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The Class of 2020 kicked off its schedule of events for this year at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London with a conference that looked at how companies can continue to invest in profitable assets such as student housing amidst the current housing crisis in Europe.

According to The Class, community leading investors plan to spend Ôé¼25 billion globally over the next 3-5 years in niche residential ‘blended living’ asset classes.

“Designing efficient, liveable, and high-quality homes has to be prioritised”

Speaking at the Pan European Summit on February 24, Yolande Barnes from UCLÔÇÖs Bartlett Real Estate Institute opened the session with a talk on how ÔÇ£alternatives are the new coreÔÇØ.

She called for real estate investors to take a longer-term approach to assess value, opportunity and risk in real estate while a panel discussed how affordability, convenience and flexibility, mental health and wellbeing and increased mobility are changing the way investors should view housing.

ÔÇ£Building large homes is expensive and living in them is unaffordable for an increasing portion of the population,ÔÇØ noted Adina David, director of flexible housing at Greystar.

ÔÇ£Designing efficient, liveable, and high-quality homes has to be prioritised by our industry.ÔÇØ

While markets like Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands remain attractive due to their liquidity, the afternoon panel also emphasised the importance of looking at cities as individual areas rather than looking at countries as a whole given the vast difference between different regions.

The most ÔÇÿyouthfulÔÇÖ cities by 2030 are expected to be Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Oslo and Dublin, while the most ÔÇÿagedÔÇÖ will be Genova, Dresden, Bilbao, Leipzig and Valletta.

Student housing was also praised for its adaptability in that it can easily be turned into other residential buildings or offices, ensuring that an investment can remain profitable even as markets change.

Outside the sector, the student housing rush is not without its critics, however, with one Financial Times article last year referring to it as a ÔÇÿbubbleÔÇÖ that in the UK has stoked concern about poor quality and further exacerbating the shortage of affordable housing.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that colleges should “consider” canceling upcoming student foreign exchange programs and asking current program participants to return to their home countries in light of the global outbreak of a new coronavirus.

The CDC guidance for student travel at institutions of higher education was issued Sunday. Colleges have already canceled many overseas programs in countries with high rates of local transmission of the virus formally called COVID-19, most notably China and Italy. But the CDC guidance is seemingly global in scope, referring to foreign travel by students in general.

Although it is somewhat ambiguous in its wording, the CDC guidance could also be read as referring to both foreign exchange students hosted by U.S. institutions and to Americans studying abroad. The first paragraph says that institutes of higher education, or IHEs, “should consider postponing or canceling upcoming student foreign exchange programs” and “consider asking current program participants to return to their home country.” It notes, "Those overseeing student foreign exchange programs should be aware that students may face unpredictable circumstances, travel restrictions, challenges in returning home or accessing health care while abroad."

The second paragraph says that colleges “should consider asking students participating in study abroad programs to return to the United States.” It advises colleges to "work with state and local public health officials to determine the best approach for when and how (e.g., chartered transportation for countries or areas assessed as high-risk for exposure) their study abroad students might return."

The CDC did not respond to requests for comment about the guidance.

“It’s a major change in policy, and it will be taken very seriously by our members,” Brad Farnsworth, vice president for global engagement at the American Council on Education, said of the CDC guidance.

“They will also take to heart that it’s only a consideration, and I think there will be institutions that decide to leave their programs in place. I think they will look at that very carefully. There is not just a safety issue but also a legal issue: the last thing a university wants is to appear to have been irresponsible by ignoring a statement from the CDC. But I think we will see some exceptions where universities say they’re looking at the situation very closely and they decided that leaving students in place is the best course of action. Institutions already have protocols in place for assessing risk," Farnsworth said.

David DiMaria, the associate vice provost for international education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said the CDC guidance took the field of international education by surprise.

"I’ve gotten text messages and emails from colleagues across the nation trying to make sense of this," DiMaria said. "While it’s certainly helpful to have guidance, there are a lot of questions that remain pertaining to the guidance. For instance, when it says postponing or canceling upcoming foreign student exchange programs, 'upcoming' -- is that spring break, is that summer, is it fall?" DiMaria also noted a lack of clarity around some of the terminology -- for example, what the CDC means by "exchange program."

“Certainly any time the CDC issues guidance, I think all of higher education is going to look to that as an official source, but if we had, I think, a little more specificity, it would certainly help international educators as they make some of these major decisions that have broad implications," DiMaria said.

The Forum on Education Abroad and Pulse, an organization of professionals focused on health and safety in academic travel, issued a joint statement in which they noted that never before has the CDC issued guidance like this in relation to student travel. "Both The Forum and Pulse strongly urge colleagues to read this statement as it is written -- as guidance to consider. It is not a directive that is being handed down," their statement says.

"Students are not typically members of the population who may succumb to a virus like COVID-19. Those populations have often included the elderly and those with compromised immune systems," the groups said. "Unlike typical travelers, students are supported on the ground at their various study sites by professional staff, faculty, and others who work to assure that students are provided information, assistance, guidance, and help when necessary."

"We also want to acknowledge that different institutions will have different capacities to manage a complex issue such as COVID-19. Not every organization can be expected to react in the same way as those with professional staff devoted to addressing international health and safety considerations. We urge those institutions to reach out to your colleagues through professional networks. Look to what they are saying and recommending and then scale it so that it fits your context."

To date, colleges have adjusted their international programming country by country in response to the virus’s spread. But the CDC advisory stresses the dynamic and global nature of the situation.

“Given the speed of spread and the number of countries experiencing human-to-human transmission, IHEs should evaluate the risks associated with choosing to maintain programs abroad and take the appropriate proactive measures,” the guidance states.

On Monday the Texas A&M University system issued new, broader restrictions on foreign student travel. The university said it would "strongly discourage all foreign travel by Texas A&M System students, faculty and staff while the outbreak of COVID-19 remains a dynamically changing and uncertain situation." It said it would "prohibit payment for System-sponsored travel to all countries identified as Level 1 or greater risk by the CDC Health Notice Warning system," and it "encourage[s] all students, faculty and staff to return from all Level 1 or higher risk countries as soon as can be practically arranged."

Sara Schwartz, founder and president of the Massachusetts-based law firm Schwartz Hannum, said the main thing the CDC advisory changes is the institutional risk management calculus.

“My takeaway from the CDC guidance is that every educational institution, whether it is an independent school or a higher ed entity, needs to take seriously the mandate to ‘consider,’” said Schwartz, whose firm represents more than 250 educational institutions. “I think prior to this guidance, we had a lot of flexibility from a risk-management perspective, but the guidance increases the institutional risk of proceeding with these programs. The CDC is saying you better think twice.”

"I’m telling all my schools that this is day to day," said Schwartz. "If they want to keep going on their trips, they can. There's an increased risk from a liability perspective, but they can keep going. They have a green light as long as it’s a level 1 country. But it's riskier. But it’s day to day."

Christine Helwick, a lawyer with the California-based firm Hirschfeld Kraemer and a former general counsel for the California State University system, said she thinks the word “consider” in the CDC message is really important.

“I read the tenor of the message to be, ‘go slow and be thoughtful,’” she said. “That seems to be entirely appropriate because there are so many unknowns about the virus.”

“There are just so many variables that I appreciated the fact that the CDC was not issuing draconian orders,” Helwick added. “It was more, just, you need to think about what your circumstances are, what your risks are. It does seem to me they are encouraging not sending any new students abroad, and that makes sense, but in terms of bringing home students, I read that word 'consider' to give institutions a lot of flexibility but really remind them that they need to be thoughtful. That seems to me about all we can expect of the CDC at this point, and all any of us can do.”

