Dear Commons Community,

In his final budget proposal to the U.S. Congress, President Obama called for an expansion of the Pell Grant program and more funding for community colleges.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The budget — for the 2017 fiscal year, which begins on October 1 — reiterates the president’s plan to make community college free while adding a new wrinkle: tax credits for companies that invest in community colleges and hire their graduates. It repeats his request for Pell Grant bonuses for colleges that graduate large numbers of low- and moderate-income students, and for stricter limits on the amount of revenue that for-profit colleges can draw from student aid. It also includes a proposal to expand and remake the Federal Perkins Loan Program, which expired in October but received a short-term reprieve in December.

Congressional Republicans have rejected most of those ideas in the past, and they are likely to do so again this year. But two perennial proposals might get some traction in the coming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act: streamlining the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which has been widely criticized as overly complicated, and shrinking the number of loan-repayment plans available to borrowers. Both ideas are popular among lawmakers in both parties. 

The president’s plan now heads to Congress, where election-year politics and budget constraints make it unlikely that many of his proposals will pass. Congress didn’t finalize the current year’s spending bill until December, and it’s not likely to do much better this year. Here’s a look at how the budget would affect academe:

A tune-up for Pell Grants.

President Obama’s proposals include a plan, first announced in January, to make Pell Grants available year-round to students taking a full course load, and to provide a $300 “on-track Pell bonus” to students who take at least 15 credit hours in a semester. (That’s the number of hours typically required to graduate on time.)

Reinstating year-round Pell Grants — which fell victim to budget cuts in 2011 — would help students finish degrees faster by letting them take more courses during an academic year. Many students now exhaust their annual Pell eligibility after just two semesters and are unable to pay for summer courses. The new proposal would provide nearly 700,000 students with an additional $1,915, on average, next year, the department has said.

The president’s budget would also make Pell Grants available to some adult prisoners for the first time in 20 years. A pilot program, which the Obama administration announced last summer, wouldn’t change the law that prohibits prisoners from receiving the grants, but it would allow some aid to flow to inmates through “experimental sites.” —K.F.

A boost for community colleges.

Like the current year’s budget, the plan seeks billions of dollars to make two years of community college free to millions of students. Unlike that budget, it would also provide grants to make two years of college free — or significantly cheaper — to low-income students attending minority-serving institutions. That expansion of the plan was borrowed from congressional Democrats. 

The president’s budget would also create a new $2.5-billion tax credit for employers that team up with community colleges to design curricula, provide instruction and equipment, and offer job-based learning. Under that plan, which the administration announced on Friday, employers deemed eligible by their states would get a $5,000 credit for every community-college graduate that they hire into a full-time job. 

Unfortunately as The Chronicle article indicates, the U.S. Congress is not likely to do much with this proposal.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Those of us who have followed the work of Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman over the past dozen years know that they produced some of the best survey reports on the extent of online learning in American colleges and universities.  Yesterday they published what will be their final report, Online Report Card.  A summary is as follows.

“The study’s findings highlight a thirteenth consecutive year of growth in the number of students taking courses at a distance” said study co-author I. Elaine Allen, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group.

“Institutions with distance offerings remain as positive as ever, but there has been a retreat among leaders at institutions that do not have any distance offerings,” added co-author Jeff Seaman.

Growth has continued, despite muted support by faculty.  The study reveals only 29.1% of academic leaders say their faculty accept the “value and legitimacy of online education.” The proportion of chief academic leaders reporting online learning is critical to their long-term strategy dropped to 63.3% in the most recent results.

Key report findings include:

• A year-to-year 3.9% increase in the number of distance education students, up from the 3.7% rate recorded last year.
• More than one in four students (28%) now take at least one distance education course (a total of 5,828,826 students, a year-to-year increase of 217,275).
• The total of 5.8 million fall 2014 distance education students is composed of 2.85 million taking all of their courses at a distance and 2.97 million taking some, but not all, distance courses.
• Public institutions command the largest portion of distance education students, with 72.7% of all undergraduate and 38.7% of all graduate-level distance students.
• The proportion of chief academic leaders that say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy fell from 70.8% last year to 63.3% this year.
• The percent of academic leaders rating the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face instruction is now at 71.4%.
• Only 29.1% of academic leaders report that their faculty accept the “value and legitimacy of online education.” Among schools with the largest distance enrollments, 60.1% report faculty acceptance while only 11.6% of the schools with no distance enrollments do so.
• Academic leaders believe blended courses with both online and classroom components continue to hold greater promise than fully online courses.

