Archives for category: Higher Education
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Contact Your Senators and Member of Congress! Protect Student Privacy!

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2017 //
5


November 1, 2017

Contact: Rachael Stickland, rachael@studentprivacymatters.org, 303-204-1272

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy opposes the College Transparency Act and overturning the federal ban on a student unit record system

The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy urges sponsors and supporters of the H.R. 2434 – College Transparency Act (CTA) to reconsider their support for this bill which would require the non-consensual collection by the federal government of the personally identifiable information of every student attending a post-secondary institution. Our members, made up of parents and privacy advocates from throughout the country, believe strongly that the 2008 Higher Education Act’s ban on the creation of a federal unit-record system should not be overturned by the CTA, and that any attempt to authorize a national student database would create an unacceptable and unaccountable surveillance system that would place our citizens at risk.

In recent months it has become clear that data held by post-secondary institutions and government agencies are under increased threat of breaches and cyberattacks. Even our “best protected” national data has been breached, including the hacking in recent years of the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Defense (DoD), the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Specifically, the U.S. Department of Education was found to have weaknesses in four out of five security categories according to a 2015 security audit by the Inspector General’s Office.

Said Rachael Stickland, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy: “It’s inconceivable that Congress should entertain legislation that would increase federal collection of personal student data at a time when they have demonstrably proven they are unable to protect what data they already hold.”

Moreover, individual student data held at the federal level could be used in the future as a go-to repository of information for purposes beyond their originally prescribed intent. Even if the CTA specifies permissible uses of the data today, no Congress can limit the actions of future administrations once the data are in the government’s possession. The bill also allows for the expansion and collection of more categories of student data by the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) without authorization by Congress. This could easily lead to widespread abuse of personal information for political or ideological gain.

While we agree in principle that students seeking to attend post-secondary institutions should have sufficient information to make informed decisions, it’s possible to do so without the creation of a national student database. New NCES surveys provide previously unavailable statistics on “nontraditional” populations, making passage of the CTA an unnecessary overreach by the federal government at a time when we should minimize data collection rather than expand it.

####

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 212-529-3539
leonie@classsizematters.org
leoniehaimson@gmail.com

Categories Data and Data Mining, Higher Education, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Gail Collins on Betsy DeVos and Her Crusade to Save Predatory For-Profit “Colleges”

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2017 //
21

This column by Gail Collins is a Must Read.

The bad news from the U.S. Department of Education comes so frequently that it is hard to keep track of it.

DeVos is clear in her goals: roll back the federal role in protecting students and taxpayers’ money.

One egregious example: she is diluting, diminishing, removing federal efforts to rein in for-profit Colleges. In fact, she has hired former executives and lobbyists from the industry to write the regulations. Some of her many investments were in the industry, which she obviously sees as part of the future. And surely she has not forgotten Trump University, the fraud associated with the man who appointed her.

Collins writes:

“DeVos is the superrich Republican donor who once led a crusade to reform troubled Michigan public schools by turning them into truly terrible private ones. Now she’s in the Trump cabinet, and she seems to be dedicating a lot of her time to, um, lowering higher education.

“When no one was watching she hired a lot of people that come from the for-profit colleges,” complained Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who feels the additions are far more interested in protecting their old associates than in overseeing them. Murray is the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, otherwise known as HELP. These days it’s hard to tell whether that’s a promise of assistance or a cry of distress.

“To oversee the critical issue of fraud in higher education, DeVos picked Julian Schmoke Jr., whose former job was a dean of — yes! — a for-profit university. Specifically a school named DeVry. Last year, under fire from state prosecutors and the Federal Trade Commission, DeVry agreed to pay $100 million to students who complained that they had been misled by its recruitment pitch.

“That sort of thing is getting to be common in the darkest corners of the for-profit world. For instance, there’s a now-defunct “university” that promised to show students how to get rich quick in real estate and wound up paying $25 million to settle the case. …

“Back to the Department of Education. One of DeVos’s top advisers, Robert Eitel, is on a leave of absence from a company that operates for-profits and once paid more than $30 million to settle charges of deceiving students about the loans they were getting.

“Which is, again, even more than that real estate school, where some students claimed they were encouraged by instructors to increase the limits on their credit cards. …

“There are well over 3,000 for-profit colleges and universities in the country, everything from tiny schools that promise to set you off on a career in cosmetology to conglomerates with campuses all over the world. Some of them have names that might seem intended to be confused with somebody else’s. (Not necessarily thinking of you, Brown College, Berkeley College, Columbia Southern University or Northwestern College.)

“Experts say some for-profits are fine. However, there have been a ton of horror shows in which low-income men and women are promised a path to life-changing jobs but wind up with nothing to show except huge loan bills.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

Ohio: Charter Grads Less Likely to Earn College Degees than Public School Grads

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
15

From Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio:

“New Ohio state report card data show that Ohio charter school grads are far less likely to earn college degrees than Ohio school district grads. These data give us an idea of how schools prepare stduents for success beyond the test score. And results aren’t good for Ohio charters overall.”

http://bit.ly/2yrT6fk

Categories Charter Schools, Graduation rates, Higher Education, Ohio

John Hechinger: The Powerful Forces that Protect the Abusive Practices of Fraternities

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2017 //
11

John Hechinger recently published an explosive book (TRUE GENTLEMEN: THE BROKEN PLEDGE OF AMERICA’S FRATERNITIES) about the fraternity culture of binge drinking and sexual assault, behaviors that typically are ignored, tolerated, and excused.

