Dear Commons Community,

The Supreme Court of Arizona ruled yesterday that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are ineligible for in-state tuition.  The Court upheld a 3-0 ruling by the Arizona Court of Appeals in favor of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in a suit against the Maricopa County Community College District.   As reported by The State Press:

“While people can disagree what the law should be, I hope we all can agree that the attorney general must enforce the law as it is, not as we want it to be,” said Attorney General Mark Brnovich in a statement from his office. “As Attorney General, my duty is to uphold the law and the will of more than one million voters who passed Proposition 300 in 2006.”

Proposition 300 was a ballot measure requiring a verification of immigration status for those seeking state services.

State universities have been charging DACA students in-state tuition since a 2015 Maricopa County Superior Court ruling said the recipients are eligible for the reduced tuition since they are lawfully in the country.

In a statement to The State Press on Monday evening, ASU President Michael Crow said the Court’s decision “does nothing to alter our steadfast commitment to making higher education a reality for all Arizona high school graduates, including those who have DACA status.”

Crow said the administration will “continue to communicate with our ASU students who have DACA status and the entire ASU community as more information becomes available.”

Belen Sisa, a DACA recipient and senior studying political science at ASU, said she’s disappointed in Arizona.

“I feel the pain that these students are going to feel,” Sisa said. “The Supreme Court of Arizona does not realize the incredibly wrong and damaging decision they made today because the impact of this is going to continue on for generations.”

Sisa said that her and other activists refuse to give up and will figure out their options from this point on.

“We’re going to continue to do what we’ve always done, which is fight back and instill hope that this isn’t the end,” Sisa said. “We will continue to fight for equity and justice, we shouldn’t be attacked by the only place we call home and the only public education system we’ve ever known.”

Base tuition and fees for undergraduate in-state students during the 2018-19 school year at ASU amount to $10,822. For non-residents and international students, the total is around $30,000 a year.

Jocelyn Lopez, a freshman student and DACA recipient studying biomedical sciences at ASU, said the decision will force her to leave ASU.

“That saddens me because now I know I can’t go to school,” Lopez said. “I’m going to have to drop out of ASU.”

Lopez said she will consider moving out of state for college.

“I don’t understand why it’s only happening in Arizona when DACA students are all over the U.S.,” Lopez said. “Why are we the only ones being underrepresented right now?”

David Montenegro, a DACA recipient and senior studying secondary education at ASU, said the decision will force him to rely on private funding such as scholarships. He said if he can not receive private funding, his academic career will be in jeopardy.

“I’m not going to be able to complete my degree and I think it’s absurd because I’m only two semesters away from graduating,” Montenegro said. “I’ve already spent a lot of time, money (and) effort, and once I’m getting close to the finish line now I have to face this stupid and absurd reality.”

ASU President Michael Crow said March 2 in an interview with The State Press that he is working to create financial support for students who are DACA recipients.

“We just found a scholarship for an incoming freshman DACA student, we basically have financial aid packaging we are developing and putting in place,” Crow said. “We will go back to raising more financial aid from private sources to help them with their tuition.

“We are a place that educates students, these students graduated from Arizona high schools, they are admitted to the University, they’re legally present in the United States,” Crow said.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, issued a statement regarding the Supreme Court of Arizona’s decision.

“These Dreamers grew up attending Arizona schools, and want to pursue careers that will give back to Arizona’s communities and boost our economy,” Gallego said. “But thanks to today’s decision, they will now have to pay triple what their classmates pay in order to achieve those goals. This is a terrible blow to Arizona Dreamers who want nothing more than to pursue their American dreams.”

Bill Ridenour, the Chair of the Arizona Board of Regents, said in a statement that the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision will negatively affect DACA students.

Ridenour also said DACA recipients who attended Arizona high school for at least three years could receive a reduced tuition rate through the Non-Resident Tuition Rate for Arizona High School Graduates.”

What a sad situation to throw the future of these students into financial turmoil.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday afternoon and evening the only story that the news media was interested in was the F.B.I. raid of the Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. The F.B.I. agents seized business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including a payment to pornographic film actress, Stormy Daniels.  Last evening in an extraordinarily angry response, Mr. Trump lashed at what a person briefed on the matter said was an investigation into possible bank fraud by Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump accused his own Justice Department of perpetrating a “witch hunt” and asserted that the F.B.I. “broke in to” Mr. Cohen’s office.  Here is a New York Times account of these events.

