GUEST COMMENTARY

The Privatization of Higher Education

WILLIAM TIERNEY Educational Policy Institute Guest Commentator

It’s March 2011. California’s new governor calls a morning news conference to make a stunning announcement: The Apollo Group’s University of Phoenix will pay $2.3 billion to buy the California State University system.

“The previous administration left us with few alternatives,” explains Whitman, who won election on a campaign pledge to end California’s chronic imbalance between what it takes in and what it spends. “Selling state parks is fine,” she continues, “but that nets a few hundred-million dollars.  Transferring ownership of CSU to Phoenix will permanently save us billions.”

“And Phoenix says it will increase enrollments at a lower cost than CSU could ever have managed,” adds Whitman.

Far-fetched? Is Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit university, really a candidate to take over CSU, the nation’s largest four-year public university system? Consider:

Persistent budget deficits and the state’s recession have taken a heavy toll on Cal State University. The 23-campus system, which serves 450,000 students, has struggled to increase enrollment as its share of the general fund has steadily declined. READ MORE...

The gender gap on campus — about 57% female, 43% male — is troubling, but it's not getting any worse, a report says today. Men have consistently represented about 43% of enrollments and earned 43% of bachelor's degrees since 2000, says the report by the American Council on Education, a higher-education organization. It doesn't offer solutions on how to narrow that gap, but it suggests policymakers and educators can have the greatest effect by focusing efforts on Hispanics. Just 9% of Hispanic young men have earned a bachelor's degree, the lowest attainment level of any group studied. Among Hispanic young women, 14% have earned a bachelor's.
Source: USA Today

States Vie to Stand Out in Race to Top Proposals
Stephen Sawchuk and Lesli Maxwell, Education Week
As peer reviewers for the U.S. Department of Education begin to comb through the thousands of pages of applications for $4 billion in federal Race to the Top Fund grants, they’ll be under pressure to determine which are most worthy of funding: those that promise the most, or those with the best chance of delivering.

L.A. Unified Unveils Revamped 'Report Cards' Evaluating Its Schools
Howard Blume, LA Times
L.A. school officials unveiled a more user-friendly school "report card" Wednesday that is more focused on information than public relations. The new product updates an effort that began last year, when Supt. Ramon C. Cortines sought to make school performance more transparent, even when the data revealed disappointing results.

More Schools Require Students to Learn Personal Finance
USA Today
The number of states requiring public high schools to offer a personal finance course rose from nine to 15 between 2007 and 2009, according to the Council for Economic Education. Thirteen states require a personal finance course for graduation, up from seven in 2007. Many schools elsewhere offer or require such courses. The U.S. Treasury Department also recently announced a national award program to encourage financial education in schools.

School Change Requires In-Depth Support
Edward Moscovitch, Boston Globe
The new education reform law will help Massachusetts win additional federal funds. It allows for more charter schools and gives superintendents more leeway in dismissing teachers in low-performing schools. By themselves, though, these changes are unlikely to make much difference in the high-poverty schools on which the bill is focused.

Teacher-Dismissal Powers Found to Affect Absences
Dakarai Aarons, Education Week
Chicago teachers who didn’t have tenure took fewer days off after principals were given more flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers, a new study has found. The policy reduced teacher absences on an annual basis by about 10 percent and cut the number of teachers with 15 or more annual absences by 20 percent.

Colleges Market Easy, No-Fee Sell to Applicants
Jacques Steinberg, NY Times
Over the last few years, the tiny College of Saint Rose has seen minority admissions rise and its standing in the U.S. News and World Report rankings climb more than 20 rungs. Its secret? Last fall the college sent out 30,000 bright red “Exclusive Scholar Applications” to high school seniors that promised to waive the $40 application fee, invited them to skip the dreaded essay and assured a decision in three weeks. Because the application arrived with the students’ names and other information already filled in, applying required little more than a signature.

Should BlackBerry Owners Power Down?
Matt Knight, CNN
Amir Khaki, a British occupational psychologist from AK Consulting studied the BlackBerry habits of executives in middle to senior management. "High" users would use their BlackBerry during the commute to work and would keep them on in the evenings and weekends. "Low" users would generally allocate specific times to check their BlackBerry and respond to emails. "The high user category tends to have a distorted perception of their own usage and they equate their BlackBerry use with being dedicated to the job," Khaki told CNN.

7 College Admissions Myths
Lee Coffin, Washington Post
Here are seven issues about college admissions that Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions and enrollment at Tufts University, calls "myths."

Cal State to Push Students Toward Graduation
Carla Rivera, LA Times
Students attending California State University may be in for a dose of tough love as they are asked to choose majors more quickly, be more disciplined about attending class and be willing to sacrifice family time and outside activities to earn their degrees, several campus presidents said Wednesday.

