higher education

Unbelievable.

The University of Illinois is grappling with the effects of a state law passed five years ago that was designed to keep state employees from campaigning for candidates on state time. In doing so, they have created quite an uproar among faculty and staff.

The university's administration has sparked outrage by telling faculty, staff and graduate students that a 5-year-old state law designed to prevent state workers from campaigning for candidates on state time or with state resources meant they could not express support for candidates or parties through pins, T-shirts or bumper stickers while on campus. Nor could they attend any political rally or event on campus, the administration said.

"They're trying to control our bodies and our voices any time we're on campus. These policies are clearly a violation of our 1st Amendment rights," said Dan Colson, an English graduate student who, along with other students, professors and free-speech experts, has lashed out.

Colson and others argue the University of Illinois was unfairly expanding state law and that academic freedom meant campus communities should not be held to the same standards as other state employees.

Unfortunately for Colson and civic-minded Americans across the state, the state took things a bit further.

But the governor's Office of Executive Inspector General, which investigates ethical violations, said it would act on complaints of political activity on college campuses depending on their severity.

And it delivered a sweeping twist, saying the state law meant that university students, not just employees, were prohibited from participating in political rallies on campus—an assertion at odds with the University of Illinois' interpretation of the law.

"Anything that benefits a political campaign is prohibited on state property," said Gilbert Jimenez, deputy inspector general. The results of any investigations of campus activity would be turned over the university's board of trustees with recommendations for discipline, including possible dismissal, Jimenez said.

Is Mr. Jimenez serious? Any activity on a college campus -- including that activity led by students -- is prohibited?

A trip to the University of Illinois website after reading about this has left me puzzled. This is from their "institutional commitment" to public engagement page:

"The term "public engagement" reflects the reality that so much of what we do takes the form of faculty members collaborating with communities, agencies, and organizations to address critical issues..." Chancellor Richard Herman, September, 2004

Chancellor Herman said this, wrote this, whatever, and then set up a task force studying civic engagement activities on campus. An excerpt from a university press release:

Chancellor Richard Herman appointed the task force in January and asked it to create a sharpened and sustained curricular and co-curricular emphasis on advancing the public good. The 26-member group, which includes representatives from campus units ranging from the department of architecture to WILL-AM/FM/TV as well as the University YMCA and Urban League of Champaign County, plans to strengthen connections between the campus and its communities, from the local to the global levels.

The effort is part of Herman’s Strategic Plan for the Urbana campus, an initiative to “establish Illinois as the leading public research institution that engages students in civic commitment and community-based learning experiences,” to help students meet the challenges of modern citizenship and address the most pressing societal problems.

The task force is leading a campuswide effort to identify the many existing dimensions of civic engagement, to help define it for the Urbana campus, encourage innovative thinking about it and make civic commitment more prominent in campus life and the identity of the institution.

So fine, the U of I is committed to civic engagement, or at least trying to find out what it means to them. But it's no wonder that only 16% of Millennials know what "civic engagement" means when they're getting mixed messages like this. U of I wants to "[engage] students in civic commitment," but its students aren't allowed to practice politics at its most fundamental level? In his article "Putting Politics Back Into Civic Engagement," in the Campus Compact Reader (Special Ed. 2003), Harry Boyte, the co-director of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs's Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, hits the nail on the head: "We need to put politics back into civic engagement in higher education if we are to open up and democratize the ways in which knowledge is produced, diffused, and adopted. This is key to democratic change of every kind in the 21st Century."

Boyte, of course, is right. Higher education and civic engagement are and should always be closely linked. But let's remember that the scapegoat here should be the state of Illinois. The policy currently on the books is no doubt faulty enough to warrant a revision. Fine, perhaps the intent of the policy -- to keep state employees from participating in political activity on state time while working -- is logical. But when a professor or staff member, not working and on their own time, walks across campus and is not allowed to voice his opinion on political issues, that not only proves that the law is too broad; it becomes unamerican. Mr. Jimenez, the deputy inspector general, is apparently victim to a civics-deprived education. The law clearly has First Amendment issues on its own, but then Mr. Jimenez comes along and broadens the scope -- students are not even allowed to express their beliefs.