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Student activists pushing for the University of Texas at Austin to fire professors found to have committed sexual misconduct and publicly disclose their disciplinary records celebrated a victory Monday when university President Greg Fenves agreed to make termination a default punishment for such behavior.

Faculty and staff members found guilty of sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking or interpersonal violence after a “thorough investigation” will be presumptively separated from the university, Fenves said in a letter to the campus. The goal is to have the new policy in effect by the end of the semester, said Scott Schneider, a partner at Husch Blackwell, the law firm that was hired by the university to advise administrators and which recommended the policy changes.

Schneider said there will be some exceptions to the policy. A faculty or staff member who engaged in sexual misconduct would be allowed to remain employed if the victim of their actions expressed that they do not want to “ruin this person’s life,” Schneider said.

Husch Blackwell recommended that any staff or faculty member retained by the university should be listed in a report that includes their name, misconduct committed and the “mitigating factors” preventing their termination, according to the firm’s report. The regularity of the report has not yet been determined, said Gary Susswein, chief communications officer.

Although Fenves said in his letter that the reporting process would preserve "the privacy of the survivors," Schneider said doing so might be difficult while providing such a list. He's also concerned it could reduce misconduct reporting, because unique public records laws in Texas allow for disclosure of university personnel records.

“I worry from the meetings we’ve had with claimants, survivors … people in the community are going to be able to find out who these people are,” Schneider said. “There’s been some retraumatization associated with that. I’m not a huge fan of providing this information. I want to be using it on a limited basis.”

The recommendations met the “big” demands of the Coalition Against Sexual Misconduct, or CASM, a student-led group that advocated for policy changes and led several demonstrations on campus, said Tasnim Islam, a spokesperson for CASM and a member of the university’s Misconduct Working Group. UT Austin will be the first university in the U.S. to publish the names of faculty and staff members disciplined for sexual misconduct, CASM wrote in a Facebook post.

“It’s a lot of complicated emotions, but when I first saw that, I almost had tears of joy,” Islam said. “It felt so good to know all of our hard work was worth it. A lot of the recommendations were very similar and reflected the same values that the student list of demands mentioned.”

Islam was frustrated that Fenves did not explicitly mention the work of CASM or other student activists who have been pushing for policy changes for several years. "It’s incredible and all because of student activists," she said.

Islam said Fenves did not address some specific changes that CASM wanted. The changes include speeding up the process for reports made to UT Austin’s Title IX office, which handles complaints of sexual misconduct.

Husch Blackwell’s recommendations, which Fenves agreed to in full, did identify “anecdotal information from various stakeholders that the resolution of sex discrimination claims took an unreasonably long period of time” and recommended the university adopt “a reasonable and presumptively appropriate timeline” to resolve claims.

Some victims had shared similar anecdotes during an emotional listening forum organized by CASM on Jan. 27, where students accused Fenves, Provost Laurie McInnis and Soncia Reagins-Lilly, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, of not caring about their safety in the classroom. After the forum, Fenves requested the original timeline set by the working group and Husch Blackwell to deliver recommendations be accelerated by two weeks, Susswein said. The firm held meetings with 150 stakeholders -- students, survivors, accused and disciplined faculty members, and administrators -- over the course of the last month, he said.

Hush Blackwell also recommended the university mandate sexual misconduct awareness and prevention training for all faculty and staff, according to the report. It also suggested a formalized alternative resolution process for employees guilty of lower-level sex discrimination offenses, which would allow for victims and respondents to participate in restorative justice if they both agree, and reintegrate employees into campus after being disciplined.

Fenves was unequivocal about the new standard being embraced by the university. The university will now start a formal institutional review process for implementing the policies. It's unclear how long it will take until the changes go into effect, Schneider said.

“Sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, and interpersonal violence will not be accepted at the University of Texas at Austin,” Fenves’s statement said. “If a faculty or staff member commits these acts, the consequences will be clear.”

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Pundits and lawmakers sometimes accuse professors of being liberals who indoctrinate their students. The research says they are right on one of those points, not both. Faculty members’ political beliefs do run left, according to numerous studies. But, counter to what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and others have alleged, even conservative students don’t generally feel pressured to think a certain way.

Preliminary data from a new study suggest that this dynamic might be changing, however -- yet not for the reasons one might assume. Ten percent of students in this study, especially conservative ones, did report feeling pressured to align their thinking with their professors' politics. Yet the authors say that this might be because the overall political environment is now so charged, not because professors are telling students what to think.

“There are so many different ways now that students are being cued to think politically, whereas maybe they weren’t before,” said co-author Matthew Mayhew, the William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Educational Administration at Ohio State University. “If I’m a professor and I’m talking about health care, students in the room might be cued to think politically about it, but 20 years ago that wouldn’t necessarily have been the case.”

What does this mean for teaching? Mayhew said that professors don’t need to change the way they teach, but that they might tell students that “discomfort” with new ideas is part of learning. And that shouldn’t be confused with pressure, anxiety or trauma, he said. This, of course, echoes much of the advice academics have shared with students in campus speech debates.

Mayhew further guessed that higher education -- generally, and not just whether it should be free -- might become one of these automatically “political” topics within the next five years. That’s a “scary” prospect, Mayhew said, as higher education is not exclusively part of any one political party's "agenda."

For this part of their study, Mayhew and his colleagues asked 3,486 college seniors from institutions across the U.S. about their observations of faculty members’ politics. Forty-nine percent of the sample said that their professors expressed politically liberal views “frequently” or “all the time.” Just 9 percent said the same about conservative professors.

As to the indoctrination question, 10 percent of students said they sensed pressure of any kind from professors when it comes to politics. Conservative students were more likely to feel pressure than those who identified as liberal.

Some 47 percent of students reported that they had changed their political leanings during college. Of those, 30 percent said they became more liberal, and 17 percent said they became more conservative. The share of “liberal” students increased 5 percentage points and the share “very liberal” grew by 4 percentage points.

What about students who felt pressure from professors about politics? Of the 10 percent who reported feeling this pressure “frequently” or “all the time,” half changed their political leanings by the end of their senior year. And that’s just slightly higher than the share of students who changed their political leanings without feeling any, or just occasional, pressure from professors.

Interestingly, the data suggest that students who felt pressure from conservative faculty members “frequently” or “all the time” felt more pressure than did students with liberal professors.

About 30 percent of students say they became more liberal in college, whether or not they felt any pressure from faculty members.

Co-author Alyssa Rockenbach, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of Education at North Carolina State University, said her team’s findings “add nuance to and in some ways challenge the narrative that colleges are exclusively liberalizing environments.” That is, the data hint at potential shifts in the student experience but also underscore what we already know: that colleges and universities are not indoctrination factories.

While students on the whole tend to perceive liberal perspectives from faculty members more often than conservative perspectives, Rockenbach said, only a “small proportion” -- that 10 percent -- feel pressured on that front.

Although conservative students feel somewhat more pressure than liberal students, she added, “we don’t see evidence that feeling pressured actually results in substantial changes to these students’ political inclinations.” And when pressure from faculty members does "appear to have an impact, it actually encourages slight conservative shifts among students."

A key piece of the study is that perceived pressure from faculty members depends on academic major. To Mayhew’s point on health care -- where topics such as universal coverage and abortion might come up -- conservative students in nursing, medicine, pharmacy and therapy were more likely to say they felt pressured. That was also true for those in the arts, humanities and religion and for double majors.

Meanwhile, liberal students majoring in the social sciences, education or business were more likely to report feeling pressured. Business, in particular, is known to have more conservative professors than academe over all.

As for the current political climate, Rockenbach said that it “probably” plays a role in students’ perceptions of pressure because political conversations in class "may be more salient right now.”