This piece is an excerpt from his book. It explains who is protecting the current fraternity culture. Just a few days ago, a student at Louisiana State University died during a fraternity hazing ritual that involved binge drinking.

Why is this allowed to continue?

Each spring, scores of fresh-faced undergraduates flock to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress in support of legislation sympathetic to Greek organizations and to network at a cocktail reception and $500-a-plate fundraiser. In April 2016, at the elegant Liaison Hotel, U.S. Representatives, flanked by American flags, posed for photos with fraternity men and sorority women. The lawmakers were the honored guests of the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, commonly known as FratPAC, which bills itself as the largest political action committee “focused solely on higher education issues.”

Since 2005, when it was founded, FratPAC has given more than $1.3 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress, almost two-thirds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks money in Washington. Fraternity and sorority alumni, who make up less than 4 percent of the adult population, are disproportionately represented in the capital. Thirty-nine percent of Senators in the 113th U.S Congress, and one-fourth of U.S Representatives, belonged to Greek organizations, primarily fraternities—as well as one-third of all Supreme Court justices and about 40 percent of U.S. presidents, according to the North-American Interfraternity Conference, which represents most of the oldest and largest fraternities. (Presidents Trump and Obama were not fraternity men.)

In 2012, FratPac helped forestall the introduction of a bill that would have revoked federal financial aid from anyone that a school disciplinary board found responsible for hazing. The fraternity lobby has also defended the due-process rights of college men in sexual-assault cases. In 2015, it backed a bill that would have required the victims of sexual assault to report the allegations to law enforcement before requesting a campus hearing. Fraternity and sorority trade groups and three national fraternities spent $250,000 lobbying for the bill.

Categories Higher Education

Sex, Booze, and Death in America’s Frat Houses

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2017 //
17

If you want to know the meaning of Betsy DeVos’ indifference to sexual assaults on campus, you should read John Hechinger’s engrossing book TRUE GENTLEMEN: THE BROKEN PLEDGE OF AMERICA’S FRATERNITIES.

It was reviewed in the Washington Post by T. Rees Shapiro, who wrote:

“Here is how Hechinger details one young woman’s experience inside an SAE house in the fall of 2014 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she found herself on a dingy bathroom floor littered with beer cans. “The man pushed her head down and forced her to perform oral sex and, then, intercourse, leaving her raw and bleeding inside. But it wasn’t over yet,” Hechinger writes, continuing the account using the woman’s real name with her permission. “The second man took his turn, forcing Gabriela to perform fellatio.” The encounter ended with a third man entering the bathroom and finding the young woman helpless, Hechinger writes. A savior he was not. “Gabriela was slumped on the floor of the shower, leaning against a wall, her leggings stained with semen, her shirt pulled up over her shoulders,” Hechinger writes. “ ‘Button up your shirt,’ he told her. Afterward, he urinated and left her on the floor, scared and alone.”

“Interestingly, the men who assaulted Gabriela were not members of the fraternity, Hechinger notes, questioning whether SAE acted negligently in allowing conditions for such a brutal attack to transpire amid a party at an SAE house.”

Hechinger writes that between 2011 and 2016, sexual assaults took place at 15 SAE houses out of 230 across the country. Insurance companies, Hechinger notes, “have rated fraternities just above toxic-waste dumps because of claims related to drinking, hazing, and sexual assault.”

Would Gabriela have been able to find witnesses to back up her complaint of sexual assault?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Higher Education

Peter Greene: Why College is Not Like K-12

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2017 //
34

Betsy DeVos keeps trying out different metaphors and analogies in her effort to persuade the public that school choice is way better than public schools.

She has referred to cell phones (you choose among many different providers but the government doesn’t underwrite your choice), Uber (you choose but the government doesn’t underwrite your choice), food trucks outside the U.S. Department of Education (because there are no nearby restaurants but the government also doesn’t pay for your lunch).

So she tried again: You choose your college, why not choose your school?

Peter Greene explains here why this analogy fails.

Here a few of his wise observations:

“In the higher education system, it is primarily the interests of students that are at stake. In K-12, all of society has a stake in the system. Public schools do not exist to serve only parents. The interests of the students, their future employers, their future neighbors and co-workers, their future fellow voters, the community as a whole– all of these interests are represented. That’s why all taxpayers chip in (unlike the higher ed system). That means that all stakeholders get a say, and all public schools should be subjected to a considerably higher level of oversight and accountability than a school ike Harvard.

“Why is choice wrong for K-12? Believe it or not, I don’t think it has to be wrong. But as currently proposed and practiced, it’s wrong because

* There must be accountability for where and how public tax dollars are spent (that includes both issues of quality and issues of violating separation of church and state)

* The system must be fully funded. You cannot run three schools for the money previously spent on one. Don’t make it a zero-sum game– fully fund it.