The complete survey report is available for a free download at:

http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/2015Survey

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The troubled for-profit education company that owns the University of Phoenix agreed on Monday to be bought for $1.1 billion by a group of investors that includes a private equity firm with close ties to the Obama administration.  As reported by the New York Times:

“The university and its owner, the Apollo Education Group, have been subject to a series of state and federal investigations into allegations of shady recruiting, deceptive advertising and questionable financial aid practices.

In recent years, many for-profit educational institutions that have received billions of dollars in federal aid, including the University of Phoenix, have been pummeled by criticisms that they preyed upon veterans and low-income students, saddling them with outsize student loan debt and subpar instruction.

Moreover, at many of these schools, enrollment has been falling and profits shrinking, casting doubt on the future health of the industry.

The investors in the Apollo Education Group include the Chicago-based investment firm Vistria Group, the Phoenix-based Najafi Companies, and funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management, which is not connected to the Apollo Education Group.

The new owners, who said they are not relying on debt to pay for the acquisition, are promising to lead a clean-up of the for-profit education industry.

Vistria’s founder is Marty Nesbitt, one of President Obama’s closest friends and the chairman of the Obama Foundation. Mr. Nesbitt is also a longtime business partner of Penny Pritzker, the commerce secretary.

A Vistria partner and its chief operating officer, Tony Miller, was deputy secretary of the United States Department of Education between 2009 and 2013. He has been tapped to become the new chairman of Apollo Education Group in August, when the deal is scheduled to be completed.

The acquisition is subject to approval by both the Education Department and the accreditation group the Higher Learning Commission.

“For too long and too often, the private education industry has been characterized by inadequate student outcomes, overly aggressive marketing practices and poor compliance,” Mr. Miller said in a news release. “This doesn’t need to be the case.”

He said the University of Phoenix would operate “in a manner consistent with the highest ethical standards.”

But longtime critics of the for-profit education industry said that the new owners would find it difficult to balance the pursuit of such a high-minded approach with the challenge of reviving high profits for investors.

Barmak Nassirian, director of federal policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, argued that the premium of roughly 30 percent that investors paid over the previous month’s weighted stock average would not seem to be justified by the company’s recent record of anemic earnings and worsening forecasts.

The company in January reported an operating loss for its most recent quarter of $45.2 million, compared to operating income of $64.2 million for the same quarter a year earlier. Excluding special items, income from continuing operations in the most recent quarter was $31.3 million, slipping from $49.9 million a year earlier.

The university has also had to contend with a shrinking number of campuses, layoffs and tumbling enrollment.”

The result of going private will mean that details of Phoenix’ operations  will be much harder to come by.  

“The sale of Apollo Education Group under the terms reported today means that the largest for-profit college chain in America is essentially going dark,” Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, said. “We’ll know less than ever about the operations of one of the most heavily subsidized universities in America.”

This sale epitomizes the education-industrial complex in America where former education and government officials become major players  in companies that profit from education ventures.  There are too many opportunities for influence peddling that typically is good for the company but bad for education and especially students.

The U.S. Department of Education and appropriate accreditation agencies should not approve this sale.

Tony

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rm8Cr9FrKs[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community,

As millions of people around the globe watched the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl last night, a Colonial Willamsburg ad bothered some viewers for depicting the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11.  The tourism spot celebrated a montage of defining moments in American history including a clip of 9/11. It aired just after halftime, and offended some for what they interpreted as a macabre use of 9/11 footage.  As reported in The Daily News:

“Colonial Williamsburg CEO Mitchell Reiss had described the ad as a reflection on America’s past.