So maybe classrooms feel like many other public or semipublic spaces in our political moment. If that’s the case, Rockenbach and Mayhew’s data offer some hope. Asked if they’d had significant disagreements over political issues with friends during college, 65 percent said no. Twenty-nine percent said they had, but that they remained friends anyway. Just 6 percent said they’d had significant political disagreements and did not remain friends. The study had three check-in points, from 2015 to 2019, when the students were seniors. So these peer-to-peer arguments happened before and after the contentious 2016 election.

Back in the classroom, Rockenbach said that more frequent discussions open up opportunities for students to feel pressure from certain professors, "particularly if the students’ own views are on the other end of the political spectrum." So are such conversations a no-go? Rockenbach’s answer: “I don’t think so. These exchanges have strong potential to enhance student learning, help them refine their own beliefs and values, and empower their political engagement.”

At the same time, Rockenbach cautioned that it's “critical for faculty to create classroom spaces that encourage authenticity and respectful dialogue.” When and if professors decide to share their own perspectives, she added, it’s “important that they simultaneously encourage students’ freedom to disagree and offer different viewpoints.”

The group’s findings were published for the first time as an op-ed in The Washington Post. Rockenbach and Mayhew led the study with the Interfaith Youth Core group. The data, drawn from their Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, also contain insights about students’ perceptions on LGBT issues, spirituality and religion, but those figures aren’t quite ready for prime time.

Amy Binder, professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, co-wrote a book on college students’ political experiences in 2012 and is working on another one. Of the new study, Binder said the “devil is in the details,” in that she’d like to know more about what kind of pressure students sense. “Do they feel pressure to write their exams in a particular way to get a good grade? To speak up in class parroting a professor’s perceived ideology?” she asked. “To become liberal or conservative because they are majoring in a particular discipline? To attend, or not attend, rallies or protests?”

Binder further noted that “influencing” an opinion is different than pressuring someone to change theirs. She guessed that numbers might be at play, at least in the finding that conservative professors influence their students more. Maybe if there are more liberal students taking business courses than there are conservative students taking humanities courses in the sample, she wondered, “you can see a pattern where conservative faculty are more persuasive in sheer numbers.”

Mayhew said that more students identifed as liberal than conservative, and students appreciated politically liberal ideologies to a greater degree than conservative ones across three time points. But he said that the finding about conservative professors might be more about students' expectations. College is seen as "liberalizing," he said, so students "might be surprised and possibly intimidated by the mere expression of their professors’ conservative ideologies." Reiterating his point about discomfort, he said that feeling often arises "when expectations misalign with experience."

 

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Homelessness in San José, Calif., the 10th-largest city in America, has increased 42 percent in the last two years. And that figure only looks at the number of people sleeping outside, not those sleeping in hotels or on friends' couches.

It’s not hard to see why things are changing. The tech sector in San José, which is nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, is unsurprisingly booming. The area is less than a half hour drive from both Apple’s headquarters and the “Googleplex,” the search engine giant’s 20-building campus.

Charlie Faas, the chief financial officer at San José State University, said that while the area is adding jobs at an impressive rate, housing production hasn't been able to keep up. As a result, housing prices have become astronomical.

The yawning gap between haves and have-nots is increasingly visible in many American cities, but nowhere is it quite as stark as in California's Bay Area.

Much attention has been paid to public university and community college students who, faced with no other options, are falling into that gap.

In the 2016-17 academic year, about 11 percent of students at the California State University system (which includes San José State) were homeless. Early last year a student group asked the San José State administration, among other requests, to set aside 10 parking spots for students who sleep in their cars.

But faculty and staff members at California universities also have felt the burden of rising rents. Many live far away and commute for hours each day. Others live with roommates or in small apartments with family.

A 2019 study by Apartment Guide found that the average studio apartment in San José rented for $2,484 per month.

Arthur Cordova, a groundskeeper at San José State, commutes every day from Manteca by commuter train. It takes him about four hours round trip.

“That was the only way I could purchase my own home,” he said. “I did it for my family.”

He’s worked for the university for 19 years.

Cookie Galvan, an office clerk for the university for over two decades, has lived in an apartment with her daughter and her daughter’s family for nearly five years. In the last two years, her monthly rent has increased by $450. Now her family is moving to another state.

“I am 58 years old, and I have to find a roommate,” she said. “Will this person steal from me? Rob me? Not pay the rent?”

Galvan injured her knee in late 2018 and as a result hasn’t been able to work her other two part-time jobs as a security officer and an usher. She’s looked at other housing in the area but doesn’t qualify to rent or wouldn’t be able to front a security deposit along with the first month's rent.

“I can’t afford to leave, and I can’t afford to stay,” she said. “If I don’t find somebody by March, by April I’ll have to give a notice and I’ll be living in my car. Or maybe I’ll be sleeping in my office.

“I’m just petrified.”

Neither Galvan nor Cordova believes their situations are unique.

Preston Rudy, a sociology professor at San José State and president of the faculty union there, said housing is a huge problem for instructors as well.

“We pretty regularly hire people, then they last a little while and then they feel they can’t make it, in part because of the housing crisis,” he said. “And they leave.”

This problem is not unique to the university, he said, but one that unfortunately affects many other people in the region.

“Working people in the Bay Area are having to move further and further away and make longer and longer commutes. It’s a pervasive problem,” Rudy said. “The Bay Area hasn’t done enough to address these problems.”

Though not every day, Rudy himself commutes from Sacramento.

Creative Solutions

The university has acknowledged the housing crisis and to some extent made addressing it a priority.

Faas explains that San José State, despite the higher cost of living in the area, isn’t able to offer faculty members more money than can its peers in the CSU system. Union-negotiated salary scales for both faculty and staff apply to all 23 universities, regardless of geographic location.

“[Faculty recruits] quickly realize they’re not going to live anywhere near the campus,” he said. “They’re going to live an hour, two hours, an hour and a half away from the campus, having to commute in here on that type of salary.”

“What they quickly do is they fall in love with California and they end up going up to [CSU campuses at] Stanislaus or Sonoma or Humboldt or one of these lower cost of living areas,” he said.

So the university is now investing heavily in building subsidized housing for faculty and staff.

“Four years ago we looked at this situation we found ourselves in and said if we don’t look at faculty and staff housing and giving people options, we’re going to, sometime in the near future, be faced with a massive, massive problem,” Faas said. “You have to find ways than are different than we’ve ever tried to do here.”

The university already provides about 50 housing units for faculty and staff, but it is pushing for more placements and more subsidies.

The hallmark of San José State's campaign is the Alquist Building, about one block from the university, which once housed state government offices. Early this year California, after prodding from state lawmakers, transferred the building and land to the university. San José State plans to build 800 to 1,200 apartments on the land for faculty, staff, graduate students and students with families. (The university is also planning on substantial investment elsewhere in student housing and housing grants.)

Through eliminating land costs and any expectation of profit, Faas said the university can easily get units to 80 percent of market value, although they’re looking to go lower.

“This is one of those 'wow' moments, that this could really happen and this could make a difference for our faculty and staff,” he said.

President Mary Papazian said early in her tenure she realized the university needed to have affordable housing options to continue recruiting accomplished and diverse talent.

“When the development of the Alquist Building is completed as planned, it may very well be one of the most important projects ever completed at San José State. It will definitely be a unique model in converting a state-owned building into affordable housing for our campus community,” she said via email. “Long-term, sustainable solutions take some time, of course, but we are happy to be addressing it now and putting real resources behind it.”

Faculty and staff seem hopeful about the potential of the Alquist Building. But they acknowledge it will be more helpful for future staff members.

