2 million grant to support an evaluation of the University of Wisconsin’s competency-based program, set to begin in January.
But not everyone is so excited about the programs. Many are raising alarms that these untested offerings will limit or undermine the power of a university degree.
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CERTIFYING learning, rather than time, is not an entirely new concept. For decades there have been other ways to earn college credits besides sitting in the classroom. You can “test out” of certain courses through A.P., CLEP or D.S.S.T. exams. At many colleges, you can do an independent study and submit a research paper for course credit. Since the 1970s, Excelsior, Thomas Edison and Empire State have allowed students to earn credits through performance-based assessment, like a simulation with patients in a clinical setting, or by submitting a portfolio with evidence of previous learning, whether through workplace experience, military training or even a hobby.
But not until Western Governors University was founded by a consortium of 19 states in 1997 was an entire degree program structured around assessments of learning. The online institution introduced many ideas that have been copied by new competency programs. They charge fees per term, not per credit, with an “all you can eat” policy — take and retake as many assessments as you can fit into a six-month term.
Anya Kamenetz is digital education writer for the Hechinger Report and author of “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education.”
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Out of Foster Care, Into College


Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times
College students in California's Guardian Scholars program for foster youth include, clockwise from top left, Bianca Boccara, Marcellia Goodrich, Angel Gabarret, Shamir Moorer, Randy Davis, Kaleef Starks and Manny Roque. More Photos »
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Published: October 30, 2013 103 Comments
BY definition, foster children have been delinquent, abandoned, neglected, physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused, and that does not take into account nonstatutory abuses like heartache. About two-thirds never go to college and very few graduate, so it’s a safe bet that those who do have an uncommon resilience.
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In a society where many young men and women live with their parents well into their 20s, foster children learn quickly that they are their own responsibility. To find someplace to live in 10th grade Kaleef Starks, now an A student at the University of California, Los Angeles, but back then (to use his words) a gay, effeminate, abused teenager, went to the local library, logged onto a computer and Googled “homeless shelters for youth.”
His closest friend at U.C.L.A., Bianca Boccara, had parents who made her go panhandling with them because they knew passers-by would be more likely to donate if they saw a young child.
By the time he was 18, Manny Roque, now a student at Los Angeles City College, had lived in seven foster homes and attended five high schools. He was raised by a mother who was a crack addict and prostitute, growing up in such chaos that he did not go to school until sixth grade and only then did he understand how abnormal it was for a boy his age not to be able to name the letters of the alphabet.
One of his classmates, Shamir Moorer, “born with crack inside me,” estimates she’s lived in “15 or 17” foster and group homes. She can’t say for sure because she can’t remember the earliest ones, having been placed in care as a baby.
•
IN a 2010 study by researchers at the University of Chicago, only 6 percent of former foster youths had earned a two- or four-year degree by age 24. Those not in college may be in jail; 34 percent who had left foster care at age 17 or 18 reported being arrested by age 19.
Most of the research is bleak — but not all. It appears that extra support can make a difference. The Chicago study tracked the lives of about 700 foster children in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. Those in Illinois who were still getting foster care services at age 19 were less likely to have been arrested (22 percent versus 34 percent) than those in the other two states who were on their own. The same was true for education. The foster children from Illinois, which has long allowed young people to remain in care until their 21st birthday, were more likely to have completed at least one year of college than their counterparts from Iowa or Wisconsin, where the age of emancipation at the time was 18.
Which is why a growing number of colleges — from those that are selective, like U.C.L.A., to those that are not, like Los Angeles City College — have created extensive support programs aimed at current and former foster young people. At U.C.L.A., this includes scholarships, year-round housing in the dorms for those who have no other place to live, academic and therapeutic counseling, tutoring, health care coverage, campus jobs, bedding, towels, cleaning products, toiletries and even occasional treats. Ms. Boccara mentioned the gift cards she was given to a local supermarket. At Los Angeles City College, Marcellia Goodrich likes the free snacks in the program office and Mr. Roque noted the free paper. “It’s useful and helps you stay on budget,” he said.
No one tracks college programs for foster youth. But it is clear there has been considerable growth in recent years, spurred in part by the creation in 2003 of the Chafee grant program, an annual $48 million federal appropriation used to award scholarships of up to $5,000. Also important was federal legislation in 2008 giving states the option of extending federal aid programs for foster youth from age 18 to 21.
Seven states are considered to have particularly strong programs. California’s is known as the Guardian Scholars. Texas, Ohio and North Carolina call theirs Reach; Michigan has Fostering Success Michigan; Washington, Passport to College Promise; and Virginia, Great Expectations. Many colleges provide some services, but a far smaller number have the kinds of comprehensive support systems offered at places like Western Michigan University, Sam Houston State University, City College of San Francisco, and community colleges in Tallahassee, Fla., and Austin, Tex.
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Black and White and in the Red Student Newspapers Scurry to Make Ends Meet