“The president, who spoke at the White House before meeting with senior military commanders about a potential missile strike on Syria, called the F.B.I. raid a “disgraceful situation” and an “attack on our country in a true sense.”

It is not clear how the F.B.I. entered Mr. Cohen’s office, but agents had a search warrant and typically would have presented it to office personnel to be let in. The documents identified in the warrant date back years, according to a person briefed on the search.

The prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but most likely resulted from information that he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

In his tirade against the F.B.I., Mr. Trump mused about the possibility that he might soon fire Mr. Mueller. Last June, the president vented internally about wanting to fire Mr. Mueller, but was talked out of it.

“We’ll see what may happen,” Mr. Trump said Monday. “Many people have said you should fire him.”

The president once again railed against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself in the Russia inquiry, and blasted the F.B.I. for failing to investigate Hillary Clinton, “where there are crimes.” He criticized Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who is overseeing the Russia investigation, and called Mr. Mueller’s team “the most biased group of people,” who he said were mostly Democrats and some Republicans who had worked for President Barack Obama.

“That is really now on a whole new level of unfairness,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, confirmed the raids. “Today, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” Mr. Ryan said. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller.”

Mr. Sessions appointed the United States attorney for the Southern District, Geoffrey S. Berman, only in January. Mr. Berman is a former law partner of Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor and a supporter of Mr. Trump.

The payment to the pornographic film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who is known as Stormy Daniels, is only one of many topics being investigated, according to a person briefed on the search. The F.B.I. also seized emails, tax documents and business records, the person said. Agents raided space Mr. Cohen uses in the Rockefeller Center office of the law firm Squire Patton Boggs, as well as a room Mr. Cohen is staying in at the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue while his apartment is under renovation, the person said.

To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a federal judge that agents are likely to discover evidence of criminal activity.

The searches are a significant intrusion by prosecutors into the dealings of one of Mr. Trump’s closest confidants, and they pose a dilemma for Mr. Trump. He has dismissed Mr. Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” but these warrants were obtained by an unrelated group of prosecutors. The searches required prior consultation with senior members of Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, however, regarded the searches as an effort by Mr. Mueller to use New York’s prosecutors as his proxy, according to two people close to the men.

The searches open a new front for the Justice Department in its scrutiny of Mr. Trump and his associates: His longtime lawyer is being investigated in Manhattan; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is facing scrutiny by prosecutors in Brooklyn; his former campaign chairman is under indictment; his former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying; and a pair of former campaign aides are cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Mr. Mueller, meanwhile, wants to interview Mr. Trump about possible obstruction of justice.

It is not clear what Mr. Mueller saw that made him refer the matter to other prosecutors. But the searches show that Mr. Mueller does not believe that he has the authority to investigate all manner of allegations against everyone in Mr. Trump’s orbit. That is significant because lawyers for Paul Manafort, a campaign chairman for Mr. Trump who was indicted on money laundering, tax and foreign lobbying charges, have challenged Mr. Mueller’s mandate as overly broad.

Mr. Cohen is a longtime lawyer and fixer who, in a decade at Mr. Trump’s side, has served as a reliable attack dog against real or perceived threats to him. His activities have been scrutinized as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Cohen recently paid $130,000 to Ms. Clifford, who said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Ms. Clifford has said she was paid before the 2016 election to buy her silence. She is challenging a nondisclosure agreement she signed barring her from discussing the matter.

The search is an aggressive move for the Justice Department, which normally relies on grand jury subpoenas to obtain records from people who are represented by lawyers and are cooperating with authorities. Search warrants are more often used in cases in which prosecutors do not trust people to preserve or turn over the records themselves. Justice Department rules require prosecutors to first consider less intrusive alternatives before seeking records from lawyers.

The searches of Mr. Cohen’s documents hark back to the pre-dawn F.B.I. raid of Mr. Manafort’s home. Those documents helped underpin Mr. Manafort’s indictment last fall.

Mr. Ryan said Mr. Cohen has cooperated with the authorities and turned over thousands of documents to congressional investigators looking into Russian election meddling.

The seized records include communications between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, which would most likely require a special team of agents to review because conversations between lawyers and clients are protected from scrutiny in most instances.”

