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Arizona Lawmakers Agree to Put on Ballot a Proposed Ban on Affirmative-Action Preferences

Arizona is set to become the first state in which a proposed ban on affirmative-action preferences will be put on the ballot by the legislature, rather than through petitions submitted by voters.

The Arizona Senate today passed a measure — approved by the state’s House of Representatives a week ago — calling for a proposed ban on the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state agencies, to go before voters next year. Under the state’s Constitution, referenda approved by the Arizona Legislature go on the ballot without the governor’s approval.

The campaign on behalf of the measure had tried to place it on the Arizona ballot last November, but failed to gather enough petition signatures. Similar measures appeared on ballots last year in Colorado and Nebraska, with the Colorado measure losing narrowly and the Nebraska measure passing with 58 percent of the vote. Such measures also were passed in California in 1996, Washington State in 1998, and Michigan in 2006.

The Arizona referendum calls for the state Constitution to be amended to ban public colleges and other state and local agencies from granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in employment, contracting, and education-related decisions. —Peter Schmidt

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Tulane and Louisiana State U. Differ Over Governance of New Teaching Hospital

Louisiana State University and Tulane University appear to be at an impasse over governance of a new teaching hospital in New Orleans, according to news reports. At issue is how much control the Louisiana State system should have on the board of a 424-bed hospital, which is expected to open in 2013 and cost around .2-billion.

Last week Tulane officials approved a plan that would give LSU four seats on a 12-member board. The LSU system’s Board of Supervisors amended the plan today to give LSU five seats on an 11-member board, The Times-Picayune reported. LSU deserves the additional clout, officials told the New Orleans newspaper, because the university would be responsible for backing 0-million in bond debt.

“We need to be in control,” Hank Gowen, a member of the LSU board, said before the vote. “We are the ones who are going to borrow 0-million.”

According to the Associated Press, Tulane officials rejected the plan and issued a statement saying that LSU’s move “indicates that Tulane and LSU have fundamental and philosophical differences with respect to the board composition and the appropriate safeguards and independent oversight of the proposed academic medical center.”

Both medical schools’ teaching hospitals were flooded and badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina. The interim downtown hospital they plan to use until the new hospital is built faces financial pressures, in addition to tensions caused by the governance feud between the two universities. —Katherine Mangan

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Colleges Must Alter Their Business Models, Some Presidents Say

Washington — College leaders today urged their colleagues to change how they do business in light of the recession, during a conference here called “Thinking Big in a Crisis,” sponsored by the higher-education policy organizations Jobs for the Future, Education Sector, and the Lumina Foundation for Education.

Panelists warned that unless colleges reformed their business models, higher education could face the same fate as the housing and banking industries. They offered examples of how their institutions have cut costs while opening doors to more students.

Paul J. LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, said his institution now offers online classes and has opened three satellite commuter campuses. To attend those campuses, students pay about 40 percent of what full-time undergraduates pay to attend the main campus.

Mr. LeBlanc also said he believes that, in coming years, colleges will move away from using credit hours as a measure of achievement and instead rely on demonstrations of competency. “I think it’s appalling how little innovation has gone on in higher ed,” he added.

Eduardo J. Padrón, president of Miami Dade College, said that his institution, the largest community college in the country, now offers both two-year and four-year degrees.

“Higher education is not immune to change,” he said. —Austin Wright

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How the N.Y. Attorney General Will Use $13-Million From Loan Scandal

New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, plans to use the -million his office has collected from colleges and student-loan companies to create a Web-based student-loan center for borrowers and to run a nationwide public-service announcement about how to pay for college and minimize student-loan debt.

In 2007 and 2008, 14 lending companies and three colleges agreed to pay into a national education fund set up by Mr. Cuomo to settle claims arising from his investigations into conflicts of interest in student lending and deceptive marketing.

The attorney general announced last month that he was seeking applications from New York-based nonprofit groups and government entities through July 6 for grants to develop and put in place the loan center and the public-service campaign. Colleges are ineligible for the money.