“It’s positive that the university is thinking about trying to develop solutions to address the difficulty of getting housing for faculty,” Rudy said.

Other universities, especially those in urban areas, have not been immune to the housing crisis.

San Francisco State University only has enough housing for 4,000 of its 30,000 students, and some have become homeless. In 2018, a City University of New York survey found that 55 percent of students who responded to a survey were housing insecure in the past year. It seems likely that faculty and staff at CUNY and San Francisco State may be struggling as well.

Stanford University, just 25 minutes away and also in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, has for its part developed hundreds of faculty and staff units, some below market rate for those who are eligible.

Stanford, though, has an endowment of over $27 billion. San José State’s endowment is $153 million, 180 times smaller than Stanford’s. San José State also serves twice the students that Stanford does.

Galvan said she hopes San José State prioritizes the neediest at the Alquist Building, with a sliding scale or income ceiling. She’s worried people like her may still be left behind.

The university says it’s too soon to say who will get priority.

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• Charles Abasa-Nyarko, vice president for the National Curriculum Assessment Program, in Ghana, has been selected as vice president for academic affairs at Doña Ana Community College, in New Mexico.
• Jason Boyers, president of Cleary University, in Michigan, has been chosen as president of Rosemont College, in Pennsylvania.
• Rachel Eells, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University Chicago, has been named vice president for academic affairs at Concordia College New York.
• Jonathan Holloway, provost of Northwestern University, in Illinois, has been appointed president of Rutgers University, in New Jersey.
• Carolyn Ringer Lepre, dean of the school of communication at Marist College, in New York, has been selected as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Radford University, in Virginia.
• Brien Lewis, president of Catawba College, in North Carolina, has been chosen as president of Transylvania University, in Kentucky.
• Tanuja Singh, dean of the Greehey School of Business at St. Mary’s University, in Texas, has been named provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Loyola University New Orleans, in Louisiana.
• Beverly Wendland, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland, has been appointed provost of Washington University in St. Louis, in Missouri.

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The University of Texas at Austin introduced a policy that makes termination the ├ó┬Ç┬£presumptive punishment├ó┬Ç┬Ø for faculty and staff who engage in sexual misconduct and violence.

In universities in some parts of the country, the median wage for graduate assistants is well below the recommended living wage.

With other graduate students vowing solidarity, the university’s hard line may lead to an instructor shortage for the spring term.

Simple policy changes and support could be the key to unlocking the export potential of the UKÔÇÖs further education colleges, a new survey by┬áthe Association of Colleges has revealed.

Designed to provide a stocktake of international work at colleges across England, among its findings, the AoC’s 2019 international survey revealed that international activity in colleges is “static” despite the fact that the global demand for skills training is rising.

“Some colleges are deterred from starting international work due to concerns over risk, cost and lack of experience,” the survey suggested.

Of the 61 colleges in total that responded to the survey, 80% are “actively involved” in international work, according to the AoC.

“ItÔÇÖs the right time to look at how this potential can be met as the UK leaves the EU”

However when asked whether colleges felt they had the right capacity and capability to deliver international work ÔÇô regardless of whether they were already working internationally ÔÇô just 46% of respondents said they had.

Some 41% of survey respondents agreed that if they had the right capacity and support, “they could deliver more and offer better training, programs and expertise sharing”.

“There is rising global demand for technical training as world economies develop their workforce, yet UK FE represents only 1.4% of British education exports,” the survey explained, adding that this compares to more than 15% from comparable sectors in Canada and Australia.

“As the UK leaves the EU it is more important than ever that colleges are empowered to be outward-facing and that the government prioritises technical and vocational education.”

The survey explained that policy and operational barriers exist for colleges currently trying to grow their global vocational training offer and recruit international students who contribute financially, academically and culturally to college communities.

AoC noted that very little centralised data exists on international activity in colleges and no formal mechanism exists to capture this information.

It explained that the survey aims to fill the gap by showing that colleges are undertaking a whole host of activities, in a broad range of countries.

Highlighting the breadth of the sectorÔÇÖs future export potential, the survey revealed that colleges are involved in over 15 different types of international activity.

Student recruitment took the top activity spot; 76% of respondents said they recruit Tier 4 students, with European student recruitment (70%) and short-term study recruitment (68%) following closely behind.

Some 64% of colleges said they were involved in the Erasmus+ program, while the number of colleges engaging in vocational training overseas is also taking “a step in the right direction”, according to the AoC.

The survey also showed that colleges provide clear pathways to higher-level study:  61% of respondents said over 75% of their international students progress into higher education.

To ensure that colleges are ready to deliver on the governmentÔÇÖs international education strategy and meet the demand for skills training, the AoC said it is keen to work with the UK government to review and implement recommendations from the 2018/19 report.

These include lifting certain Tier 4 visa restrictions to allow FE international student numbers to grow and developing mechanisms to capture quantitative and qualitative data on international work in colleges.

“It is more important than ever that colleges are empowered to be outward-facing”

ÔÇ£Despite over 10 years of a difficult visa and financial environment, UK colleges have continued to provide great opportunities overseas and excellent learning experiences on campus for international students. Although, as this survey shows, there is potential to do so much more,” said AoC International director, Emma Meredith.

“ItÔÇÖs the right time to look seriously at how this potential can be met as the UK leaves the EU and the new points-based immigration system brings significant change to how the economy and businesses tackle skills gaps.

“AoC seeks to work with the government to take up our recommendations, enabling colleges to meet the growing need for vocational training overseas, to offer enriching cultural and learning programs like Erasmus and to boost the UKÔÇÖs skills sector,” Meredith added.

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The international education sector has rallied behind organisers of the 2020 Asia Pacific Association for International Education conference, after the announcement that the event will be postponed due to the coronavirus.

Due to be held in Vancouver on March 22-26, the APAIE conference will now be held in the same venue in the Canadian city in March 2021.

In an email to attendees, Sarah Todd vice president (Global) at Griffith University and APAIE event organiser said because of┬áWorld Health Organisation advisories and an increasing number of travel restrictions meant there “was little choice” but to postpone the 2020 event.

“The health and well-being of the APAIE community… [is] the priority”

“We have taken the very difficult decision to postpone APAIE 2020 in light of the global impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the conference will now be held in March 2021, in Vancouver,” she explained.

“The health and well-being of the APAIE community, as well as that of our local host community, are the priority.

“The travel restrictions in place are changing daily and it is important that the many friends and colleagues wanting to attend what is now the flagship event for international education in the Asia Pacific are able to,” she added.

APAIE 2020 was set to host more than 2,500 attendees, and preparations had been underway for two years, Todd noted. It was also to be the first APAIE conference to be held in the Americas.

“These are indeed challenging times for the international education sector and, on a personal note, I would like to extend my thanks for your understanding and support of this decision to postpone APAIE 2020,” Todd continued.

“We are all disappointed and your messages have meant a lot to me at a difficult time.”

The postponement means that APAIE 2021 due to take place in Bangkok, Thailand has been rescheduled to 2022.

APAIE 2021 was set to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, before a fire disrupted construction plans at the conference centre, resulting in organisers relocating it.

Elsewhere, the Association of Language Travel Organisations has also postponed its conference until next year. The event was due to be held in Rome from March 20-22.

Organisers of ALTO 2020 in Rome said they had “tried not to give in to the panic driven by the media”, but decided to postpone the event due to flight cancellations, and governments requesting travellers from Italy to┬áself-quarantine for 14 days. A result of that had been more than 15 people cancelling their trip to the event.

“It is clear that coronavirus is going to have a significant impact on membersÔÇÖ businesses,” event organisers said. “It is at times of crisis such as this that we need to work together as an association to ensure the survival of industry in general and our own businesses in particular.”