If we can get beyond Mr. Trump’s bluster, I believe what is critical here is the fact that these warrants were obtained by a group of prosecutors unrelated to Mueller and that these searches required prior consultation with senior members of Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department.  Mueller simply referred the matter to others in the Southern New York District Court who approved the F.B.I seizure of Cohen’s documents and other material. Though Mr. Mueller’s team did not initiate the search, if prosecutors in Manhattan uncover information related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, they can share that information with his team.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

John C. Hitt announced his retirement as president from the University of Central Florida.  He penned a brief commentary on “Challenging the Future of Higher Education.”  Here it is in its entirety.

“I recently announced that I will step down from the presidency of the University of Central Florida after more than 26 years in this role. Few university leaders are lucky enough to serve so long at a single institution as I have.

As I contemplate this change, I realize that there is more to do to improve UCF and higher education. I also know that UCF, like all universities, will need a president who is an academic at heart, an entrepreneur in spirit, and a visionary seeking to predict what students 50 years from now will need to succeed.

Most important, we will need presidents with the ability and confidence to act decisively.

We will need bold presidents who aren’t afraid to think and act big. And those presidents will need support — from governing boards, elected officials, donors, and faculty — so that challenging the status quo won’t jeopardize their jobs.

When I arrived at UCF in 1992, UCF was largely a commuter school with limited selectivity, serving 21,200 students.

Today, we exceed 66,000 students and award more degrees annually than any other public university in America. University housing fills 11,600 beds and our undergraduate admissions office receives more SAT and ACT test scores than any other school in Florida. I am especially proud that our minority population has grown from 17 percent to 46 percent.  

UCF has challenged the belief that in higher education bigger can’t be better. For us, the past 26 years has shown the opposite to be true.

As enrollment has grown, not only have our average undergraduate SAT scores increased by nearly 25 percent, but the number of National Merit Scholars has climbed from 18 to 315 while our first-year retention rate has increased from 75 percent to 90 percent.

UCF has achieved this success in several ways, but mainly through the mindset that bigger is  better. Bigger is how we can achieve our goal of making education attainable for as many people as possible.

We believe universities exist to make a brighter future for our students and our society. Starting from that core value, we don’t seek to brag about the number of students we exclude.

Faculty and administrators should look for ways to serve more students, not fewer. Now more than ever, businesses see a college degree as a prerequisite to employment. We must find ways to prepare more people for jobs in a diverse and global economy.

The need is particularly critical for low-income and first-generation students. As a first-generation student myself, I know firsthand the power of a college degree to transform lives and to increase economic opportunity.

We believe transformative universities emerge from the meeting of diverse viewpoints. Too often, competition trumps collaboration in higher education. That is why I joined the presidents of 10 large, public research universities a few years ago to form the University Innovation Alliance. The Alliance is committed to drive real change in higher education by combining our intellectual resources. In short, if we have a solution that works, we share it.

We believe a good idea should be copied. An example is UCF Downtown, a campus under construction in the heart of Orlando’s urban core 13 miles east of the main campus.  

The idea for UCF Downtown was born from a conversation with Arizona State University President Michael Crow about his university’s innovative campus in downtown Phoenix. Like ASU’s Phoenix campus, we expect UCF Downtown to foster strong learning and professional connections for students while revitalizing the surrounding urban area.

We believe none of us is smarter than all of us. I have found that success is much easier when I have partners to share the work. Ten years ago, we worked with community leaders to establish our College of Medicine, which anchors a fast-growing area of Orlando now known as Medical City.

To serve our Central Florida region, a healthcare partner will break ground this year on a university hospital adjacent to our medical college. It is tempting for those of us in academe to isolate ourselves from the communities around us. However, we need to resist that urge and be open to opportunities beyond our walls. 

We believe higher education should dare to innovate. As early adopters, we’ve been perfecting online learning for more than 20 years. Today, 81 percent of UCF students take at least one online or blended course. Online learning is closing the achievement gap by giving students access to courses that meet their schedules and needs.

We’re also exploring adaptive learning, which allows students to move ahead at their own pace. This technology can accelerate the path to a degree and save students money.

Predictive analytics allows us to identify students who are at risk of failure, employ intervention strategies early on, and keep students on track for graduation.

