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Higher Education

Study Says That 36% Of College Students Don’t Have Enough To Eat

April 6, 2018 Mike Kennedy, Asumag.com , ,
"Prices have gone up over time," says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy at Temple and the lead author of the report. "But the rising price is just a piece. This is a systemic problem." The findings are based on data collected from 43,000 students at 66 schools. The report used the Department of Agriculture's assessment for measuring hunger. That means the thousands of students it classifies as having "low food security" aren't merely avoiding the dining hall or saving lunch money for beer: They're skipping meals, or eating smaller meals, because they don't have enough money for food. On top of that, the report found, 46 percent of community college students and 36 percent of university students struggle to pay for housing and utilities.

Hampton University Students Take To The Streets Over Campus Conditions

March 30, 2018 Eddie Conway, Therealnews.com , ,
Yeah, there’s a number of student protests taking place on campus. Variety of issues that students are trying to get addressed. One is Title IX compliance issues. Another is quality of food service on campus and housing issues, certain deficiencies with mold and mildew and things like that in rooms. And the administration has been working to respond to a lot of the students concerns. They’ve had a number of public meetings. The students have also been vocal on social media on expressing their displeasure with some of the conditions, or the concerns, and their efforts to try to reach out to administration to work with them to solve them. So it’s a very unique issue for Hampton. There are a lot of HBCUs that confront these kind of things every year, but it’s very rare for Hampton as an institution and as a student body to be so out front publicly on these kinds of issues.

Brazil: Professor Subpoenaed Over ‘2016 Coup’ Course

March 12, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , , ,
During an interview with Bahia Noticias, Zacarias said: “I have ten days to explain myself (to the court). Joao Carlos Salles, the university dean, was also cited (in the subpoena). In other words, the UFBA has been affected. It's under assault, being put to the test.” Zacarias was notified of the subpoena at the university. He defended his decision to organize the course, asking, “When will we be able to speak about the 2016 coup? When this government (administration) comes to an end? If we're only allowed to speak about it when it is finished, that means this government is authoritarian.”  Zacarias concluded that “There's a reasonable consensus about what constituted the 2016 coup and the risks that democracy faces in the country.”

U Of I Graduate Employee Strike Enters Second Week

March 9, 2018 Bryan Moline, Peoriapublicradio.org , ,
The graduate workers’ strike on the University of Illinois Urbana campus enters its second week today, after talks with a federal mediator Sunday yielded no progress toward an agreement. Both the U of I and the Graduate Employees’ Organization, or GEO, released statements last night after the talks. Patrick Kimutis with the GEO’s bargaining team says the university did not propose anything different than in the last session, so the strike will continue. The university did not address the substance of the negotiations, only saying that they want to continue talks with the GEO. The main sticking point between the two sides continues to be tuition waivers.

Clashes Erupt As White Supremacist Richard Spencer Speaks At Michigan State University

March 8, 2018 By Aaron Maté, Therealnews.com , ,
The white supremacist Richard Spencer spoke at Michigan State University after defeating a campaign against his appearance. The Rev. David Alexander Bullock of Change Agent Consortium says that Spencer shouldn't be given a platform to recruit for a violent, racist movement. AARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. The white supremacist, Richard Spencer spoke at Michigan State University on Monday after defeating a vocal campaign against his appearance. The school denied Spencer a permit last year after a community outcry, but Spencer's group filed suit, leading to a court order for the two sides to enter mediation. The result was a deal in which Spencer spoke today while the school was on spring break. Protests were held outside the event. SPEAKER: They're fascists and they are not welcome here on Michigan State's campus. We don't believe they should have been allowed to speak. I just want to say, too, this is just a part of what's going on in the country.

Universities That Censor Speech On Palestine Pose As Champions Of Protest

March 8, 2018 Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronicintifada.net , , , ,
Last week, students at the University of Virginia protested during a campus event featuring a group of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers were part of Reservists on Duty, an organization that aims to counter the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights on US college campuses. They were brought to campus by Israel-aligned groups in order to “humanize the conflict” – in other words, to distract from Israel’s human rights abuses and help brand the Israeli military as “the most moral army in the world.” Protesters held signs and chanted slogans including, “Fight the power, turn the tide, end Israeli apartheid.” Following their action in solidarity with Palestinians living under Israeli military rule, the University of Virginia’s dean of students Allen Groves accused the protesters of violating univerisity rules and hampering free speech.

University Of Nebraska Faces Growing Calls To Expel Violent Neo-Nazi Dan Kleve

February 16, 2018 Staff, Unicornriot.ninja , , ,
Lincoln, NE – Administrators at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) are facing mounting criticism over their choice to ignore safety issues posed by 23-year-old biochemistry major Dan Kleve. Anti-racists have been calling for Kleve’s expulsion from UNL since last summer, when images of him surfaced after the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville. Public pressure on administrators has been building again after the recent release of a video from a Google Hangouts session in which Dan Kleve describes himself as “the most active white nationalist in the Nebraska area” and says “I want to be violent…really violent.” A similar video shows Kleve discussing his desire to murder a black man who asked him about his “pagan tattoos.” Kleve’s former roommate recently told Newsweek that the young man would keep an assault rifle in plain view and discussed wanting to kill black people...