* Do not leave leftover students behind. Do not push students out because they don’t fit your model. If you want choice, make it parents’ choice, not the school’s choice.

* Students before profits. No for-profits choices. And stringent rules on not-for-profits, most of whom are currently just for-profits with good money-laundering systems.

* Total transparency and complete local control.

“None of these are features of the system that brought those students to Harvard. That’s why choice in higher education, while not always very successful, is less objectionable than choice for K-12.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Higher Education, School Choice

New SAT scores Released, and Confusion Reigns

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
45

David Coleman led the creation of the Common Core, which has been mired in controversy since it was released.

Now he is president of the College Board, where he oversaw the redesign of the SAT. Confusion reigns.

The good news is that nearly 1,000 colleges and universities are now test-optional, meaning students don’t have to take the SAT or the ACT to apply. The word is out than the students’ four-year grade-point-average is a better predictor of college performance than a standardized test.

What next for David Coleman?

Categories Higher Education, Standardized Testing

David V. Johnston: Academe for Sale to the Highest Bidder

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
30

This is an alarming article about the invasion of corporate and philanthropic money into higher education, not to underwrite the purposes of higher education, but to buy control of policy and thinking.

The most obvious example is the millions donated by Charles Koch to spread the gospel of free markets and individual responsibility.

All told, the Charles Koch Foundation has invested some $200 million in higher education activities since 1980, with more than $140 million of that money allocated since 2005, funding over fifty free-market research centers and institutes at universities. And these beachheads of private campus cash have become lush islands of ideological purity by partnering with like-minded philanthropists such as Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter and the recently deceased Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider.

But all this high-profile private funding has also provoked a backlash. Groups such as Kochwatch and UnKoch My Campus have galvanized public attention and even sparked protests at campuses nationwide. So the Kochtopus has rebranded. Starting in 2014, Charles Koch introduced the “Well-Being Initiative” with a blog post under his signature and a conference at the Charles Koch Institute in Washington, D.C.

One speaker was Koch beneficiary James Otteson, a philosopher and executive director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism. BB&T is a bank holding company formerly chaired by a man named John Allison, who retired in 2010 and now serves as “executive in residence” at the center. He was also president and CEO of the libertarian Cato Institute. In 2011 he caused a stir by promising through the BB&T Charitable Foundation to provide grants as high as $2 million to schools that established courses on the first principles of modern capitalism with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as required reading. That novel, of courses, preaches naked self-interest as a virtue. At conferences like these, however, the candid celebration of capitalist predation doesn’t always align so cleanly with the institutional interests of the Koch Foundation. So the focus has been rejiggered to explore “what enables individuals and societies to flourish and how to help people improve their lives and communities.”

Koch is far from alone. Read the article and see how many other billionaires have stepped into the game to buy scholars and whole departments.

This is the auctioning off of academic freedom and intellectual pursuit. It is a scandal. Call it intellectual corruption.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Higher Education

DeVos Changes Obama-Era Policy on Campus Rapes to Provide Greater Protection for Those Accused of Rape

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
96

Betsy DeVos changed the standard of evidence required in cases where there are allegations of rape on campus. The change will make it more difficult to sustain a claim of rape.

The most controversial part of the Obama-era guidance was that the outcome of investigations should rely on the preponderance of the evidence in each case to determine guilt. Critics said that was too low a standard, and DeVos has said that some innocent men were falsely accused under the standard.

Victims will have a harder time meeting the new standard because there are seldom witnesses to rape.

Common in civil law, the preponderance standard is lower than the “clear and convincing evidence” threshold that had been in use at some schools. Victim advocates viewed the April 2011 letter as a milestone in efforts to get schools to heed the longstanding problem of campus sexual assault, punish offenders and prevent violence.

DeVos has made it clear for several weeks, as has her Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candace Jackson (who opposes affirmative action and feminism), that they believe that many men have been unfairly accused of rape. They have expressed sympathy for those accused of rape, not their accusers.

Categories Higher Education

Who Benefits from Expanded Access to AP Courses? Students or the College Board?

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2017 //
31

This is a really good piece of investigative writing by Alina Tugend on the value of Advanced Placement courses. It doesn’t answer the question posed in the headline of this post but it supplies valuable information and poses the right questions.

I was interviewed and what really bothers me about the demand for “AP for All” is the implicit assumption that taking a rigorous course and failing the exam will improve educational opportunity. As I say in the article, if this is the goal of the College Board, why not offer the test for free? It is easy to forget that the College Board is a business, not a charity.

There are other ways to reduce the achievement gaps instead of putting kids in a class where the reading level is far beyond their reach and they are near certain to fail.

Although AP was originally designed for elite high schools, some of them have dropped it because their own classes are equally demanding. And some elite college don’t give credit for AP courses.

So the strongest claim of the College Board these days is that their tests supply equity. No standardized test has ever increased equity. They are designed not to. If your primary interest is civil rights, fight for funding and desegregation, not a better standardized test.

Categories Civil Rights, Equity, Higher Education, Standardized Testing
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