At UCF, the power of scale has magnified our impact and changed lives and livelihoods. Likewise, every institution in its own way can boldly reimagine how to meet the challenges of tomorrow. “

We wish President Hitt all the best!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last week, the media was abuzz with stories of the questionable behavior of Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  Pruitt was also the subject yesterday on several of the Sunday morning talk shows .     Sen. John Kennedy (Republican, Louisiana)  lambasted him over his “juvenile” behavior and numerous ethical scandals. 

“Stop acting like a chucklehead, stop the unforced errors, stop leading with your chin,” Kennedy said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” while addressing the multiple controversies currently surrounding Pruitt. “If you don’t need to fly first class, don’t. Don’t turn on the siren on your SUV just to watch people move over. You represent the president of the United States.”

He added, “All of this behavior is juvenile, it’s distracting from the business that we’re trying to do for the American people.”

At least 23 ethical issues are dogging Pruitt, including a $50-a-night sweetheart deal to rent a room in a luxury Capitol Hill townhouse linked to a fossil fuel industry lobbying firm, unapproved raises for his top staff, first-class airfare worth thousands of dollars, and costly, round-the-clock security.  Two reports last week also alleged that Pruitt tried to use his vehicle’s emergency sirens to cut through traffic and that five EPA officials who challenged Pruitt’s “unusually large spending” were either reassigned, demoted or forced out.

 “Why do you want ― in his position ― why do you want to rent an apartment from a lobbyist for God’s sake?“ Kennedy added. “Stop leading with your chin. Now, these are unforced errors. They are stupid. There are a lot of problems we can’t solve. But you can behave.”

Kennedy did not say, however, whether he thinks Pruitt should be ousted. 

“That’s really up to the president,” he said. “I know what I would do if I were Mr. Pruitt, I would call a press conference tomorrow and I would say, ‘Okay let’s talk about your criticisms of me.’”

Only three GOP lawmakers have called on Pruitt to step down: Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

Most conservatives enthusiastically support Pruitt and view him as one of President Donald Trump’s most effective cabinet members, citing his success at rolling back a number of Barack Obama’s environmental regulations.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), for example, said Sunday in a separate interview that Pruitt should retain his position because “he’s following through with the policies that the president said he wanted to implement.” Pruitt’s effectiveness at cutting regulations, he argued, outweighed any ethical lapses.”

I agree with Kennedy that Pruitt is a “chucklehead.”  He should also step down.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Harold Levy, former Chancellor of the New York City public Schools has been informed by his doctors that he is dying of A.L.S. In his remaining days, he has felt ”a great urgency” to speak boldly about a troubling fact: “Despite the best efforts of many, the gap between the numbers of rich and poor college graduates continues to grow.” In this op-ed, he lays out a series of recommendation with the assistance of journalist Peg Tyre, that “people of good conscience might take to make sure higher education is aligned with the democratic values we share.” As described in the op-ed.

“Let’s start with alumni. It is common to harbor fond feelings toward your alma mater. But to be a responsible, forward-looking member of your college’s extended community, look a little deeper. Make it your business to figure out exactly who your college serves. What is the economic breakdown of the current student body? Some colleges trumpet data about underrepresented minorities and first-generation students. But many don’t. And either way, there are follow-up questions to ask. How has that mix changed over the past 10 years? What policies are in place to increase those numbers? You may not get a direct answer. No matter. When they call you as part of the annual fund-raising drive, press the issue.

But you need to go further. Legacy admission must end. By some counts, children of alumni, almost all of them from the top economic quartile, account for 10 percent to 25 percent of the students at the top 100 universities. In 2011, an analysis of 30 elite schools found that legacy candidates saw a 23 percentage point increase in their chances of getting in compared with otherwise similar candidates. Among the Harvard class of 2021, 29 percent had a parent, grandparent or close family relation who attended the school.

Colleges say they need legacy admissions to encourage donations. But a 2010 study by Chad Coffman, Tara O’Neil and Brian Starr looked at alumni donations at the top 100 universities and found no discernible impact of legacy admission on giving. Leading universities, including M.I.T., Caltech and Berkeley, don’t allot extra credit to legacies. We need to press all schools to do the same. Your child is likely to have a great life even if he or she never sleeps in the same freshman dorm you did.