Benjamin Lawsky, a special assistant to the attorney general, said that colleges had been excluded from the grants “in order to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest” in the wake of an investigation that examined improper practices at institutions of higher education. He said the objectivity of the information provided through the loan center or the public-service announcement could be compromised if any particular college were involved.

The attorney general had said when he collected the money that it would be used to educate high-school students and their families about the financial-aid process, but it wasn’t until May 20, when the attorney general’s office published a notice in the New York State Register, that Mr. Cuomo outlined how the funds would be used.

The notice said the Web-based student-loan center would provide free information to students, college graduates, and parents across the United States about how to minimize student-loan debt and how to choose the best loan options. It would also help distressed borrowers. The center would allow students and parents to “interact in real time,” the notice said, with people who are trained to answer questions about paying for college and repaying student loans.

The national public-service announcement would also provide information about how to minimize student-loan debt and how to choose the best student-loan options. The campaign would “use as spokespersons public figures, such as actors or musicians, who are popular among high-school and college students,” the notice said.

The projected start date for the grant contracts is January 1, 2010. —Sara Hebel

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Several U. of Wisconsin Medical-School Professors Accepted Large Corporate Payments

Thomas A. Zdeblick, an orthopedic surgeon, apparently isn’t the only doctor at the University of Wisconsin who has been collecting a substantial outside income from medical companies.

A tally by the Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee has now found that Dr. Zdeblick had at least six colleagues at the Wisconsin medical school who have also been receiving six-figure payments from makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

The newspaper reported in January that Dr. Zdeblick received more than -million from Medtronic, the medical device-maker, from 2003 to 2007. That led University of Wisconsin officials to declare that their policy of requiring doctors to state only whether they were collecting more than ,000 a year from outside sources — without declaring the actual figure — wasn’t sufficient to guard against possible abuses.

Such payments aren’t illegal, though critics, including U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, have questioned whether large payments to doctors might improperly influence their decisions in patient research and patient treatment.

The new cases at the University of Wisconsin described by the Journal Sentinel include Paul A. Anderson, a professor of orthopedic surgery who was paid 0,000 by Medtronic for eight days of work as a consultant; Ben K. Graf, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who collected 0,000 in royalties from the medical-device manufacturer Smith & Nephew; and Clifford B. Tribus, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who was paid 0,000 for royalties and 15 days of work as a speaker and consultant for Stryker Spine, another device company. —Paul Basken

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City College of San Francisco Seeks Donors to Sponsor Courses

The City College of San Francisco will face a cut of 800 courses this year — unless it finds donors to sponsor them.

For ,000, sponsors can save one of the classes, which each meet three times a week for a 17.5-week semester, for about 30 students. If the sponsor designates the money for a specific course, its title would be changed to include the donor’s name.

The list of canceled classes spans disciplines, from elementary French and introductory accounting, to beginning piano and advanced kung fu.

California lawmakers announced they will cut about 0-million from the entire California Community College system — the largest community-college system in the country — over the next two years. For the San Francisco community college, that means drastically reducing its 9,800 course offerings, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The budget cuts also mean hundreds of students may be blocked from enrolling because of reduced class space and need-based subsidies, which help many students pay for the books, travel, and food necessary to attend college.

“These cuts will really hurt the mission of the college,” Chancellor Don Griffin told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Our goal has been to try to keep the access.” —Erica R. Hendry

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French Student Protesters Disrupt Paris’s Academic Core and Seize Presidents’ Offices Elsewhere

On the eve of the two-week Easter holiday, French university students and academic staff members staged another mass demonstration in Paris today, blocking a major boulevard in the Latin Quarter, the historic core of academic life in the city, and shouting slogans evoking the mass protests that convulsed the country in May 1968, the news agency Reuters reported. Elsewhere in France, protesters this week appeared to step up their tactics, occupying administrative offices at two universities and “sequestering” their presidents.

Operations at universities across France have been disrupted for the past 10 weeks by protests and demonstrations sparked by government moves to reform the higher-education system. France’s education minister, Valérie Pécresse, said today that it was still possible to salvage the semester if there are no further disruptions after classes resume after the holiday. “There is still time to catch up on lectures and hold exams,” Ms. Pécresse told the Parisien newspaper, according to Reuters.