This law absolutely needs to be changed. We don't need students coming from Illinois who are as civically ignorant as Mr. Jimenez and its state legislature.

And I'm hoping U of I proves the words on their website aren't merely there to keep up with other institutions who are committed to civic engagement. It can do this by aggressively lobbying for a revision of the law.

Here's another write-up at The Chronicle of Higher Education in case you're interested.

Bumped. Not our usual fare, but this is interesting and well-argued. Particularly if you've read something like David Brock's take on 1980's campus conservatism. --Mike

One of the few lasting institutional impacts of 60s and 70s student activism is the proliferation of identity-based academic departments: black studies, women's (and now gender) studies, queer studies, native studies, Hispanic studies, etc.

Often these departments are the last havens for dissidents in the professoriat, thanks to disciplines like political science and sociology increasingly de-politicized (largely through emphasis on quantitative than qualitative - if it can't have hard numbers ascribed to it, good luck getting funding - or tenure!). Critics of the way universities are run usually come from these departments too, which makes sense as their very creation stemmed from backlash against a privileged and oppressive curricula and governing structure.

On a recent trip to Washington DC I decided to see if I could talk to a few of our notable Representatives in Congress. Rep. George Miller was not only available but eager to talk with me about the outreach the Committee had done in the first 100 days of the New Congress in 2007 to work with students on how we can make higher education easier and more manageable for students.

Some friends who work on the Hill told me that he was a great guy, and very forward thinking when it comes to technology and outreach, but I had no idea he would be as engaging and eager to talk about the needs of students and ways in which we can continue our work after Election Day. It was a true honor, and I certainly look forward to seeing what is possible in the 2009 Legislative Session.

Crossposted from Wiretap Magazine

Bumped. Great stuff as usual. --Mike

We know by now that Millennials are pragmatic by nature. They are not concerned as much about ideology as they are progress. They would much rather cooperate with all the stakeholders in a given problem, compromise, and patch together a solution that accommodates everyone. We also know that many Millennials are frustrated by politics because they feel their issues are not seriously addressed by older politicians.

Yesterday, the Senate voted on the Advancing America's Priorities Act, an omnibus bill consisting of some 35 different pieces of legislation packaged together by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Many of these bills were crafted in a bipartisan fashion, with fifteen of the 35 bills being sponsored by Republicans. These bills promoted targeted medical research, protected children from being exploited online, and, the subject of this post, increased assistance for college students wishing to study abroad. With each of these bills receiving broad, bipartisan support in the Senate, you may ask why they were all packaged together in a hurried vote prior to the summer recess. Enter Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Senator Coburn is upset that the Senate is taking its focus off energy issues to vote on these bills.

When the Congressional Budget Office reported to Reid that his recent legislation would cost $10 billion to implement over the next five years, Coburn wrote Reid a letter suggesting that $45 billion in federal spending that he considered wasteful could be used to offset the costs of carrying out his omnibus package. Coburn, known for copiously holding numerous pieces of legislation from reaching the debate floor out of symbolic objections, has not openly expressed his displeasure with any of the specific bills in Reid’s omnibus, he said in a recent statement that he views it as a distraction from the Senate’s current energy debate.

Emphasis added.

A friendly civics reminder on Senate rules to those reading:

Senate procedure depends not only on the rules, but also on a variety of customs and traditions. In many cases, the Senate waives some of its stricter rules by unanimous consent. . .

A "hold" is placed when the Leader's office is notified that a senator intends to object to a request for unanimous consent from the Senate to consider or pass a measure. A hold may be placed for any reason and can be lifted by a senator at any time. A senator may place a hold simply to review a bill, to negotiate changes to the bill, or to kill the bill. A bill can be held for as long as the senator who objects to the bill wishes to block its consideration.