Next, let’s shorten the college tour. College admissions officers, who opted for the Common Application to make multiple applications to college easier, subsequently tried to weed out the not-so-serious applicants by making a pre-application college visit and a tour weigh in favor of an applicant. They call it “demonstrated interest,” but what it mainly signifies is a family’s ability to pay for a trip and not much more. The college tours, which for wealthy families gobble up vacation time for most of their child’s junior year in high school, are another way to signify the means, not the seriousness, of a candidate. Princeton and Emory, to name two, do not factor demonstrated interest into their admissions decisions. The rest should follow.

Broadly speaking, more people are going to college. To help students who come from the middle and working classes, cities and states should adopt models like the City University of New York’s ASAP program, which provides intensive advising, money for textbooks and even MetroCards to smooth a student’s pathway to his or her degree.

More name-brand colleges could do what Bard College has done: Refine the first two years of their four-year liberal arts education into an accredited Bard associate degree. They work with local partners to offer the degree in “microcolleges” within libraries and community centers. Their first four students — all low-income women with children who never considered applying to elite schools — are graduating from the pilot microcollege, in poverty-stricken Holyoke, Mass., this spring. One has been admitted as a transfer student to both Smith and Mount Holyoke, an almost unimaginable leap. The others are waiting to hear whether they will get to transfer to other selective colleges in the region with enough financial aid and child care to make it a reality.

And please, let’s not act like everyone already has the road map to college plotted. The college application system has become costly and baroque. Middle- and working-class kids rely on high school guidance counselors to help them navigate college admission and financial aid. But according to the latest figures, the average national ratio of high school students to counselors runs as high as 482 to 1. We must make it possible for high schools to hire, train and deploy enough guidance counselors, or we will have proved that we are not taking this issue seriously.
And of course, money talks. The 529 savings programs reward wealthy people for saving for, among other things, colleges, many of which disproportionally favor … wealthy people. President Barack Obama was shot down for trying to do away with it. And the new tax code allows parents to use those funds to pay for private and parochial elementary and secondary school as well. If you are saving money in a 529 to pay for college and live in a state that gives you a tax deduction for it, you might consider making a donation to a college access program for low-income kids. It’s a small gesture, but it can make a big difference to a child in your community and beyond.

This may seem counterintuitive, but please stop giving to your alma mater. Donors to top universities are getting hefty tax deductions to support a system that can seem calculated to ensure that the rich get richer. If you feel you must give, try earmarking your donation for financial aid for low-income, community college students who have applied to transfer to your alma mater.

While visionary leaders are pushing their college and universities to increase the numbers of first-generation college students, comprehensive reforms must come quickly and they must be more visible. Campuses that are overwhelmingly populated by wealthy students amplify the voices that jeer at our higher education system and energize those who seek to destroy it. It would be a tragedy if they succeeded.”

Thank you Mr. Levy and Ms. Tyre!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported yesterday that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has adopted a new “data dexterity” requirement for its students, starting in fall 2019.  The requirement, the first of its kind in the nation, will propel all Rensselaer students beyond the current collegiate standard of “data literacy” to “data dexterity” — proficiency in using diverse datasets to define and solve complex real-world problems.  The data requirement is part of an updated core curriculum — the common academic and non-academic elements that all Rensselaer students must complete to graduate – that reflects the skills and capabilities graduates need to be tomorrow’s global leaders and problem solvers.   As reported by The Chronicle:

“The new requirement, which has a lot in common with more-traditional curricular areas like mathematics and data or quantitative literacy, will be fulfilled through two courses, one at the introductory level and another in a student’s major. 

Kristin Bennett, a math professor there [R.P.I.], gave an example from her entry-level course, “Introduction to Data Mathematics.” Her students work in teams on a project to design drugs, and they devise computer models to predict how different chemicals interact. To do that, they might learn linear algebra or multivariate modeling, subjects that they wouldn’t get to until much later in a traditional curriculum. The new requirement at RPI, she said in an interview, can expose them to sophisticated material earlier, and in a tangible way — by allowing them to work on problems in complex projects with real-world applications.

“These problems are completely open ended,” Bennett said. “They kind of experience what it’s like in the real world to do math.”

Teaching students linear algebra earlier than they would traditionally encounter it also means that there are trade-offs, and Bennett has had to make tough choices about what material to leave out. Some concepts that students typically learn in lower-level courses will get short shrift; and she will teach linear algebra in what she calls “a narrow and deep way.”