Greg Kahn for The New York Times
At George Mason University, the student newspaper and an online news site combined forces to create Fourth Estate.
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Published: October 31, 2013
WITHIN a month of taking over as editor of The Hatchet, George Washington University’s student newspaper, Cory Weinberg knew that something had to change. Advertising dollars had been steadily declining. Printing costs continued to rise. At the same time, visits to the website were up. The number of students reading articles on their mobile devices had doubled. Traffic from Twitter had increased 300 percent in the last year.

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Cory Weinberg, editor of The G.W. Hatchet, now just a weekly.
In June, he and the general manager outlined a plan for the paper’s board of directors to eliminate one of two weekly editions and invest more heavily in online coverage and ways to reach students through mobile and social media. At first, Mr. Weinberg worried that the board, made up mostly of Hatchet alumni, journalism professionals and professors, would balk.
“There’s been tension elsewhere over cutting editions,” said Mr. Weinberg, a senior majoring in economics and journalism. “And, honestly, I expected some resistance, especially when you are talking about changing an organization that people love. But they got it.” The board’s decision was unanimous.
Becoming a weekly is just one of the efforts to help ensure the future of this 109-year-old newspaper. The Hatchet, which is independent of G.W.U., pays $4,520 in monthly rent to the university. And so an alumni group called Home for The Hatchet bought it a townhouse.
To bolster its $2 million fund-raising drive, the group is offering “naming opportunities.” Donors have pledged $50,000 each for engraved plaques outside the offices of the editor in chief and business manager. The newsroom will be sponsored for $50,000 by Berl Brechner, a longtime television executive and 1967 Hatchet editor in chief, who fondly remembers covering the tumult of the Vietnam protests there.
Naming opportunities are still available for the sports and opinion offices and staff lounge. The entire building can be had for a $750,000 pledge.
 •
THE HATCHET, like many college newspapers with long traditions, has until recently managed to stave off industry challenges that have forced professional news organizations to make deep budget cuts. When print advertising revenue fell 9 percent for commercial newspapers in 2007, college newspapers enjoyed a 15 percent increase. But the student media landscape has been shaken in the last two years by plummeting revenues and changing reading patterns.
“In the last year in particular, we have seen a contraction in the marketplace,” said Tammy Nelson, vice president for marketing and research for the marketing company re:fuel. “The measures a lot of college newspapers took in recent years, maybe cutting editions from five days a week to four days a week, trimming sections now and then, got them through the downturn. But they are having to look at other ways now to be profitable.”
At the University of Texas, Austin, The Daily Texan has been relying on a reserve fund to help make up a free fall in ad revenue from $2.2 million in 2007 to $1.3 million last year, according to Friends of The Daily Texan, an alumni group organized to help the paper that counted Walter Cronkite and Bill Moyers on its staff.
At the University of California, Berkeley, the 142-year-old Daily Californian is in the midst of an ambitious fund-raising campaign after a single anonymous donor who had been helping fill growing budget gaps pulled out this summer.
Former staff members have helped The Daily Illini, the student-run newspaper at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, begin to pay down its $250,000 debt. Roger Ebert, the late film critic and D.I. editor in chief, had appealed to fellow newspaper alumni in a widely circulated letter on Facebook that helped drive donations. “Many, including myself, would say that they owe their careers at least in part to their experience at Illini Media,” he wrote. “It’s now time to give back.”
The Daily Illini is among several financially independent campus news organizations that have asked students to support small fee increases. Beginning this semester, Illinois students pay a media fee of $1.85, which is expected to cover 9 percent of this year’s budget. A $3 fee was approved last April at the University of California, Irvine. The student body at Western Michigan University initiated and voted for a $10 annual fee to support the newspaper as well as radio and broadcast station. Students at the University of Connecticut balked at a $6 increase for its student newspaper, but noting that voter turnout on the issue was small, the trustees approved the fee for this academic year, putting off the debate for another year.
The University of Georgia’s Red and Black and the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily have recently cut back the number of days they publish print editions.
Ms. Nelson warns that college papers that eliminate too many of their print editions do so at their peril. Re:fuel research shows that students still enjoy picking up copies, free and convenient as they are, stacked in the student union and dorm lounges. In 2011, 60 percent of students read their college paper — a testament, if you will, to its importance as an outlet for student concerns, from tuition increases to the quality of food in the cafeteria. Of those readers, 60 percent preferred print, while 16 percent preferred to get their college news online.
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California: Aid for Illegal Immigrant College Students