“The ad is meant to show that the America we know was not inevitable,” Reiss said in a statement introducing the video Wednesday. “It took courage. It took leadership. It took pain and sacrifice.”

The foundation stood by its advertisement shortly after the work aired Sunday.

“We understand and respect that some of the images depicted in the ad are jarring,” wrote Colonial Williamsburg Foundation spokesman Joe Straw in a statement to the Daily News. “However, the small data point of people who objected to some of the imagery in the ad does not represent the total viewership. Not even close.”

“All that is past is prologue. Our ad is meant to walk viewers backwards through time, challenging them to reflect on how our collective history and struggles shape who we are as Americans today,” Straw added. “We cannot forget our sacrifices or our tragedies even as we celebrate our accomplishments.”

The foundation’s ad included additional moments tinged with death: black and white footage of soldiers landing on Normandy Beach, service members carrying a wounded soldier and a funeral procession for a fallen veteran.”

I saw the ad and although I was surprised by it, I was not offended.  For many Americans and especially New Yorkers, 9/11 is a tragic moment frozen in time that is still relatively recent for us.  Advertisers need to be sensitive when invoking its images.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night’s Republican Presidential Nominee Debate is being characterized as the revenge of the governors, namely, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich.  Each of them scored points:

• Bush on the question of how Donald Trump has used eminent domain  to try to displace an elderly woman in order to build a parking lot for his casino;
• John Kasich expressing deep sensitivity on dealing with the families of illegal immigrants;
• Chris Christie attacking Rubio’s inexperience ad reducing him to babble about underestimating President Barack Obama.  During this exchange Rubio looked inexperienced and completely rattled.

The other candidates (Trump, Carson, and Cruz) had little impact and were not in the fray except for Trump with the eminent domain issue.

To my dismay, there were but three passing, one-line comments by the nominees about education.  I had emailed David Muir (the ABC News moderator for the debate) to no avail earlier to please consider the 75 million pre-k through college students when formulating his questions.  

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Republican candidates are getting ready for yet another debate tonight (ABC-News) just before the New Hampshire primary.  These debates have covered many topics but education has not been one of them.  Other than a few passing comments about Democratic proposals for free college tuition, none of the Republican candidates have said very much about the state of our schools and colleges.  The Huffington Post did a summary of the Republican debates and came up with this analysis:

“ … an analysis of transcripts from each of the 14 Republican presidential debates, which includes both undercard and the main debates, shows the candidates only discussed education in earnest 11 times. 

In 12 of the GOP debates, no candidate even uttered the word “teacher.” In the other two debates where the word was used, it was in the context of the taxes that a teacher married to a cop would pay, and about governors who sparred with teacher’s unions. 

Looking at the first four official Democratic debates, not including the extra forums, the candidates have talked about education policies at least 38 times. (Democrats have talked about college affordability extensively) 

Some Republican candidates mentioned college or education a handful of other times that we did not include in our count because they were just references in passing: 

• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Neurosurgeon Ben Carson both mocked Sanders’ free college plan.
• Ex-HP executive Carly Fiorina briefly stated that the federal government was responsible for the student debt problem, but didn’t say anything else about it and instead pivoted to talk about the Federal Communications Commission. 
• Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum talked about helping people who did not go to college find jobs in five debates before he bowed out of the race.
• Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned graduates being in student debt “up to their eyeballs,” but didn’t discuss the issue further. 

Republicans should come to understand that education matters for now and for our future.  How about a few ABCs tonight!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The debate last night between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders covered a lot of the same ground and issues that we have seen in the previous debates: health care, free college tuition, Iraq War/ISIS, and corporate influence.  I thought the last item generated the most audience reactions with both cheers and boos especially when Sanders questioned Clinton on why big banks and financial interests have given her PAC money and paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees.

Clinton directly told Sanders that it was time to end his “smear” by insinuation.

“Time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is an attack that he is putting forth,” she said.

She went on to say that it was beneath Sanders’ dignity to raise such doubts about her:

“Which really comes down to: Anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought. And I just absolutely reject that, senator. And I really don’t think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough.