Narrowing a curriculum so that students focus on — and hopefully learn — a smaller number of key concepts rather than covering a wide swath of content is a trade-off that I’ve heard many faculty members in lots of disciplines grapple with. Some professors have estimated that they have had to cut as much as a third of a course’s content when they adopted active-learning techniques instead of teaching via lecture.

This dynamic, in turn, mirrors an even larger situation facing many disciplines, says Lee Ligon, chair of the core-curriculum committee at RPI. Professors must make increasingly difficult choices about what material to include in their courses as data, research, and knowledge proliferate at an accelerating clip. They have to determine what new information students need to know while also weighing which pieces of foundational knowledge they should continue to teach. “We have to turn that around into a strength,” said Legon, an associate professor of biology, “to turn that overabundance of information around and use it as a lever to pry open new questions.”

At first, I thought this was just a more elaborate quantitative literacy requirement but it actually it requires a lot more problem solving.  Interesting idea!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a sobering article yesterday on California’s Master Plan for Higher Education entitled, A Grand Plan for Public Higher Ed Is Aging. Can It Be Reinvented?   It comments on its chief architect, Clark Kerr, Governor Ronald Reagan’s attack on it, Proposition 13, and the aftereffects of the Great Recession of 2008. The entire article is worth a read.  I particularly liked the section on the community colleges and student access.  Here is an excerpt:

“From the outset, the plan assigned an outsized role to community colleges. The reasons were twofold: limiting enrollments at four-year institutions would preserve their selectivity. And it brought the state’s costs way down — at that time, after all, most of the expense of educating a community-college student was borne locally.

“That was the genius of it, because you could meet everyone’s needs and do it relatively cheap,” says Simon Marginson, author of The Dream Is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of Higher Education (University of California Press, 2016). “Community colleges were the linchpin of access.”

The plan envisioned that about 55 percent of California students would be enrolled in community colleges. Today, however, it’s closer to 65 percent. California ranks fifth in the nation in the share of its high-school graduates who enroll directly in community colleges, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. It’s 47th in the percentage who start at four-year institutions.

Significantly more students, however, meet the academic qualifications for Cal State and the University of California than enroll. Still, the master plan’s original admissions formula remains in place.

“We have one of the widest doors to access in the community colleges,” says Brian Murphy, president of De Anza College, a two-year institution. “But we have one of the narrowest — if not the narrowest — doors to be admitted to a research university in the country.”

The emphasis on community colleges made sense in Kerr’s time, when a credential or a two-year degree was more than adequate to secure a good job. In the current economy, though, a bachelor’s degree is often a prerequisite.

It also puts the burden of educating most students on the least well-financed institutions, says Joni E. Finney, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education. The University of California’s per-student allocation is more than double what the community-college system gets from the state.

“There’s a mismatch between where the resources go and where the needs are,” Finney says. “And that’s enshrined in the master plan.”

The financial strain has jeopardized the access mission of California’s community colleges. Since Prop 13’s passage, two-year institutions have repeatedly slashed enrollments during budgetary shortfalls: by 250,000 in the early 1980s, 170,000 a decade later, another 150,000 when the dot-com bubble burst. During the recession that began in 2008, students often had to spend a semester or more on waiting lists for core courses. (The Cal State system has followed a similar pattern.)

As a result, many students are not getting into college, or not getting through. Fewer than a third of California community-college students earn an associate degree after three years. Of those who started in 2009-10, just 10 percent had transferred to a four-year college within six years.

Such statistics are troubling to many Californians. If the master plan envisioned that many students would start in the community colleges, they weren’t supposed to get stuck there. Students who earned a minimum grade-point average in community-college courses were supposed to gain a spot in a four-year institution; universities were required to allocate a higher share of seats to the upper divisions to accommodate transfers.”

The article goes on to comment on the problem of the transfer policies that are especially difficult for community college students to navigate and concludes:

“For them to come together, then, to rethink California’s plan for higher education would be a particularly heavy lift. Nor do the sectors have much incentive to change, Callan and others say. While the three systems struggle with statewide priorities, the current governance structure gives them relative freedom to set and pursue their own institutional goals. It codified their turf.

“Someone with four aces,” says Penn’s Finney, “doesn’t call for a new deal.”

Clark Kerr didn’t intend for the master plan to be set in stone. In the final edition of his classic work, The Uses of the University, published in 2001, two years before his death, he wrote about the need for new models to meet the evolving pressures on public higher education.”