ALTO will facilitate a Webex conference call about the implications of coronavirus on businesses, they added.

Head of International Relations at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland’s School of Business┬áRobert Buttery said it was a “difficult but timely decision”, but APAIE┬áhad “the full solidarity and support of #intled community”.

#APAIE2020 Difficult but timely decision. You have the full #solidarity and support of #intled community. Thanks for your monumental efforts and leadership @STodd_Griffith @SFU @BCCIE https://t.co/wSprfJXJPh

ÔÇö rob (@robertbuttery) March 1, 2020

Simon Fraser University was due to host the event in March 2021.

SFU vice-president Research & International, Joy Johnson, said despite no longer hosting APAIE 2020, the institution looks forward to welcoming higher education colleagues to Vancouver in 2021.

“Our thoughts are with our colleagues around the world impacted by COVID-19,” Johnson said on social media.

Executive director of BCCIE Randall Martin told The PIE News it was with “great regret” that the event was postponed, but the event had been “appearing less likely by the day”.

The organisation had been working with SFU as the local organising committee.

“We were not surprised by the decision, but it was not one taken easily or lightly; all involved are very sad but believe it is the right thing to do, and at the right time, in order to allow people at least a few weeks to get their travel affairs in order,” he said.

“We are working with hotels, providers, the professional conference organiser, any number of parties, to see how we can minimise loss and disruption this year and see how see can transition as much of the work as we can, the investments and deposits and the planning and the goodwill towards 2021,” Martin added.

“We are hoping many of the presenters are able to stay committed, and we are working with our keynote and featured speakers to see if they might still be able to join us. How will [2021] be different?┬áBigger and better we hope.”

CBIE president and CEO┬áLarissa Bezo added, “[our] thoughts are with our APAIE, SFU and partner BC institutions, and BCCIE colleagues as they operationalise this difficult decision”, and that CBIE looks forward to engaging at APAIE 2021 Vancouver in a “mere 12 months”.

Not an easy decision to make, weÔÇÖre thinking of you and the team who have worked hard to deliver #APAIE2020 .

ÔÇö AIEC (@AIEC) March 1, 2020

Director of Germany’s University of Bayreuth’s international office┬áArnim Heinemann noted he was grateful the APAIE team was ready to prepare for the important event again.

“Our thoughts are with our colleagues around the world impacted by COVID-19”

“As much as I regret that this sensible decision had to be taken, we are in this together and I would be happy to help in any way needed,” he wrote online.

Regional Educational Advising Coordinator for Northeast Asia and the Pacific at EducationUSA┬áVincent Flores thanked Todd for “putting safety first”, adding, “Perhaps this is a time for us all to consider some ways to connect virtually”.

“International education may take a hit this year but we can work together for a comeback!”┬áFlores concluded.

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Graduate student loan provider Prodigy Finance has added more than 1,000 new postgraduate courses to its loan offer as it responds to an increase in demand for STEM programs.

Of the courses added to Prodigy, 800 will be in STEM subjects ÔÇô half of that total in science courses.

“The main focus of this expansion is really embracing the overall growth of STEM,”┬áJoel Frisch head of Business Development at Prodigy Finance said.

“It’s a really substantial move because of the breadth of courses and schools”

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates STEM jobs will grow 8.8% by 2028, compared to 5% for non-STEM jobs, the company noted.

According to Prodigy, the new courses┬ácomplement the company’s “historic strength in business and engineering programs”.

“The continued expansion [is] moving the business to where the interests are in the economy and the jobs, but also for the schools and their programs,”┬áFrisch added.

“And [we] continue to do that in a smart way, so that the students are funding their programs in a smart way where they can responsibly repay them and put them on the path to success.

“It’s a really substantial move because of the breadth of courses and schools,” he said.

Demand for STEM program from international postgraduates is overtaking business programs, according to Prodigy.

More than 100 new university partners have also been added to Prodigy FinanceÔÇÖs offering, primarily in the US and Canada.

“We are also considering some of these programs in Western Europe, and they’ll be included in part of the expansion but the majority of the new programs will be in the US and Canada,”┬áFrisch told┬áThe PIE News.

Prodigy Finance has funded more than $900 million in graduate education loans to almost 19,000 students since it was established. Funding for the new courses is tied to 2018 investment from the likes of┬áDeutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, in addition to “arrangements that are in the works”, according to┬áFrisch.

“It’s all tied into the longer-term strategy that we have been working on for a while,” he said.

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The president of the European Council has suggested providing the Erasmus+ program with Ôé¼21 billion in funding, marking around a Ôé¼24 billion cut from previous funding proposals. The move has been described by the┬áErasmus Student Network as “going against the promise of a┬ámore inclusive and accessible Erasmus”.

The EU is currently discussing itÔÇÖs long term budget, known as the multiannual financial framework, which will run from 2021 until 2027.

ÔÇ£We believe that with this proposal of Ôé¼21 billion, it will threaten the program”

President of the European Council, Charles Michel, unveiled his draft European Council conclusions for the MFF in February, which includes detail about funding for Erasmus+.

The program currently receives Ôé¼14.7bn in funding. But in May 2018, the European Commission had proposed that it receive Ôé¼30 billion.

This figure was increased in further proposals in March 2019, when the European Parliament said that funds for the Erasmus+ should not just be doubled, but tripled to around Ôé¼45 billion.

However, the draft European Council conclusions for the multiannual budget of the EU for 2021-2027 suggest that the program should receive Ôé¼21 billion in funding┬á ÔÇô 30% less than the original Commission proposal of two-fold increase and more than 50% cut from the ParliamentÔÇÖs.

Kostis Giannidis, president of the Erasmus Student Network, explained that the latest proposals of Ôé¼24 billion came as a surprise.

ÔÇ£We have been advocating for so long for the new Erasmus+ program. All of the signs that we were receiving from institutions, from governments, from member states, was that yes, everybody believes that the program is very impactful and so we need to invest more,ÔÇØ he told The PIE News.┬á

ÔÇ£We feel that all these promises were empty. Most of all we believe that with this proposal of Ôé¼21 billion, it will threaten the program because we know that we need more inclusiveness.”

Giannidis said that ESN has witnessed students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups participating in the program less frequently because the funding is not there.

ÔÇ£Everyone was saying how we should have a more inclusive program and weÔÇÖll pay more money. So as an organisation, we feel that all these promises, in the end, were a bluff from the member states,” he added.

In the Gothenburg Summit of December 2017, the European Council called upon member states and other European institutions to work towards stepping u­­­­p mobility and exchanges, including through a substantially strengthened, inclusive and extended Erasmus+ program.

However, Giannidis argued that Ôé¼21 billion will simply not be enough money to achieve the ambitions of the new program.

The financial position the EU finds itself in after Brexit may go some way to explaining the latest Erasmus+ funding proposals.

“We feel that all these promises, in the end, were a bluff from the member states”

Discussions around Erasmus+ came as EU heads of state or government met in Brussels to discuss the MFF.

Those negotiations ultimately proved to be unsuccessful, and an agreement was made that said more time is needed.

ÔÇ£The last weeks and the last days, we have worked very hard in order to try to reach an agreement regarding the next European budget,ÔÇØ said the president of the European Council.

ÔÇ£Unfortunately, today we have observed that it was not possible to reach an agreement. We have observed that we need more time.

ÔÇ£We know that this European budget is a very difficult topic, it’s a very difficult negotiation, especially after Brexit and the gap between Ôé¼60 billion and Ôé¼75 billion,” Michel added.