Coburn is the senator who placed the hold on this particular package of legislation. Any legislation that is held can only be debated by the Senate should the motion to proceed with debating the legislation be passed. If there is no unanimous consent (which there isn't in this case since Coburn objects), an end to the debate on whether to proceed or not (cloture) must be approved with 60 votes. The motion for cloture on the motion to proceed failed yesterday as only 52 senators voted to end the debate.

Still with me?

One of the 35 pieces of legislation that was held hostage in the Republican-led procedural circus was The Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act, named for the late Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL). This legislation heavily consulted a report from the Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program. This commission evaluated the state of study abroad programs in the United States. The report found that certain demographics, such as low-income students, students with a minority background, and math and science students, had difficulty studying abroad. It also noticed that students mostly studied in Western European countries. The Simon Act sought to increase the number of American students studying abroad from 225,000 to 1 million, especially among the aforementioned groups, and promote other, less popular locations to students.

Study abroad programs are wildly popular among this generation of young people. A 2007 Open Doors report announced that there was an 8.5% increase of students studying abroad in the last three years.

A record 223,534 students from U.S. colleges spent anywhere from a January or summer term to more than a year earning academic credit in a foreign country. That was up 8.5 percentage points from the 2004-05 school year when 205,993 students went abroad and up 150 percent from the 1995-96 year when fewer than 90,000 students took classes over seas, the study said.

Its popularity isn't exactly a mystery.

The Institute for the International Education of Students (IES), www.iesabroad.com, surveyed alumni from all IES study abroad programs from 1950 to 1999. Regardless of where students studied and for how long, the data from the more than 3,400 respondents (a 23 percent response rate) shows that studying abroad is usually a defining moment in a young person's life and continues to impact the participant’s life for years after the experience.

Survey Item	% Full Year	% Fall Semester	% Spring Semester	% Summer	% Total
Personal Development
Increased self-confidence	98%	95%	96%	97%	96%
Served as a catalyst for increased maturity	98%	97%	97%	95%	97%
Has had a lasting impact on world view	97%	95%	94%	92%	95%
Academic Commitment
Enhanced interest in academic study	81%	80%	79%	84%	80%
Influenced subsequent educational experiences	91%	85%	86%	84%	87%
Reinforced commitment to foreign language study	88%	83%	85%	90%	86%
Intercultural Development
Helped me better understand my own cultural values and biases	99%	97%	97%	95%	98%
Influenced me to seek out a greater diversity of friends	94%	88%	89%	86%	90%
Continues to influence interactions with people from different cultures	97%	93%	92%	92%	94%
Career development
Acquired skill sets that influenced career path	82%	73%	74%	71%	76%
Ignited an interest in a career direction pursued after the experience	70%	57%	59%	59%	62%

So is it really any wonder that Millennials are disenchanted with the political process? This is a perfect example of why. A package of legislation with broad, bipartisan support is bogged down because one senator out of 100 is holding it up. One of those pieces of legislation, a chance to dramatically grow and improve a life-changing program that is beloved by the most multicultural generation ever, is being squashed because some lawmakers are not willing to cooperate, compromise, and get something done. Not only is this a significantly visible missed opportunity among Millennial college students, but it is also a rejection of this generation's pragmatic values.

Change may be coming, but there is still much work to be done.

Appearing in Michigan today, Barack Obama unveiled his plan to increase college affordability:

College affordability: John McCain doesn’t have a real plan to put college within reach

When it comes to education, Senator McCain is out of touch with the needs of hardworking Americans. It’s not just that he doesn’t have a real plan to make college affordable; it’s that he’s voted time and time again to stop us from making college affordable. A couple of years ago, he even voted against funding for students so he could protect billions of dollars in corporate tax loopholes.

Barack Obama’s plan to make college affordable for every student:

Provide a $4,000 American Opportunity Tax Credit. This fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university. Recipients of the credit will be required to give back by serving their community for 100 hours a year, either during the school year or over the summer.