New models of public higher education are indeed needed.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The big political news in New York politics today is that after seven years of propping up Republican leadership in the New York State Senate, Senator Jeff Klein and conservative Democrats of the Independent Democratic Conference have agreed to dissolve as a conference and reunite with the regular Senate Democrats. Here is a recap as posted in several news outlets including the New York Times,  The Washington Post and the New York Daily News.

A years-long conflict inside of New York’s Democratic Party came to an end yesterday  — or a pause, depending on whom you ask. The Independent Democratic Caucus, a group of eight state senators who effectively gave Republicans control of half of New York’s legislature, disbanded in a ceremony presided over by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D).

“What unites us is more important than what divides us,” Cuomo said, as the IDC’s leader, Sen. Jeff Klein, agreed to get in line behind the Democrats’ long-suffering Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

Anyone not closely following politics in New York likely missed the drama. Until recently, most New Yorkers were unaware of the IDC, too.

But in the aftermath of the 2016 election, the state’s many restless, growing liberal organizations aimed to make the IDC infamous, defeat its members in primaries, and give New York a Democratic trifecta that could uncork bills from marijuana legalization to the Dream Act to single-payer health care. That same movement powered Cynthia Nixon’s entry into the Democratic primary for governor, turning a sleepy Cuomo coronation into one of the country’s most closely watched races.

“Andrew Cuomo likes to put himself forward as bipartisan, and that’s not the case,” Nixon said last week in an interview with The Washington Post. “He can barely work with Democrats. He seems to be working for the Republicans. There’s a host of issues he says he cares about — campaign finance reform, early voting, the campaign for fiscal equity for schools . . . and it’s unclear whether he really cares, because if he did, he wouldn’t have handed power to the Republicans.”

National Democrats, including the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), had begun to criticize the IDC, and arguments about it spilled over into the party’s debates about rules for the 2020 presidential primary. And the IDC’s opponents do not believe that this saga is over.

What was the IDC? Founded seven years ago, after Republicans won control of the New York state Senate, it began as a coalition of four Democrats who, in Klein’s words, “could no longer in good conscience support the present Democratic leadership.” They lost nothing by breaking with their minority-status party; they gained clout by working with Republicans. In 2012, Democrats won a majority of state Senate seats, but the IDC stayed in formation, and the odd coalition continued for years, with even more Democrats climbing on board.

Why did it disband? Ask a liberal, and they’ll say it was the pressure that 60-odd progressive groups, eight primary challengers, and Cynthia Nixon put on the governing coalition. Ask Cuomo, and he’ll say it wasn’t that at all — it was about Democrats rediscovering what they stood for. Ask the reporters who exposed how IDC membership was helping some senators pad their salaries, and they’ll tell you the politics became unsustainable.

Are liberals happy about this? No, they’re not, for three reasons. One: They worry that this will sap momentum for their primary challengers. Two: The Senate’s work is largely finished this year, after last week, when the IDC-empowered Republicans signed off on a budget that funded some liberal priorities but left big ones — early voting, the Dream Act — on the cutting-room floor. Three: They do not trust Cuomo or Klein, and this is not the first time they’ve been told that the IDC is packing up.

Who runs the state Senate now? Republicans. Even if Democrats win two special Senate elections this month — they held both seats previously — they will have 32 members to the GOP’s 31. The wrinkle is that one of those Democrats is Sen. Simcha Felder, who decided almost immediately after winning that he could deliver more for his conservative Brooklyn district by sticking with Republicans — a position he reaffirmed Wednesday. And Senate rules require 38 votes to change a leader in mid-session, ensuring that Sen. John J. Flanagan, the Republican leader, will stay in power through the 2018 election.”

All this is a bit confusing but if we sift out some of the smoke, it should in the long run be a good thing for the Democratic Party in New York.  Now, if only Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio would patch up their differences, we would have a very powerful Democratic Party in the state.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Betsy DeVos’s U.S. Department of Education announced earlier this week that it would restore its recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.  This allows its member colleges, almost all of which are for-profit, to be eligible for student financial aid.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday evening that a controversial accreditor, which had lost its federal recognition in 2016, would again be eligible to serve as a gatekeeper of financial aid.

The department restored the recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which oversees primarily for-profit career colleges. That means that more than 100 colleges still accredited by the council will remain eligible to receive federal student aid, for now. It also means that the council, commonly known as Acics, will not have to face a federal advisory panel in May as part of the process to regain recognition.

