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| State & Local Education News |
CEO to give up base salary, use it for educational fund
The Virginian-Pilot
March 22, 2016
The president and CEO of shipbuilding company Huntington Ingalls Industries says he will forgo his base salary and use the money to launch an educational assistance fund for employees' children.
Huntington Ingalls CEO Mike Petters said in a news release Monday that the fund will go toward early childhood education assistance and college scholarships.
Peters earned a base salary of $950,000 last year. His total compensation last year topped $8 million. His pay included salary, annual incentives and changes in pension value.
Virginia to offer inmates CTE credit
Education Dive
March 21, 2016
The Virginia Department of Corrections has become the first to offer inmates in state prisons access to five career and technical education courses for college credit.
WSLS 10 reports the courses in business, software applications, commercial arts and design, computer aided drafting, and digital print production are recommended by the American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendation Service.
Once inmates pass their courses, they’ll get transcripts to submit to colleges and universities, which will decide on their own whether to accept them.
Virginia Tech Board of Visitors approves tuition increase
CBS 7 (WDBJ)
March 21, 2016
Tuition is going up at Virginia Tech.
The school's board of visitors approved a 2.9 percent tuition increase for in-state and out-of-state students for the 2016-17 school year.
Tuition for in-state undergraduate students will increase $367 to $12,852, and out of students will pay an extra $846, bringing the annual cost to $29,975.
Here is the news release from Virginia Tech:
The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors approved tuition and fees for the 2016-17 academic year.
The board approved a 2.9 percent increase in tuition and mandatory fees for both resident and non-resident undergraduate students, the smallest increase percentage since 2001-02.
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National & Federal Education News
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Portman introduces bipartisan bill to strengthen career and technical education
The Daily Press
March 18, 2016
On Thursday, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced the CTE Excellence and Equity Act to support re-designing the high school experience by making courses more relevant to students’ future careers.
The bill would provide federal funding for partnerships between school districts, employers and institutions of higher education in Ohio and other states that integrate high-quality career and technical education (CTE) programs into high schools. Portman serves as co-chair of the Senate Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus.
“Far too many young people don’t have an opportunity to gain the skills and experience get a good paying job,” Portman said. “The CTE Excellence and Equity Act would help give more high school students the opportunity to participate in high-quality CTE programs that provide college credit, workplace skills and opportunities for internships and apprenticeship programs.”
Teach for America to cut national staff by 15 percent
The Washington Post
March 21, 2016
Teach for America, the nonprofit known for placing idealistic and inexperienced teachers in some of the nation’s neediest schools, is cutting 15 percent of its national staff in what the organization described as an effort to give more independence to its more than 50 regional offices around the country.
The organization will cut 250 jobs and add 100 new ones, making for a net loss of 150 jobs.
“Our regions will have more autonomy to adapt and innovate on our program in ways that meet the unique and varied contexts in which we work,” Teach for America CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard wrote in a letter to TFA corps members and alumni.
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Is the cost of college rising drastically?
If the
news out of Virginia Tech this past week is any indication, not really. The board of visitors there approved a 2.9% increase in tuition and mandatory fees (or about 1.9% above overall inflation), the smallest since 2001-2002. That stands in stark contrast to the rise in tuition over the last several decades compared to the overall rate of inflation. As can be seen from the graph below, college tuition has increased much faster than other costs that many people face, even the rapidly rising costs of health care.
Of course, as any current student will tell you, tuition is not the entire story. Increasingly colleges and universities have increased mandatory fees more steeply than increases in tuition itself. A better measure is likely the one used by the State Council on Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV) which adds both tuition and mandatory fees together. The annual rate of increase here is more often 5-7%, with a high of 21.5% in 2003. Last year, tuition and mandatory fees
averaged 6% across all public Virginia colleges and universities.
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The increases in college costs also produce political tension as elected representatives hear from constituents about the burdens that higher costs create. This tension was one factor in
the recent dust-up between leaders of public universities and some of the Virginia House delegates.
If you want to look at more detailed information on recent trends, the
College Board has a comprehensive report that covers colleges nation-wide, including numbers based on the net actual cost to students (after scholarships and other assistance).
On other topics, we include
a final excerpt from our March education law newsletter.
We hope you have a great week!
Sincerely,
CEPI
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Regulating Professors' Online Speech: Academic Freedom or "Incivility"
Excerpted from from Kathleen Conn's
March 2016 Education Law Newsletter.