Eliminate Costly Bank Subsidies. Obama will save taxpayers billions by eliminating the more expensive private loan program that exists today, and directing that money into direct aid for students. A transition to the direct lending system will also ensure that access to federal financial aid isn’t disrupted future market turmoil.

Simplify the Application Process for Financial Aid. The current application for federal financial aid is longer and more involved than many federal tax return. Obama will simplify the financial aid process by eliminating the current form altogether. Instead, he’ll base aid on a much simpler but equally accurate formula, so that students can predict their eligibility well in advance. And families will be able to apply simply by checking a box on their tax form, eliminating the need for a separate application.

Create a Community College Partnership Program. This initiative will help community colleges analyze what skills are needed to prepare students to work in local industry, and rewarding success by providing grants to community colleges that graduate more students and increase the number of their students who transfer to four-year colleges.

Help Students Become Aware of College Readiness. Too many high school students discover they are unprepared for college when it’s already too late. Barack Obama will provide $25 million in matching funds annually to states that develop Early Assessment Programs that help inform students early what they’ll need to do to prepare for college.

• Pinch me because I think I'm dreaming, but "this year the youth vote will matter," declares the mainstream media. -Washington Post
• Road trip for Democracy. An oldy but goody organization from 2004 is gearing up to get to work in 2008. -Swing Semester

• Next Generation is Reshaping Politics Through Social Networks. An interview with Morley Winograd of Millennial Makeover. -San Jose Mercury News
• ABC News notes that the age gap between the candidates is made larger as education levels rise. -ABC News
• Young, left-leaning religious voters are making social justice issues a part of their faith and politics. -St. Louis Today
• The New York Times Editorial page has an idea for helping cash-strapped students: reign in the out-of-control price of books and the monopoly that sets the prices. - New York Times

I'm going to be traveling and at a meeting most of the afternoon so today will be a little light on content. Back tomorrow.

Over at Campus Politico, Ben Adler paints a picture of the not so rosy side of the recently passed College Opportunity and Affordability Act:

When the House overwhelmingly passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act last week, the Democratic leadership found itself in a self-congratulatory mood. House leaders were quick to praise measures to improve the lives of students through cheaper textbooks and greater transparency in the financial aid process, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declaring that the House was “making college even more accessible and affordable for the middle class and those who aspire to it.”

But student activists are giving the legislation mixed grades. Although they are pleased with the provisions that made it into the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, they are disappointed with those that did not. Chief among their frustrations: The final package did not include an amendment, offered by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), that would have made student loans, like many other forms of debt, dischargeable in bankruptcy, and it did not repeal a provision of the 1998 Higher Education Act that strips students of their federal aid if they are convicted of any drug offense.

This wasn't the only problem with the bill. It also included a provision that would require colleges to begin making plans for filtering networks for P2P activity - essentially making college administrators the police of the entertainment industry. There were threats that the bill would include penalties in the form of removed federal funding from universities who failed to comply. Thankfully, that particular provision didn't make its way into the final bill.

Taken to it's logical conclusion, though, this could wind up as the digital age version of the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, which prevents any student with a drug conviction from receiving federal financial aid. The whole thing is even more disturbing when you realize that the MPAA and RIAA have wildly inflated their claims about file sharing among college students, and are generally just engaged in a bad-faith, scare campaign as part of their strategy to rescue a failed business model.

Universities shouldn't violate the privacy of their students in order to prop up a failed business model for the entertainment industry. Thankfully, things didn't go that far in this version of the bill, but they will keep pushing this, and they have better (and more) lobbyists than students do, so this is something we'll need to fight.

This is a great chance for the College Democrats, USSA, and the Free Culture movement to work together.

Boing Boing is reporting that Congress is getting ready to take up the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. In addition to aiding students trying to afford college, the bill would also turn universities into the police arm of the RIAA in their war on music fans. Ironically, if the bill became law with the current RIAA-friendly provisions, it could result in less students getting aid in affording college:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns us that H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, is still steaming ahead with its "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" that ties college funding to universities' purchase of DRM-based industry-sanctioned download services and deployment of network snoopware that spies on and disconnects college kids if they appear to be violating copyright (without any hard evidence or a chance for the student to present her side of the story).

