...The University of Minnesota is among
many colleges across the country objecting to a promotion for Bud Light
-- selling cans in school colors -- that the universities contend encourages
underage drinking and infringes on trademarks...Anheuser-Busch said
it also agreed to drop the promotion in other communities where schools
objected, including Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin...
This fall, law students are competing for
half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is
shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years.
For students now, the promise of the big law firm career -- and its
paychecks -- is slipping through their fingers, forcing them to look
at lesser firms in smaller markets as well as opportunities in government
or with public interest groups, law school faculty and students say...
...The budget document shows that federal
spending on the Pell Grant Program will be $27 billion higher over
the next decade than the administration estimated as recently as February.
At that time, the cost of making Pell Grants an entitlement and having
it increase automatically each year was estimated at $117 billion over
10 years. The good news (such as it is) for President Obama and Education
Secretary Arne Duncan is that the budget office attributes the shortfall
to sharp increases in the number of students using federal aid to enroll
in college this fall -- a typical result when the economy nosedives,
but also arguably a sign that Americans are responding to the president's
call for every American to have at least a year of higher education...
Average national SAT scores
for the high school class of 2009 dropped two points compared with
last year, a report out today says.
And while the population of test takers was the most diverse ever,
average scores vary widely by race and ethnicity. On one end, students
who identified themselves as Asian, Asian-American or Pacific Islander
posted a 13-point gain. On the other end, students who identified
themselves as Puerto Rican posted a 9-point drop in average scores.
The SAT's
owner, the nonprofit College Board, highlighted the 40% minority
participation rate among test-takers this year, up from 38% last
year and 29.2% in 1999. Also up from previous years: More than
a third of students say they are first-generation college students
whose parents never went to college, and more than a quarter said
English is not their first language...
Along with producing lawyers, our nation's
colleges are increasingly producing work for them. As courts get more
involved in campus affairs, such judicial intervention poses a serious
threat to academic freedom, argues Amy Gajda in her new book, "The
Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation," scheduled for
release by Harvard University Press in October.
Ms. Gajda, an assistant professor of journalism and law at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed her views in an e-mail interview...
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a lifelong champion
of equal rights and educational opportunity, died late Tuesday at
his home in Hyannis Port, Mass...Mr. Kennedy, who represented Massachusetts
in the U.S. Senate for more than four decades, had a hand in the creation
of nearly every major federal student-aid program, from Pell Grants
in 1972 to the Academic Competitiveness and Smart Grants for high-achieving,
low-income students in 2006. In the 1990s, he was a chief architect
of the federal direct-loan program, in which the government lends money
directly to students through their colleges, and one of its staunchest
supporters in the Senate...
