Dear Commons Community,

Community colleges “are in great danger of becoming indelibly separate and unequal institutions in the higher-education landscape,” a Century Foundation task force warns in a report  released earlier this morning.   To deal with what it calls “the increasing economic and racial isolation of students” at community colleges, the group also calls for major changes in how two-year colleges are financed and operated.  As stated at the Century Foundation website:

“Education has always been a key driver in our nation’s struggle to promote social mobility and widen the circle of people who can enjoy the American Dream. No set of educational institutions better embodies the promise of equal opportunity than community colleges. Two-year colleges have opened the doors of higher education for low-income and working-class students as never before, and yet, community colleges often lack the resources to provide the conditions for student success. Furthermore, there is a growing racial and economic stratification between two- and four-year colleges, producing harmful consequences. Bridging the Higher Education Divide: Strengthening Community Colleges and Restoring the American Dream, faces those grave realities in unblinking fashion. Led by co-chairs Anthony Marx, the president of the New York Public Library and former president of Amherst College, and Eduardo Padron, the president of Miami Dade College, the task force recommends ways to reduce the racial and economic stratification and create new outcomes-based funding in higher education, with a much greater emphasis on providing additional public supports based on student needs.”

In an article reviewing the report, The Chronicle of Higher Education commented:

“Among its recommendations, the group urges states and the federal government to provide additional funds to two-year colleges that serve the neediest students, much in the way the federal Title I program works for elementary and secondary schools. In states where constitutional guarantees of education might extend to higher education, the report suggests that advocates even consider filing lawsuits to require such “adequate funding” of community colleges.

To “bring greater clarity to all types of public support for higher education,” the report also asks the U.S. Departments of Education and of the Treasury to jointly study how tax exemptions for donations to colleges and for institutions’ endowment earnings indirectly subsidize colleges—an effort that would highlight how such policies disproportionately benefit wealthier four-year institutions.

The report is premised on the notion that community colleges, which enroll about 44 percent of the nation’s college population, are in many cases not serving students well now and will be ill equipped to handle future demands without radical change.

Along with the financial recommendations, the report outlines a series of educational proposals. The proposals are aimed at shifting the patterns that result in four-year colleges’ enrolling disproportionably more wealthy and white students while two-year colleges enroll a higher proportion of needy and minority students.”

These are important issues which will resonate at community colleges across the country including here at the City University of New York.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Apple is the latest corporation that has had to explain its tax strategies namely the shifting of income to foreign countries to avoid paying taxes here in the United States.  In a hearing before the U.S. Senate, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained the necessity for what it does as based on the need to compete in the global market place.   Joe Nocera, in his New York Times column, analyzes Mr. Cook’s position and finds it lacking.

…”as documented both by The Times and the Senate subcommittee, Apple is as much an innovator in tax avoidance as it is in technology. Take, for instance, a scheme known as The Double Irish, which it largely invented and which many American companies have since replicated. This strategy, which was the primary focus of Tuesday’s hearing, involves setting up a shell subsidiary in an offshore tax haven — a k a Ireland — and transferring most of Apple’s intellectual property rights to the dummy subsidiary. The subsidiary, in turn, charges “royalties” that allows it to capture billions of dollars in what otherwise would be taxable profits in the United States. In Ireland, according to Apple, it pays an astonishing 2 percent in taxes, thanks to a deal it has with the government. (The Irish government denies giving Apple a special deal.)

Here is another whopper from Mr. Cook on Tuesday. He said that his company not only doesn’t violate the letter of the law, that it doesn’t even violate the spirit. He may be right on the first part, but he is wrong on the second. As the subcommittee’s chairman, Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, pointed out to me on Wednesday, one of the main goals of American corporate tax policy is to tax profits in the jurisdiction where they are produced.

“That intellectual property and patents are the crown jewels of the company,” Levin said. “The Irish subsidiary had nothing to do with creating those crown jewels. It has no employees. It has no offices. Yet most of Apple’s profits are now offshore because they were able to utilize a shift of their intellectual property to a tax haven.”

It appears that Mr. Cook’s Apple story has worms!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that Texas Republican and Tea Party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz made a remarkable admission on the floor of the U.S. Senate Wednesday, admitting in a dispute with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that not only does he not trust Democrats, he doesn’t trust Republicans, either.

McCain had challenged Cruz, as well as fellow Tea Party Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.), to let the Senate appoint conferees to work out a federal budget with the GOP-controlled House for the first time in four years.

The Tea Party members, however, are insisting on a highly unusual set of pre-conditions first, including requiring that the conferees be barred from raising the debt limit. Normally, McCain argued, the Senate gives them instructions, but recognizes that there needs to be room for negotiations in conferences.

McCain said their refusal amounts to not trusting the Republicans who lead the House to stand by their stated opposition to raising the debt limit without major cuts.

Surprisingly, Cruz agreed.

“Let me be clear. I don’t trust the Republicans,” Cruz said, casting it as a broader distrust of a government that has rung up more than $16 trillion in debt. “And I don’t trust the Democrats. And I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don’t trust the Republicans and the Democrats because it is leadership in both parties that has gotten us in this mess.”

Tony