If you’ve got something to say, say it directly. But you will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation that I ever received. … I think it’s time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out in recent weeks.”

Sanders responded by arguing that corporate money and lobbying exert influence over elected officials.

Sanders said:

“Let’s talk about why in the 1990s, Wall Street got deregulated. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wall Street spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions? Well, some people might think, some people might think, Yeah, that may have some influence. There is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system. In my view, it is undermining American democracy, and it is allowing Congress to represent wealthy campaign contributors and not the working families of this country.”

Clinton has struggled to address her speaking fees in the past, including during a town-hall event on Wednesday night, in which CNN’s Anderson Cooper pressed her about a $675,000. fee she received from the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

This issue will not go away for Clinton and is a liability for her in the primary battle with Sanders.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin issued a statement raising concerns ahead of a University of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting tomorrow, where the regents will discuss proposed changes to faculty tenure policy.

Last year, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin legislature and Gov. Scott Walker (R) pushed through a budget that eliminated tenure from state law. Academics raised an outcry when it appeared that the new budget would allow governor-appointed regents to fire tenured professors simply because an academic program had changed in some way.   Faculty and the media have been referring to the proposal as “fake tenure”.  As reported by The Huffington Post:

“Critics fear that Wisconsin’s attack on tenure is an attempt to strip away protections for academics and make it easier for the state to silence certain voices if it wishes to.

In 2015, it was revealed that a draft of the University of Wisconsin regents’ new policy would allow for layoffs of tenured faculty “when such an action is deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision requiring program discontinuance, curtailment, modification or redirection.”

The draft policy has changed since then. As of this week, it does not include any mention of program “curtailment, modification or redirection” — a change that both the AAUP and AFT-Wisconsin said they were pleased to see.

“We remain concerned, however, that some of the provisions in the draft regent policy documents fall far short of those standards,” the groups’ statement reads.

“Particularly alarming is the inclusion of a provision for program prioritization based primarily on financial considerations for the purpose of discontinuing academic programs and laying off faculty,” it continues. “Actions taken by administrations at several universities in the name of program prioritization have led to investigations of violations of academic freedom and tenure as well as the imposition of censure by the AAUP.”

The action of the Wisconsin Board of Regents and any subsequent proposals made by Governor Scott Walker or the state legislature will be watched closely by faculty around the country. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Zephr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University, who came on the political scene last year by challenging Andrew Cuomo in the New York State gubernatorial primary, announced last week that she will run for Congress in New York’s 19^th Congressional District.  Her political views are very similar to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. She considers herself a populist who is concerned about issues such as corporate influence, campaign finance reform, and climate change. 

In her primary challenge, she garnered an impressive 30 percent of the vote against the popular incumbent Cuomo.

Since declaring her congressional candidacy, she has already received campaign contributions from more than 3000 donors with an average donation of $30.

The 19th District is located in the Hudson Valley where she did well in her primary challenge. It’s a district that leans slightly Democratic, and where the incumbent, Rep. Chris Gibson (R), is not seeking re-election — making it a takeover target for Democrats.

We wish her well in her campaign!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The long-awaited Iowa caucuses yesterday resulted with Ted Cruz receiving 28% of the delegates, Donald Trump 24%, and Marco Rubio 23% on the Republican side with Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie with a few tenths of a percentage point separating them.  The Huffington Post has branded these results as “the chaos has just begun”.

Various media are predicting that the results portend a massive headache for the Republicans, who face the real prospect of a fissure in the months ahead as the two leaders, Cruz and Trump duke it out, much to the chagrin of the Party establishment who do not want to see either of them win the nomination.

Things were just as confusing for the Democrats where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clung to the slimmest of leads over Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 99% of the votes counted. Regardless of the final numbers, Clinton has a lot of work to do to convince Democrats that she is their candidate.  Rather than show herself to be the inevitable nominee yesterday — blessed with a bloodless and quick primary fight — she struggled to handle Sanders whom she once led by more than 50 points in the polls.

On to New Hampshire!

Tony