Tag: Higher Education

The shrouded process by which Colorado State University is searching for its first-ever system chancellor offers a striking contrast to the public disclosure by the University of Idaho in its recruitment of a new campus chief. Ironically, ex-CSU president Larry Penley figures prominently in both stories.

Rocked by the former president's high-stakes budget shifting, Colorado State University is gambling once again that upping administration costs will bolster its future. The controversial search for the land grant university's first chancellor comes amid faculty and staff layoffs, a looming multi-million budget shortfall and another round of expected state tuition hikes. But what good does a high-level executive ensconced in a Denver office bring to thousands of middle class students and dwindling ranks of tenured faculty at the Fort Collins and Pueblo campuses?

Investigation of the veiled process by which Colorado State University decided to hire its first system-wide chancellor to lobby lawmakers and "attend cocktail parties" leads to a nondescript administrative division housed in Denver.

This week the finance industry reacted with alarm to sections of the Obama budget that would push the banking industry out from the center of the student-loan business and turn billions of dollars in private profits into scholarship money, aiming to cut corruption and lower skyrocketing student debt. The Obama plan is a version of reform plans that have been floated for years as abuses in the student-loan industry have come to light. The difference is that this one is likely to pass into law.

Culminating a week of being beat up in the press and on the blogs, Colorado Sen. Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora) will talk with AM760 progressive radio show host Mario Solis-Marich today at 5:30 p.m. The subject of the pro-am media ire: Carroll's opposition to an in-state tuition equity for undocumented Colorado high school grads. Expect fireworks. Marich dubbed Morgan and the four Senate democrats who joined the GOP caucus to defeat SB 170 the "Dream Killer Five" in a piece posted at Huffington Post.

The unending Colorado budget crisis continues. There's not enough money, say lawmakers, to grant undocumented Colorado students in-state tuition. The Legislature this week is floating a $300 million cut to higher education. Yet there's lots of money to waste on political court battles that the state has no hope of winning.

The state companion to the federal DREAM Act that would have provided college tuition equity to undocumented Colorado high school graduates was lost on a 18-16 vote on second reading, reports Hank Lacey at Colorado Capitol Journal. Five democrats joined with the Republican minority to halt SB 170.

Senate lawmakers on the left and right came together Thursday to fund more schools in Denver, passing Senate Bill 256. It was a remarkable feat but it may be overshadowed by the big-time poker game the Joint Budget Committee began dealing out Wednesday, which could cost already strapped higher education in the state roughly $400 million. The committee threatened to cut $300 million in state funds, which would automatically disqualify Colorado for $100 million more in federal stimulus cash.

The jury in the Ward Churchill trial decided in favor of the defendant yesterday. The members agreed after a day and a half of deliberation with the so-called 9/11 professor's claims that he was wrongfully dismissed from the University of Colorado — that he was fired, basically, to appease national outcry over his controversial writings on the 9/11 attacks. In awarding him a mere $1, the jury chose not to compensate him in cash but paid him instead the kind of compliment he will likely appreciate: The minimal cash award suggests the jury concluded that Churchill, although unlikeable or unsympathetic, was right.

Could former Colorado State University President Larry Penley become a Vandal? Some say he has already shown his skills as a pillager, and they are demanding his name be removed from a dwindling list of finalists for the top job at the University of Idaho.