Academic Freedom As Viewed by Academicians
While the courts wrangle about the extent of academic freedom in higher education, the AAUP has been at the forefront in disseminating policy statements advocating respect for the academic freedom of college and university professors. The seminal AAUP statement on academic freedom for college and university professors is its Committee A 1940
Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. AAUP revisited the
Statement in 1969, but left the original wording unchanged, choosing instead to merely add interpretive footnotes. The overarching principle from the Statement is that professors are entitled to full freedom in research, in the publication of research results, and in the classroom when discussing their subject, and, when they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline. However, the
Statement also added the caution that the public may judge the teaching profession and professors’ institutions by what they publish, and that at all times professors should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for their institutions. This last aspirational sentiment is extremely difficult in the 140-word world of tweets.
And the AAUP has not ignored technology’s role in academic speech. Most recently, the AAUP Committee A has weighed in on academic freedom online in
Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications, adopted by the Association Council in November 2013. The premise of this AAUP report is that academic freedom, free inquiry, and freedom of expression within the academic community is protected in electronic communications to the same extent as in print. The report’s Executive Summary reaffirms the broadened concept of the classroom and that faculty’s intellectual property rights are the same in a virtual classroom as in the physical classroom.
The Rise of the Civility Spectre
The AAUP pronouncements on academic freedom apparently did not impress Chancellor Wise. Her decision appeared to be prompted not by either judicial sentiment nor by AAUP’s pronouncements, but by economics, to stem the loss of major donors to the university. Professor Salaita was sacrificed on the altar of the bottom line, but Wise’s statements championing civility were soon taken up by the university’s Board of Trustees and high-level administrators in colleges and universities across the country. Administrators from several institutions, notably Penn State University, Main Campus, and Ohio University weighed in: civility is of paramount concern in a community of scholarly dialogue. Chancellor Nicholas Dirks of the University of California at Berkeley came under special fire when he used the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at his university to condition the exercise of free speech upon treating each other with civility. The negative reaction to his speech forced Dirks to backpedal, but the message was out there. Many in academia began to voice fears that civility might become important not only in faculty appointments, but even in tenure decisions. Inside Higher Education’s 2015 Survey of Chief Academic Officers reported that a majority of provosts believe that civility is a legitimate criterion in hiring and faculty evaluation decisions. However only one appellate court to date has upheld dismissal of a professor on the grounds of incivility.
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Recommendations
Civility as a standard for employment decisions in any context, but especially in academia, is problematic. Civility can be viewed differently by different individuals at different times, and the need to be viewed as “civil” may stall or foreclose full discussion of sensitive issues. The basic premise of the First Amendment is defense of the “marketplace of ideas.”
At public institutions, contrary to Garcetti, professorial speech may be protected by the First Amendment, but at the current time that protection is jurisdiction dependent, with Circuit Courts of Appeals creating contradictory precedents for lower courts. In addition, the very different and more expansive nature of online speech may influence the outcome of any institutional disciplinary deliberation. The more controversial or profane the speech, the wider its dissemination, and the more tangential to the professor’s assigned teaching duties, the less likely is First Amendment protection. Bad publicity translates into decreased funding, alumni and otherwise. Boards of Trustees fully comprehend this reality.
A professor’s duties revolve around teaching and scholarship, with institutions of higher education known as “teaching institutions” or “research institutions.” However, the common denominator is that institutions hire certain faculty members because the institutional search committees collectively decide that the successful candidates will fulfill a need in the institution, and will be a “good fit” with the institution’s mission, goals, and colleagues. Even so, rescission of Steven Salaita’s job offer because of his tweets was unprecedented.
What should be the guiding principles for professorial speech online? First, professors are by collective reputation “smart.” Publishing controversial opinions in inflammatory rhetoric, without substantive factual support or elaboration, is not smart, and allowing those opinions to be broadcast online to the world is even less smart. Second, professors should remember the caution of the AAUP: the public, including donors to universities, may indeed interpret professorial speech as representing the university’s mission and vision.
On the other hand, civility cannot be an excuse for bad decisions. As one commentator remarked, college and university administrators must take care not to create campuses of “nice people” where professors are afraid to state well-supported, but unpopular opinions. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently surveyed 437 institutions of higher education and asserts that 55% maintain severely restrictive speech policies for students and faculty, prohibiting protected speech under the guise of respect for others and civility. College and university administrators must re-examine their speech policies together with their legal counsel, to make sure that protected speech rights are not abridged.
Read the full analysis and other Education Law Newsletters on
our website.
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