These congressional requirements will turn out to be expensive dead-ends -- the industry-sanctioned online music services are laden with DRM, and network detection/filtering programs present privacy risks and are inevitably rendered obsolete by technological countermeasures.

Advocates of the bill stress that the language stops short of demanding implementation -- that it only requires universities to "plan" -- but this argument misses the point entirely. The passage of this bill will unambiguously lead universities down the wrong path. For the sake of artists, administrators, students, and consumers better approaches exist.

The bill also would hang an unspoken threat over the heads of university administrators. In response to concerns that potential penalties for universities could include a loss of federal student aid funding, the MPAA's top lawyer in Washington said that federal funds should be at risk when copyright infringement happens on campus networks. Moreover, earlier versions of "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" proposals nakedly sought to make schools that received numerous copyright infringement notices subject to review by the US Secretary of Education.

Higher Ed Watch is reporting that increases in Pell Grant funding isn't all we thought it was cracked up to be:

Last night, Democratic Congressional leaders, who came to power promising substantial increases in spending on student aid, passed through the House a compromise omnibus spending bill for 2008 (the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008) that will CUT the maximum Pell Grant by $69. That's right. In September, Congress celebrated a new maximum Pell then slated to be $4,800 between base and added mandatory funding. Today, it's slated to be $4,731. That might not sound like a big difference, but it translates into almost a $300 million cut in financial aid for needy students.

In an earlier 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations conference agreement that Congress passed in November, lawmakers proposed going in the other direction and increasing the maximum Pell Grant award by $125, from $4,800 to $4,925 for the 2008-2009 academic year. See table below. But President Bush, unhappy with the overall level of spending in the bill, vetoed that measure and Congress failed to override him. Congress is now slated to meet the President's level and is doing so in part by reducing the maximum Pell Grant. But of course Congress didn't have to meet the President's level by cutting the maximum Pell Grant to do it. They could have pulled back on other spending priorities, like say for earmarks. But they chose not to go that path.

Now in fairness to the Democratic Congress, despite the reduction in the maximum Pell Grant level as of September 2007, the actual 2008 Pell Grant maximum will still be $421 (as opposed to $490) more than last year's level. That's far short of the Democrats' "Six for '06" campaign promise to increase Pell by $1,000, but it's a step in the right direction and nothing at which to sneeze.

In March the RIAA (Recording Industry) started a crackdown again on illegal downloads. In the previous three years the RIAA filed suits against about a thousand college network file sharing users. In March they planned to do a thousand in just a few months time.

Since then, over 30 students at the University of Kansas and a student at Washburn University in Topeka have been targets clocking 35 people in the state of Kansas alone that have been sued. And that’s only in Kansas!! Around 26,000 people nationally have been sued.

If you saw my blog about developing a more creative culture and the democratization of techniques used to “say things differently,” as Larry Lessig said, then you know about my gripe with generations who are clearly out of touch with our generations means of expression. The RIAA is another.

"Anyone with a $1500 computer who can take sounds and images from around us and use them to say things differently. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. It is a literacy for this generation. This is how our kids speak. This is how our kids think. It is what your kids are. As they increasingly understand digital technologies and their relationships to themselves." (emphasis added)

Now in response to this new use of culture, using digital technologies, the law has not greeted this (John Phillip) Sousa revival with very much common sense. Instead the architecture of copyright law and the architecture of digital technologies as they interact have produced the presumption that these activates are illegal. Because if copyright law at its core regulates things called “copies” that in the digital world the one fact we can’t escape is that every single use of culture produces a copy. Every single use requires permission, you are a trespasser. . . . "

After talking over lunch with a friend of mine who is in the throws of a Media and Law class, she told me that essentially everything is copyrighted – and everything is illegal. It made me wonder how we could go back to a world without Jesus the Musical or the Endless Love of Bush and Blair

She went on to say that the RIAA is essentially targeting dumbasses (folks who don’t quite understand the severity of the law) as part of an education campaign rather than working to keep their technology current enough to satisfy their users who clearly must go outside the accepted norms. Most people who know what they are doing, rarely get caught.