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Fresh from receiving a $252 million donation, the single largest gift in its history, the University of California, Berkeley, announced the start of an ambitious $6 billion fundraising campaign, the largest goal yet by any public higher ed institution without a medical school or health science center.

The campaign, which was formally announced Saturday, reflects a trend of universities and colleges increasingly seeking and receiving enormous amounts of donor money as state funding for higher education fails to keep up with the growing costs of running colleges.

The University of California, Los Angeles, announced the next day that it raised nearly $5.5 billion during its most recent campaign, which launched in May 2014 and ended in December 2019.

Among leading private institutions, Harvard University's last campaign, which ended in 2018, raised $9.6 billion. The University of Chicago announced last Tuesday that it raised $5.4 billion from a recently ended campaign that launched in October 2014.

The University of Washington, a public research institution that has schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry and public health, appears to be the only public institution to have raised over $6 billion. It launched a $5.9 billion campaign in October 2016 that is scheduled to end in June and has raised $6.06 billion so far.

Berkeley administrators said they hoped to reach the $6 billion goal by 2023, a seemingly high bar for a three-year campaign -- the university’s last campaign ran from 2005 to 2013 and raised $3.13 billion -- but officials are undaunted, perhaps swayed by the reality that even as individual giving has declined nationally, overall giving has risen and the amounts donated have increased. Berkeley has already raised $3.44 billion so far, a university spokesman said.

“We actually have not found that giving has been declining,” Carol Christ, Berkeley’s chancellor, said during a media briefing last week. She noted that the university enjoyed record philanthropy in the last two years and that 2020 giving has already surpassed last year.

“People understand the need for philanthropy to Berkeley and are happy to join us as partners in reaching our goal,” she said.

The $252 million gift to the university is from an anonymous, living donor and will help fund construction of a new “data hub” for the university’s Division of Computing, Data Science and Society. The hub will serve as a central location for “the diverse array of students and faculty engaged in computing and data science research and teaching and will provide a new anchor for Berkeley’s fastest-growing new areas of study,” according to a press release announcing the gift.

The university also announced a $50 million donation to its College of Natural Resources from Gordon Rausser, former dean of the college and the Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor Emeritus of agricultural and resource economics. The gift to the College of Natural Resources “will support the school’s land-grant mission to take on key economic, social, environmental and health challenges facing the state and the nation,” according to another press release by the university.

Christ said such generosity is needed more than ever, given dwindling state funding for higher ed, a reality that colleges and universities across the country are facing. She said the decline in state support was a reason for setting the fundraising goal high.

State funding currently accounts for 14 percent of Berkeley’s budget, a significant drop from the period of the last fundraising campaign, when state support was 25.8 percent of the university’s budget.

Christ said the state remains an “extraordinary partner” of the university, but “we have to be much more entrepreneurial in our diversification.”

She said administrators spent over a year developing a strategic plan for the university and made the decision "to raise money for the very core of the institution" and to ensure that the funds raised would be used to meet the various needs across the campus and "didn’t select some departments and leave out others."

The new data hub building "was part of our capital planning process," she said.

The high fundraising bar is an indication of worrisome fiscal and economic trends in higher ed as demographic shifts in the U.S. and the shrinking population of college-age students has cut into the revenues of two- and four-year institutions and forced them to ramp up their fundraising efforts. In many cases, those efforts were already highly competitive, and aggressive, at the nation's most elite institutions. Christ did not mince words about the current state of affairs; she said the money raised would not be funding "nice to haves" but would instead pay for the “must-haves,” or the university’s core needs and priorities.

Those needs include:

• 100 new tenure-track faculty positions. (Undergraduate enrollment grew 14 percent in the past five years, but there has been no increase in the number of faculty members during that same period.)
• 300 new graduate student fellowships to compete for the brightest minds.
• Affordable campus housing for all freshman, sophomore and first-year transfer students. (This will accommodate the growth in the number of students.)
• Undergraduate scholarships and opportunities for all undergrads to do research.
• Support for research for the public good in targeted academic areas: data science and artificial intelligence, health, the environment, democracy and equality, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Christ said the university will work to engage students, alumni, longtime supporters and even those unaffiliated with the university in the fundraising campaign.

“We will be seeking to tell the story of this campaign in multiple ways to multiple audiences,” she said.

Christ said Berkeley had received donations from 168,672 unique donors as of Feb. 28.

One of the largest gifts so far came from philanthropists Sanford and Joan Weill, who donated $106 million jointly to Berkeley; the University of California, San Francisco; and the University of Washington last November to create a “neurohub” to “accelerate the development of new treatments for diseases and disorders of the brain.”

"He's not an alum, and some of our largest gifts came from people who are not alums," she said.

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Senator Lamar Alexander is seeing time ticking down on passing a rewrite of the nation’s main higher education law this year, and during his career.

Though he didn’t say it is a drop-dead deadline, the Tennessee Republican and chair of the Senate's education committee said in little-noticed remarks two weeks ago before a group of community college trustees that he wants to have a bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act passed by his committee by the end of March -- or only about a month from now.

The goal was in recognition of the fact that even after it passes the committee, the first revamp of the law since 2008 would have a long path to reach President Trump’s desk by the end of the year.

“I think we can make some progress if we get out of our committee by the end of March,” he said of working with Washington senator Patty Murray on the bill, according to a transcript made available by his staff of his Feb. 11 remarks at the Association of Community College Trustees’ annual legislative summit.

In a statement, a committee spokesman reiterated that the clock is ticking. “The committee should consider and approve legislation early this spring to give the Senate enough time to pass a bill that can be signed into law by the end of the year,” the spokesman said.

Whether he and the committee's top Democrat, Murray, can reach a deal in the next month, or at all, is anybody’s guess, several higher education lobbyists said. Republican and Democratic committee staff have been closemouthed about their negotiations, which are said to have continued through the holidays and during the Senate’s impeachment trial.

The possible bill still faces the major stumbling block of finding a bipartisan response to the controversial Title IX rule Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is expected to issue soon. The rule, which will set new requirements on how institutions deal with sexual assault and harassment allegations, would among other provisions include a mandate that the accused be able to cross-examine their accusers -- something Murray strongly opposes and insists be dealt with in a higher education bill, along with increasing student aid.

Although lobbyists note that Alexander has set and missed timelines for reaching a goal before, time is an obstacle to reauthorizing the law this year, said Craig Lindwarm, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ vice president of government affairs.

In a year when many senators will be home campaigning for re-election and attending national party conventions, the Senate will be in recess for nearly all of August and October. In the remaining time, Alexander and Murray will have to rally the full Senate to approve the bill, then work out a compromise with the Democratic House, whose Higher Education Act proposal would spend an additional $332 billion over 10 years, which is far more than what is expected from the Senate. A Senate bill also would have to vie with other major bills for time on the floor for debate.

"There are factors outside their control, like the congressional schedule," Lindwarm said. "There’s only so much time left before the end of this Congress."

The Next Republican Chair?

But despite the obstacles, and skepticism that it will happen, both Alexander and Murray have a number of incentives to get a deal done -- including the fact that it’s their last chance before Alexander retires at the end of the year.

Those hopeful for a deal point to the fact that the two senators have a history of being able to find compromise on complex legislation, including the Every Student Succeeds Act they negotiated in 2015.

Back home in Washington State two weeks ago, Murray brought up their relationship when asked by a local public radio station if it’s still possible to work out bipartisan deals in Washington, D.C.

“That is what I do every day. I’ve done it with Paul Ryan in putting together a budget deal no one thought that we could do. [Or] in working with Lamar Alexander in rewriting No Child Left Behind,” Murray told KNKX. “I’m working with Lamar now to rewrite the Higher Education Act to address the cost of college and safety on campus.”