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 30, 2013
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Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California, said Wednesday that $5 million would be devoted to providing special counseling and financial aid for students living in the country illegally, a move aimed at disarming critics who worried she would be hostile to the small but vocal student population. Ms. Napolitano, formerly the secretary of homeland security, announced the initiative in her first public address, in San Francisco, since becoming head of the 10-campus university system a month ago. She also pledged $10 million for recruiting and training graduate students and research fellows.
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As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry


Jim Wilson/The New York Times
At Stanford this month, Jeremy Dean showed graduate students how to use Rap Genius to teach the classics in the digital age.
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Published: October 30, 2013 1073 Comments
STANFORD, Calif. — On Stanford University’s sprawling campus, where a long palm-lined drive leads to manicured quads, humanities professors produce highly regarded scholarship on Renaissance French literature and the philosophy of language.
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Tanya Llewellyn, a graduate student in English at Stanford, at a workshop on a database analysis of 18th-century novels.

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"A university without a philosophy program is no longer a university."
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They have generous compensation, stunning surroundings and access to the latest technology and techniques of scholarship. The only thing they lack is students: Some 45 percent of the faculty members in Stanford’s main undergraduate division are clustered in the humanities — but only 15 percent of the students.
With Stanford’s reputation in technology, it is no wonder that computer science is the university’s most popular major, and that there are no longer any humanities programs among the top five. But with the recession having helped turn college, in the popular view, into largely a tool for job preparation, administrators are concerned.
“We have 11 humanities departments that are quite extraordinary, and we want to provide for that faculty,” said Richard Shaw, Stanford’s dean of admission and financial aid.
The concern that the humanities are being eclipsed by science goes far beyond Stanford.
At some public universities, where funding is eroding, humanities are being pared. In September, for example, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania announced that it was closing its sparsely populated degree programs in German, philosophy, and world languages and culture.
At elite universities, such departments are safe but wary. Harvard had a 20 percent decline in humanities majors over the last decade, a recent report found, and most students who say they intend to major in humanities end up in other fields. So the university is looking to reshape its first-year humanities courses to sustain student interest.
Princeton, in an effort to recruit more humanities students, offers a program for high school students with a strong demonstrated interest in humanities — an idea Stanford, too, adopted last year.
“Both inside the humanities and outside, people feel that the intellectual firepower in the universities is in the sciences, that the important issues that people of all sorts care about, like inequality and climate change, are being addressed not in the English departments,” said Andrew Delbanco, a Columbia University professor who writes about higher education.
The future of the humanities has been a hot topic this year, both in academia and the high-culture media. Some commentators sounded the alarm based on federal data showing that nationally, the percentage of humanities majors hovers around 7 percent — half the 14 percent share in 1970. As others quickly pointed out, that decline occurred between 1970, the high point, and 1985, not in recent years.
Still, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued a report this spring noting the decreased funding for humanities and calling for new initiatives to ensure that they are not neglected amid the growing money and attention devoted to science and technology.
In The New Yorker in August, the writer Adam Gopnik argued for the importance of English majors. The New Republic ran an article, “Science Is Not Your Enemy,” by Steven Pinker, a Harvard cognitive scientist. A few weeks later came a testy rebuttal, “Crimes Against Humanities” by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, rejecting Dr. Pinker’s views on the ascendancy of science.
“In the scholarly world, cognitive sciences has everybody’s ear right now, and everybody is thinking about how to relate to it,” said Louis Menand, a Harvard English professor. “How many people do you know who’ve read a book by an English professor in the past year? But everybody’s reading science books.”
Many distinguished humanities professors feel their status deflating. Anthony Grafton, a Princeton history professor who started that university’s humanities recruiting program, said he sometimes feels “like a newspaper comic strip character whose face is getting smaller and smaller.”
At Stanford, the humanists cannot help noticing the primacy of science and technology.
“You look at this university’s extraordinary science and technology achievements, and if you wonder what will happen to the humanities, you can be threatened, or you can be invigorated,” said Franco Moretti, the director of the Stanford Literary Lab. “I’m choosing to be invigorated.”
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Drop in LSAT Takers Shows Legal Field’s Slump


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Published: October 31, 2013
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Once again, fewer candidates are taking the Law School Admission Test, a sign that students recognize the continuing slump in the legal field. The latest figures released this week by the Law School Admissions Council show that nearly 11 percent fewer people took the LSAT in October than the year before. The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog calculated that this October’s 33,673 test takers represent a drop of 45 percent since the test-taking peak in 2009. Daniel M. Filler, a professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University, blogged that some schools might see applications decline to the point that they could have to “radically restructure” to make ends meet.
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