The department’s announcement is a response to a federal-court ruling, issued in late March, that concluded the department had used a flawed process in removing the accreditor’s recognition. The accreditor sued the department after its recognition was removed, starting an 18-month countdown in which all of the colleges that it had accredited would have to find a new accreditor by June or lose access to federal student aid.

The judge’s decision did not overturn the department’s earlier action. But it did require the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to reconsider whether Acics should remain recognized, after she reviews some 36,000 pages of material that the accreditor submitted to the department nearly two years ago. Although the material had been requested by the department, the court found that it had not been reviewed by department officials in revoking the council’s status.

“As the court ordered, we will fairly consider all of the facts presented and make an appropriate determination” on the accreditor’s recognition, DeVos said in a news release.

The department’s announcement does not necessarily mean she will reverse the decision made under the Obama administration. But she will consider more options than just the binary choice of either renewing or denying the council’s recognition. And the council will have new opportunities to prove itself to the department, according to DeVos’s official order.

If a return to full recognition is not appropriate, DeVos said in the order, instead of denying the council’s bid for recognition she would give it an additional 12 months to come into compliance with any remaining regulatory deficiencies.

And DeVos said she not only would consider the 2016 material but also would allow the council to submit additional information to show that it could come into compliance.

What’s less clear is whether DeVos, and other department officials who advise her, will give any weight to the previous determinations by her predecessor, John B. King Jr., and the federal advisory panel, which voted to recommend that the council lose its recognition.

The members of that panel, called the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, voted 10 to 3 in 2016 to remove the council’s recognition, following a similar recommendation by the department’s staff. The recommendation was later adopted by King.

Department staff members had also prepared a recommendation for the council’s hearing at the May meeting of the advisory panel. That analysis, in draft form, has not been publicly released.

Before the department’s announcement on Tuesday, Steve Gunderson, president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the main lobbying group for for-profit colleges, said his association had advocated just such an approach, including restoring the council’s recognition and removing the June deadline for the colleges still accredited by the council to find new accreditors.

He called the judge’s ruling good news that would keep students in colleges that might otherwise have been forced to close down in a few months. “We were dealing with crisis decision-making,” he said.

Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, criticized the department’s announcement. The center has been a harsh critic of the council as taking a lax approach to troubled colleges.

“Yet again,” Miller said, “Betsy DeVos shows her only concern is to do everything in her power to put students at risk of attending lousy schools.”

I agree fully with Mr. Miller’s statement.  DeVos’ abandons the interest of students for those of the private, for-profit sector.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Cambridge Analytica data breach at Facebook may have been greater than originally estimated.  Facebook yesterday said that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with the political consulting firm connected to President Trump during the 2016 election — a figure far higher than the estimate of 50 million that had been widely cited since the leak was reported last month.  As reported by the New York Times:

“Facebook had not previously disclosed how many accounts had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the firm connected to the Trump campaign. It has also been reluctant to disclose how it was used by Russian-backed actors to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Among Facebook’s acknowledgments on Wednesday was the disclosure of a vulnerability in its search and account recovery functions that it said could have exposed “most” of its 2 billion users to having their public profile information harvested.

The new effort to appear more transparent about the data leaks — including a rare question-and-answer session with Mr. Zuckerberg and reporters — came just before Mr. Zuckerberg’s expected testimony next week on Capitol Hill, where he will most likely face criticism over how the company collects and shares the personal data of its users. Sheryl Sandberg, Mr. Zuckerberg’s top deputy, has several national television interviews scheduled for later this week.

The company said that on Monday it would start telling users whether their information may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook in Washington, said the 87 million figure was an estimate of the total number of users whose data could have been acquired by Cambridge Analytica. He said that the estimate was calculated by adding up all the friends of the people who had logged into the Facebook app from which Cambridge Analytica collected profile data.

“We wanted to put out the maximum number of people who could have been affected,” Mr. Zuckerberg told reporters.

It remains unclear exactly how many users had their personal information accessed by Cambridge Analytica. The firm said Wednesday that it had licensed data for no more than 30 million users of the social network.”

The data breach at Facebook is one of the major travesties of our digital world.  There are so many unsuspecting everyday people whose data is being mined for all sorts of purposes some of which are nefarious to say the least.

Tony