Alexander also spoke about his relationship with Murray in his presentation to the community college trustees. He also cited his work with Murray on No Child Left Behind.

“You think higher education is hard? That was hard,” he said. “And I’d like to do the same thing for higher education.”

Once Alexander is gone, Murray will be dealing with somebody else. For her, one motivation to get a deal done this year that it’s hard to know who that will be.

The Senate generally goes by seniority in deciding who chairs committees. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina is the committee’s next senior Republican. But he also is chairman of the intelligence committee.

Burr will hit the Senate’s time limit for chairing that committee, but he could seek a waiver. It’s unclear if he will.

“We’ll decline to speculate about chairmanships in the next Congress at this time,” said a spokeswoman for Burr.

If Burr passes on the chairmanship, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky would be next on the list. Many are skeptical Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, will allow Paul to chair the committee, because he’s not known for toeing the line. And it’s unclear if Paul would be interested in the chairmanship. His spokesman declined comment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about education at all. I don’t think it’s a primary issue for him,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. He added that Paul could still be interested in chairing the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee because it is also the main committee handling health-care policy.

And Paul could be sympathetic to the belief among many libertarians and conservatives that federal student aid leads to higher tuition, the so-called Bennett hypothesis. He could push to eliminate or cut federal aid, he said, although he might settle for cutting back programs like Parent PLUS that are not focused on low-income students, McCluskey said.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is next on the list. But Collins faces a tough re-election fight and may not be in the Senate next year. If she is, Collins could be in position to chair the powerful appropriations committee.

Next up after her is Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana gastroenterologist who might be interested in working on health-care policy.

"Chairmanship succession can be unpredictable, depending on the complicated Rubik's cube of committees and seniority and requests that Senator McConnell may face," said Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success and former Democratic senior counsel of the HELP Committee.

Another lobbyist said, "Both Sens. Murray and Alexander have a strong incentive to reach a deal now, because Alexander very much wants the higher ed feather in his cap before he retires."

The lobbyist added in an email that "Senator Murray is looking at a future chairman (or ranking member) with whom she may not have such a strong partnership."

During the meeting with two-year college trustees, Alexander said now is not the time to hold out for a better deal.

“If you don’t get it done this year, it’ll probably be another 10 years before you get the job done properly,” he said.

Factoring in a New White House

Murray may be less concerned about who her Republican counterpart is if Democrats gain the four Senate seats they need in November to ensure having the majority. But that’s considered very iffy.

A Democratic president who would push to make college more affordable could help Murray secure more financial aid funding in the Senate. But the election of a candidate like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, who are calling for major changes like free college and forgiving student debt, could also make that harder.

“They could wind up moving the goalposts pretty considerably for what constitutes a ‘good deal’ and could make it even harder for Senator Murray to live up to expectations and hold the Dem caucus together,” a higher education lobbyist said in an email.

According to Alexander, though, there are a number of elements for an HEA bill on which he and Murray have been able to find agreement, including allowing use of Pell Grants for short-term programs. He mentioned the bipartisan Jumpstart Our Businesses by Supporting Students (JOBS) Act, introduced last year by Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat. The bill would allow Pell money to be spent on programs as short as eight weeks that are designed to help students quickly find employment.

“We believe the Rob Portman and Tim Kaine’s legislation would be a good idea, so we’re committed to that,” Alexander said of Murray and himself at the community college event.

Alexander also said he and Murray agree on further simplifying the federal financial aid application. Twenty-two questions were cut under a law Congress passed last year. ”We have bipartisan support to further reduce the FAFSA from 108 to 18 to 32 questions,” Alexander said

Lindwarm said he thinks a reauthorized HEA is a possibility in 2020.

"Alexander and Murray have cut deals before," he said. "No one should think that they can’t do it again."

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The University of California, Santa Cruz, made good on a threat to fire striking graduate student employees late last week: 54 graduate assistants received notifications that they’ll lose their spring teaching appointments for failing to turn in undergraduates’ fall quarter grades.

It’s all part of December grade strike over a requested cost of living adjustment, which has since escalated to a full labor strike. The strike, in turn, spread to California’s Davis and Santa Barbara campuses last week. But Santa Cruz is the only site where graduate students have been fired.

“Your abandonment and sustained willful dereliction of your job responsibilities as a teaching fellow constitutes serious misconduct,” read intent-to-dismiss letters sent to the graduate instructors Friday. “Your conduct has harmed graduate students and disrupted university operations.”

The letters warn students that they’re also at risk of losing financial aid, eligibility for academic honors and even adequate advising.

Some 200 Santa Cruz graduate workers initially withheld fall grades. Their union, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, says that 82 students are still holding back marks and that those who didn’t receive one of the 54 dismissal letters instead received notes that they are out of consideration for spring appointments.

The university said two weeks ago that it would fire those who refused to turn in grades, as the action unfairly impacted undergraduates. In the interim, 500 graduate students pledged not to pick up any assistantships from fired workers. So Friday’s development raises new questions about how the strike will impact campus operations.

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to find an amenable resolution, 54 teaching assistants have continued to withhold fall grade information,” Lori Kletzer, interim provost, announced. “As a result, we have been left with no choice but to take an action that we had truly and deeply hoped to avoid.”

The firings increase the financial hardship of graduates students who say they already face severe rent burden, which they cite in seeking more money. They also put the legal status of international students at risk.

“It’s like a chain of events that starts with termination of employment, leads to removal of tuition remission and goes all the way to losing your visa and having to leave the country,” stated Stefan Yong, a Ph.D. candidate from Singapore who is studying in Santa Cruz’s history of consciousness program. Yong estimates he pays 45 percent of his salary for rent, and said over the weekend that he's "one of the lucky ones in that regard." Like many of his colleagues, he received a notice that he's blocked from spring appointments over the grade strike.

The federal government defines rent "burden" as paying more than 30 percent of household pay for rent and severe rent burden as spending more than 50 percent of pay on rent.

California is generally an expensive place to live, but graduate employees at Santa Cruz say that their city is so lacking in affordable housing that many of them pay 60 percent of what they make for rent. Based on their calculations, their requested COLA of $1,412 per month would enable many of them to spend a more manageable 30 percent of pay on rent.

Protesters at Santa Barbara are seeking about $1,800 extra per month for the same reason. Colleagues at Davis say they need about $1,550 extra to make ends meet.

Across the University of California system, graduate student instructors, readers and graders make $2,400, pre-tax, per month for nine months out of the year for half-time appointments.

Because the statewide UAW contract is current, Santa Cruz has said it can’t renegotiate graduate workers’ pay. But Santa Cruz strikers say that the contract never suited their needs and that 83 percent of voters on their campus opposed it, even as it passed statewide last summer.

Graduate workers insist that Santa Cruz’s administration could amend the contract if it wanted to. Instead, Santa Cruz offered $2,500 annual housing supplements -- first on an as-needed basis, and then, after pushback, to everyone -- until the university builds more student housing. The university also promised full funding packages for doctoral students in the first five years of their programs and for master of fine arts students in their first two years, among other changes.

That’s still not enough for graduate students who say they can’t afford to live where they’ve been recruited to work and study.

The statewide UAW union has not approved any of the “wildcat” campus strikes, and the contract includes a no-strike clause. But the union has encouraged university administrations to bargain with workers. On Thursday, it also filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state alleging that the university has failed to meet and confer to negotiate a COLA. The claim says that the university has tried to avoid bargaining with the union by engaging individual graduate students and university-funded student graduate student assemblies.