Now it’s important to mention before I quote Lessig again, he is speaking more about mash-ups and the use of these kinds of technologies to create new pieces of art. I’m talking more about the specific targeting of young people by the RIAA to charge with piracy when there are larger and more serious people who are running operations that hurt the recording industry.

Lessig continues:

"Common sense here though, has not yet revolted - in response to this response the law has offered to these forms of creativity. Instead what we’ve seen is something much worse, than a revolt. There is a growing extremism that comes from both sides in this debate in response to this conflict with the law and the use of these technologies.

One side builds new technologies such as one recently announced that will automatically allow them to take down from sites like YouTube any content that has any copyrighted content in it whether or not there is a judgment of fair use that might be applied to that content.

And on the other side. Among our kids. There is a growing copyright abolitionism. A generation of that rejects the very notion of what copyright is supposed to do. Rejects copyright and believes that the law is nothing more than an ass to be ignored and to be fought at every opportunity possible. . ."

Life is opensource. Why can’t creativity and the products of such also be?

Jonathan Gater’s blog at the NYTimes has a link to this letter from officials at 4 universities:

“While [universities] generally support a separate provision in the bill that would require them to disclose their policies on file-sharing and to inform students of what is and is not legal, they do not want to be in the position of having to block certain online activities by their students – even though they say that they do not want their on-campus networks clogged by students illegally downloading copyrighted movies, television shows and music.

"You have the federal government requiring a nonprofit educational institution to develop plans to help a for-profit industry to earn more revenue from their students," said Matt Owens, assistant director of federal relations at the Association of American Universities. "It makes no sense. That's not what we're in the business of doing."

My frustration is in colleges and universities being easy targets for these folks. If you target them, chances are the administration will give you all the information you want to charge the student. And chances are that there is someone on a campus illegally downloading. Live off campus and the chances are lower that you’ll get targeted, arrested, or charged. Either way, its age profiling. Like pulling over someone with a graduation tassle hanging from their rearview mirror because the chances are they’re young and doing something wrong, targeting colleges and universities just as an easy place to screw a few kids over.

Lessig continues

“Now the balance I try to fight for, (I as any good liberal tried to fight by going to the government). Total mistake. Looked first to the courts and the legislatures to try and get them to do something to make this system make more sense. It failed partly because the courts are too passive, partly because the legislatures are too corrupted by which I don’t mean that there is bribery operating to stop real change but more the economy of influence that governs how Congress functions means that policy makers here will not understand this until its too late to fix it. So we need something different, we need a different kind of solution and the solution here in my view is a private solution that looks to legalize what it is to be young again and to realize the economic potential of that.”

Now the HEA Reauthorization Bill includes the following:

A massive education bill (747-page PDF) introduced into Congress contains a provision that would force colleges and universities to offer "technology-based deterrents" to file-sharing under the pain of losing all federal financial aid. Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 is entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention" that could have just as easily been called "Motion Picture and Recording Industry Subsidies," as it could force schools into signing up for subscription-based services like Napster and Rhapsody.

Under the terms of the act, which is cosponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), schools will have to inform students of their official policies about copyright infringement during the financial aid application and disbursement process. In addition, students will be warned about the possible civil and criminal penalties for file-sharing as well as the steps the schools take to prevent and detect illicit P2P traffic.

As the Consumerist puts it

“Have we no worse educational problems to worry about? Is Congress really prepared to tell a school, "Sorry, you've lost your funding because Billy is letting people download music on your network?"

Another person commenting says that he is ok with them informing students about policies but forcing schools into Napster and Rhapsody like services is pretty extreme.

This is interesting given the people who are getting kickbacks from the RIAA and MPA. Wonder if that money has anything to do with it…. Either way, its BS and its another way that both the RIAA and Congress is out of touch with our generation.