In targeting the heads of universities, protesters appeared to be borrowing a page from the manual of disgruntled French workers who have recently taken their bosses hostage at a handful of factories. On Monday the president of the University of Rennes 2 was reportedly held by student and faculty protesters. On Tuesday the president of the University of Orléans was held by demonstrators who occupied the university’s main administration building. Gwendal Ropars, a second-year student who participated in the action, insisted today that the rector was free to depart at any time and that, although he remained in the building until 9 p.m., he did so of his own volition.

Annliese Nef, a lecturer in medieval Islamic history at the Sorbonne who participated in the demonstration in Paris today, said that action would be the last major event on the protest calendar before the Easter holiday, but that mass demonstrations would resume after the break. In the meanwhile, actions such as the ronde des obstinés — a uniquely Gallic protest in which, according to The Guardian, protesters have walked in circles for two weeks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — are set to continue over the holiday. —Aisha Labi

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Higher-Education Associations Announce U.S.-South African Partnership

Washington — Two major U.S. higher-education associations have formed an international partnership to strengthen curriculum and expand work-force-development programs at a dozen colleges in South Africa.

The American Council on Education and the American Association of Community Colleges have been awarded a three-year, .7-million grant by the the U.S. Agency for International Development to start the project, called the U.S.-South Africa Partnership for Skills Development. The project, which builds on past efforts by the U.S. and South African governments, will help expand institutional capacity for student-services and faculty-development programs at South African further-education and training colleges and will better prepare the colleges to train and provide employment opportunities for underemployed South African workers.

Partner institutions in the United States include Bronx Community College, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, Springfield Technical Community College, as well as the National Center on Education and the Economy, and YouthBuild International, a nonprofit organization.

The announcement comes as American universities, foundations, and donor groups have increased their focus on sub-Saharan Africa as a means to further economic-development there. the U.S. Agency for International Development is expected to soon announce the recipients of 20 planning grants of ,000 apiece meant to kickstart collaborations between African and American universities. —Karin Fischer

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Maryland Lawmakers Will Require Colleges to Submit Written Porn Policies

The Maryland General Assembly today put an end to a weeklong standoff with University of Maryland students over the screening of a pornographic film on the campus. Lawmakers agreed that all public universities would need to submit written policies regulating when explicit films can be shown in on-campus public facilities, but they rejected a stricter amendment from the state senator who started the showdown.

Sen. Andrew P. Harris, a Republican who represents Baltimore and Harford counties, this morning proposed an amendment to the capital budget that would deny funds to any college that did not submit its pornography policy by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. Senate President Thomas V. (Mike) Miller, a Democrat who represents parts of Prince George’s and Calvert Counties, called the move out of order, and the Senate voted almost 3 to 1 against Mr. Harris’s amendment.

The requirement to submit a written policy was added to the state’s operating budget, which needs to be passed by the time the legislative session ends Monday. Mr. Harris originally proposed that the University of Maryland’s allocations in the operating budget be cut if administrators allowed a XXX-rated porn film, Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, to be shown in an on-campus movie theater last Saturday. The university canceled the event, but students claimed their First Amendment rights were being violated.

A student group scheduled an event Monday in which several speakers, including university faculty members and an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, discussed the free-speech issue, and a portion of the film was played.

If the amendment is passed as written, Maryland’s public colleges would have until September to report back to the General Assembly. Mr. Miller and other leaders said the amendment would probably pass because no one wants to be seen as voting for porn. —Megan Eckstein

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Professor Loses Discrimination Case Against Montana State U.

A jury ruled against a Montana State University professor who said her male peers were paid thousands of dollars more than she was, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

In her lawsuit, Aleksandra M. Vinogradov, a tenured professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering, accused Montana State of discrimination based on gender and retaliation for complaining about her salary, the newspaper said. Her lawyer told the jury that the university did not have policy guidelines on salary increases but gave lump sums to departments to distribute. The university’s lawyer disputed that, saying pay raises were merit-based.

The case was decided late last week after a 10-day trial. —Audrey Williams June

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