Administration: Obama to Boost Education Funding by $4 Billion
Ed Henry, CNN
Despite a heavy focus on fiscal discipline in his first State of the Union address, President Obama will announce an increase of up to $4 billion in federal education spending. A big chunk of that boost will be an increase of $1.35 billion for Obama's signature "Race to the Top" grant program, aimed at sparking innovation in schools across the country, the officials said. An additional $1 billion will be targeted at overhauling the No Child Left Behind Act.

Poor White Boys 'Not Catching Up'
Hannah Richardson, BBC News
Efforts to help poor white boys catch up with their peers in the early years of school appear to have stalled. Official data on assessments at age five show three-quarters of the poorest white boys in England are still not achieving a good level of development.

U.S. Suspends Aid to Kenya Education Ministry, Ambassador Says
David McKenzie, CNN
America's top diplomat to Kenya has announced that the United States has suspended a $7 million "capacity building" program for the country's Ministry of Education, citing corruption. "The United States shares the deep concern of Kenya's development partners and the Kenyan people regarding the continuous revelations of large-scale corruption," Ambassador Michael Ranneberger said in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Nairobi, Kenya.

Parents Advised to Ignore My School Website
ABC News- Australia
The Victorian Association of State Secondary Schools is urging parents to ignore the Federal Government's My School website when deciding where to enroll their children. The website was launched yesterday morning and compares schools by using their numeracy and literacy results. But the association's president Brian Burgess, says the comparisons are not accurate because the health and welfare of the students is not considered and enrolment numbers are not calculated.

Haiti’s List of Needs Includes Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Norma Greenaway, Edmonton Journal
International businessman Yves Savain says he can look five years down the road in Haiti and see tens of thousands of workers earning $4 or more an hour producing everything from shirts and socks to electronics. Savain, who left Haiti as a teenager in 1963, says Haiti’s large, willing, low-wage workforce will become a major investment draw if what’s left of the Haitian government and the international community come up with an effective long-term recovery plan that doesn’t repeat past mistakes.

The Loophole That Allows Smacking in Some Schools
Gary Eason, BBC News
Smacking is banned in schools in the UK. Or is it? In general terms, it is. But concerns have been raised again in England about a clause that still permits corporal punishment in educational establishments that have children for less than 12.5 hours a week.

EPI Research Study Shows For-Profit Schools Achieve Graduation and Retention Rates Comparable to Those of Colleges and Universities
Vast college campuses with academic programs requiring rigid, full-time schedules aren’t the picture of postsecondary education that fit for thousands of people across the nation. The juggling act of work, financial- and family-related obligations can make it nearly impossible for some to attend a traditional college. More Americans, though, are realizing there are more convenient and comparable options where they can obtain a quality education: career colleges. With advanced programs and facilities, for-profit schools – or career colleges – measure up to traditional colleges and universities and, in some cases, provide better opportunities of success for students in need. A research study sponsored by the Imagine America Foundation (IAF) shows that students who fall into at-risk categories attending career colleges have comparable and often higher retention and graduation rates than those at other institutions.  The Educational Policy Institute (EPI), a non-profit research organization, conducted research for the Foundation’s Graduating At-Risk Students: A Cross-Sector Analysis.  The results show the tremendous impact the for-profit sector of education has in training students for careers.

Gender Gap in US Enrolment Stabilizing
According to a report released by the American Council on Education, the distribution of enrolment and undergraduate degrees by gender in the US has remained consistent since about 2000, with men accounting for 43% of enrolment and earning 43% of bachelor's degrees. Enrolment gaps continue to widen between Hispanic men and women. The percentage of male Hispanics students, age 24 or younger, enrolled in undergraduate programs fell from 45% in 1999 to 42% in 2007. The study's author suggests the low education attainment rates among Hispanics born outside the US compared to their American-born peers is a probable cause for the enrolment disparity.

The Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color
It is becoming an acknowledged fact that the United States is losing ground in the international competition to produce superior intellectual talent. This is a situation that President Barack Obama has pledged to correct. Just as accepted is the fact that the population of the United States is changing dramatically, with a significant increase in the Hispanic and African American populations. These facts lead to an inescapable conclusion: If the United States is to achieve the president’s goals, then we will have to do a much more effective job in educating those populations with which we have traditionally failed. This report, The Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color, is a step in the direction of raising the visibility of a pressing problem in American society. Generally speaking, the report investigates — through the voices of members of the African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American and Native American communities — the frustrations, hopes and aspirations of these communities. The report also investigates the significant differences in performance between males and females within those minority groups.