Both Santa Cruz and the greater UC system say they’ve worked in good faith to resolve the conflict. Janet Napolitano, system president, previously announced that she plans to meet with the UC Graduate and Professional Council, but that group said in a statement that it agreed to do so to “discuss joint advocacy opportunities with the state legislature, not to negotiate a cost of living adjustment or union contracts.”

The American Association of University Professors' governing council last week endorsed the Santa Cruz grads, saying that graduate student workers “do important work to fulfill the university’s academic mission and their compensation should reflect that simple fact.” The UAW represents 19,000 graduate employees across the California system.

Santa Cruz and other system campuses are located in areas with "extraordinarily high housing costs that put a great burden on graduate students and other low wage workers," according to the AAUP. One-bedroom apartments in the Santa Cruz area rent for an average of $2,600 a month, the group said, “but graduate students only earn about $2,400. The university needs to recognize that this is an unsustainable situation.”

As for the university’s argument that it can’t bargain with one campus during a statewide contract, the AAUP Council wrote that universities are “creative places and we expect better from UCSC administration. Options include increases in wages, fellowships, stipends, and scholarships.”

The council further condemned "the use of riot police against the graduate student picketers and condemn President Napolitano’s threat to fire striking graduate student workers. No university should be taking that approach toward its own employees."

Regarding police activity, 17 students were arrested last month during campus protests.

In addition to the support from the AAUP, about 3,000 academics, mostly faculty members, have pledged not to hold or attend events at Santa Cruz or any other California campus where there is a strike.

A Santa Cruz administrator who did not want to be identified by name, citing the ongoing situation, said that the “disaster” unfolding at Santa Cruz “speaks to the dismal financial plight of public higher education in this country, a situation that has been deteriorating for many years,” and especially since 2008.

If the world’s “premier public higher education system” can’t afford to pay graduate students “enough to house and feed themselves,” the administrator said, “perhaps that’s because state funding for colleges and universities has plummeted to an all-time low." California dedicates 2.5 percent of its budget to the UC system.

Before “imagining that we are frivolously squandering taxpayer dollars or voluntarily starving our students,” the administrator said, anyone wondering how this situation came about should study that budget.

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Colleges continue to grapple with how to respond to the new coronavirus, COVID-19, as public health officials report community spread of the virus in California, Oregon and Washington State. There are more than 87,000 confirmed cases globally and, as of Sunday afternoon, 73 in the U.S. Over the weekend health authorities announced the first two deaths in the U.S. from the virus, both in the Seattle area.

Several colleges on the West Coast reported that students had potentially been exposed to the virus. Academic events have been canceled, most notably the American Physical Society annual meeting, which, with 10,000 expected attendees, is the largest annual convening of physicists worldwide. 

Lake Washington Institute of Technology said officials learned on Saturday that a nursing professor and 16 of its students were at a nursing and rehabilitation facility late last week where two confirmed coronavirus cases have been reported.

The college's president, Amy Morrison, said in a statement that the college would be closed Monday and Tuesday to continue disinfecting and cleaning the campus, and that all large community and college events for the week are canceled.

The Los Rios Community College District, in California, said that four students at its member colleges have been exposed to individuals with confirmed coronavirus. In all cases the exposure happened when the affected students were performing their professional medical duties. All have been ordered by health authorities to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Los Rios said that three of the four students returned after the exposure to their respective campuses, American River College, Cosumnes River College and Sacramento City College. Despite this, the community college district said it had been directed by Sacramento County public health experts "to take no immediate action and proceed with regular class and work schedules at this time."

The University of California, Davis, reported Sunday that a student who had been quarantined for a possible case of COVID-19 tested negative for the virus. Two other students who were asymptomatic but who lived in the same residence hall were released from isolation.

Many colleges have continued recalling students and faculty from travel to countries with high levels of community transmission -- most notably China, where the virus originated, as well as South Korea, Italy and Japan -- and are in some cases urging individuals to self-quarantine or refrain from coming to campus upon their return to the U.S.

The University of Pittsburgh said in a press release it is “encouraging all Pitt-affiliated people across its five campuses to practice social distancing upon return from areas with sustained community transmission of COVID-19.” The release asks individuals who have returned from China since Jan. 21 and from Iran, Italy, Japan or South Korea since Feb. 13 to refrain from coming to campus for 14 days.

Rice University said on Saturday that its Crisis Management Advisory Committee “has asked a small group of Rice employees and students to self-quarantine because of a Rice employee's possible exposure to the coronavirus while on overseas travel.” Rice did not specify where the individuals had traveled but said it was to a country that is not on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s restricted travel list.

The CDC recommends against nonessential travel to China, Iran, Italy and South Korea, and recommends enhanced precautions for travelers heading to Japan.

The CDC upgraded the travel warning for Italy to its highest level on Friday. Colleges typically abide by the travel warnings issued by the CDC and the Department of State. Accordingly, an increasing number of colleges have announced plans to close study abroad sites and recall students from Italy, which is the second-most popular destination for Americans studying abroad after the United Kingdom. Almost 37,000 American students studied in Italy for credit in 2017-18, according to the Institute of International Education's Open Doors survey. Among the institutions that have suspended their Italy programs or recalled students are:

• Loyola University Chicago
• Pennsylvania State University
• Spring Hill College
• Syracuse University
• Temple University
• Trinity College
• University of Connecticut
• University of Maryland

NBC News reported Friday that the 550 students on a Semester at Sea voyage that was supposed to take them to 11 countries have been trapped at sea for about two weeks. Semester at Sea reported on its website that it made the decision to divert from planned stops in Malaysia and India due to the coronavirus, and that it was denied permission to dock in Seychelles by public health and port authorities there. On Saturday, Semester at Sea said in a statement it had confirmed plans to dock in Mauritius on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the National College Players Association on Saturday called for “a serious discussion” of whether to hold the March Madness basketball tournament and other athletic events without an audience present. A National Collegiate Athletic Association spokeswoman said the NCAA's Sports Science Institute sent memos to NCAA members directing colleges and conference offices to CDC resources on the issue. "Otherwise, NCAA staff continues to prepare for all NCAA winter and spring championships, but we are keenly aware of coronavirus and will continue to monitor in coordination with state/local health authorities and the CDC," the spokeswoman said.

TheÔÇï ÔÇïcoronavirus is also causing conference cancellations in North America, including the cancellation of the American Physical Society meeting. APS announced on Saturday that it was canceling the meeting, which was scheduled to start today in Denver. Many attendees criticized the timing of the decision on Twitter, saying it came too late and that they had already traveled long distances to get to the meeting location.

"The decision to cancel was based on the latest scientific data being reported, and the fact that a large number of attendees at this meeting are coming from outside the US, including countries where the CDC upgraded its warning to level 3 as recently as Saturday, February 29," APS said in a statement on its website. "Please wait for APS staff to be in touch with you in order to arrange for a full refund of your registration fees. The situation with hotels is more complicated, and we ask your forbearance as APS looks into what is possible regarding hotel cancellation fees."

Educause, an association focused on technology in higher education, similarly canceled a meeting on Sunday that was scheduled to start today in Bellevue, Wash., outside Seattle.

And Sarah Todd, the president of the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education, announced on Twitter that the group would postpone its meeting scheduled for later this month in Vancouver until March 2021.

Although some school districts in Oregon and Washington State have closed, the Universities of Oregon and Washington both said their campuses are operating normally. Colleges are urging students to wash hands thoroughly and practice other good hygiene practices and to stay home and contact student health services when sick. Some colleges are also stepping up their cleaning and sanitation protocols.

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It’s fund raising, and presidents agree on its centrality to their duties.

Some colleges that counted on an increase in international students that didn’t come through now have to shift strategies.

According to the 2017 American College President Study, nearly 60 percent of presidents said it was one of the main things that occupied their time.