Scholars For Social Justice Launches With 100+ Members

February 16, 2018 Staff, Portside.org , , , ,
Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ) is a new formation of progressive scholars committed to promoting and fighting for a political agenda that insists on justice for all, especially those most vulnerable. We are clearly living in dangerous times with the election of Donald Trump and the empowerment of a set of rabidly right wing and racist forces. Trump, Pence and the Republicans have made it clear that not only will they usher in a radically conservative policy agenda threatening any incremental advances won under the Obama presidency, but more fundamentally reactionary right-wing supporters will directly target the rights, status and lives of people of color, Muslims, women, immigrants, LGBT communities, the poor, indigenous and differently-abled and all who have been forced to live on the margins in this country.

Higher Education, Job Training For No Jobs And Massive Debt

February 13, 2018 By Julian Vigo, Truthdig.com , ,
I have been in academia since the mid 1980s—first as a student, then as a university professor. I have seen higher education shift radically over the past three decades: from being a place of learning where intellectual debate, particularly in the humanities, was based on a direct engagement with texts and cultural artifacts, to today, where it is the site of emotional and moral exorcisms and where many humanities departments now discourage reading. Not only have curricula and course syllabi been sterilized by this move to banish unpopular ideas from university halls, but much academic rigor has been lost, in part because the focus of higher education is dictated by an increasingly reactive and conservative student body, one which demands safe spaces and which “no-platforms” unpopular speakers and ideas.

A California Trend Worth Catching: College For All

February 1, 2018 By Chuck Collins, Otherwords.org , , ,
America's left coast is showing how to break up concentrated wealth and fund higher education for all. California can be an annoyingly trendy state. Think avocado toast, In-N-Out Burger, Hollywood fashion, even legal pot. But Californians are now in the vanguard to fix the serious problem of how to pay for public higher education. Over 44 million households in the U.S. are saddled with college debt — $37,000 on average. Together they owe over $1.4 trillion, surpassing credit card debt and auto loans. In the 1970s, California led the world with its famously accessible public universities and community colleges. Millions of Californians received a virtually debt-free college education. A friend of mine attended both undergraduate and grad school at the University of California in the 1970s and covered all of his tuition and expenses by painting houses during two months of the summer.

Graduate Student Unions Are Growing — And Fighting For Social Justice

January 28, 2018 By Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout.org , ,
Not surprisingly, when graduate students heard that the Republican tax bill included a provision to tax tuition waivers, most became both upset and angry. But rather than despair, they organized. On campus after campus, in city after city, they mobilized to protest the 2017 bill. Their concerns extended beyond the injustice of taxing in-kind financial aid incentives as income, to include a broader progressive agenda: opposing racism, sexism, classism and homophobia; denouncing corporate tax giveaways; fighting the growth of anti-intellectualism; and countering attacks on publicly funded education. Austin A. Baker, a Ph.D.-level philosophy student at New Jersey's Rutgers University, joined students from Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere to oppose the proposed measure.

Duke University Gets Corporate Mining Gift To Help Exploit Indigenous People Of Peru

January 9, 2018 By Gary G. Kohls, Transcend.org , , , ,
3 Jan 2017 – Below are two articles that nicely illustrate the cunning methods that ALL multinational mining, exploration, drilling, energy extractive or oil transporting corporations use to try to sanitize what in reality are greedy designs to enrich corporate stakeholders by raping, stealing, exploiting and permanently polluting the land, water and air that really has always belonged to the indigenous people and who simply want to protect what has always been theirs.The first article illustrates how an otherwise respected major educational institution like Duke University (of Durham, North Carolina) could be easily bamboozled by financial enticements from an exploitive corporation.

Student Debt Slavery: Bankrolling Financiers On Backs Of Youth

December 28, 2017 Ellen Brown, Ellenbrown.com , ,
The government, too, had to be enslaved by debt. It could not be allowed to simply issue the money it needed to meet its budget, as Lincoln’s government did with its greenbacks (government-issued US Notes). The greenback program was terminated after the war, forcing the government to borrow from banks – banks that created the money themselves, just as the government had been doing. Only about 10% of the “banknotes” then issued by banks were actually backed by gold. The rest were effectively counterfeit. The difference between government-created and bank-created money was that the government issued it and spent it on the federal budget, creating demand and stimulating the economy. Banks issued money and lent it, at interest.

Betsy DeVos Met With Boos, Protest At Commencement Speech

December 19, 2017 Casey Quinlan, ThinkProgress.org , ,
Betsy DeVos delivered a commencement speech at the University of Baltimore on Monday, sparking protests from students and members of the community. Her speech focused on the topics of thoughtfulness, selflessness, and perseverance. She also stressed multiple paths to professional success, including certificate programs, micro-degrees, and apprenticeships, and waded into debates about free speech on campus. Students booed loudly as she was announced to speak, but remained mostly silent throughout her speech. When the university first announced DeVos would be the fall commencement speaker in September, student government leaders spoke out against the choice.

Tax Bill: Stealing Money From College Education For Tax Cuts For Wealthy

December 14, 2017 Jeff Bryant, educationopportunitynetwork.org , , ,
New tax bills Congress just passed with zero input or support from Democrats hit higher education hard, but new legislation House Republicans are crafting will likely worsen the damage. As The Wall Street Journal reports [paywall], the House education committee recently gave a preview to its new legislation, a long overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Like recent tax bills passed by the GOP-controlled House and Senate, this proposed rewrite of HEA will have the effect of further constricting learning opportunities for students, adding to the costs students and families take on for education, and steering more public money for learning to private businesses.
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