Roundup: News You Need to Know, Tues., Nov. 21st

TONIGHT: Secretary Spellings Appears on Jeopardy

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will appear on Celebrity Jeopardy! tonight at 7:30 P.M (EST). She will be competing against Michael McKean, an actor best known for his roles in Laverne and Shirley (Lenny), This is Spinal Tap, and more recently Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, and Hill Harper, an actor who currently plays Dr. Sheldon Hawkes on CSI: NY. Harper, one of People magazines Sexiest Men Alive, will not be easy competition: he graduated magna cum laude from Brown and has a JD and MPA from Harvard. The celebrities are competing for at least $1 million to be donated to a charity of their choice.

Public Flagship Universities Becoming "Engines of Inequality"

A new report by the Education Trust finds that public flagship universities have become less accessible to low-income and minority students. The report grades each university on gaps in access and graduation rates between low-income and minority students and the student body as a whole. Only four of the 50 universities received "B" grades, and 32 received "D" or "F" grades. The Education Trust attributes a large part of the enrollment and graduation gaps to insufficient need-based financial aid and growing merit-based aid. At flagship universities, the average institution grant going to students with family incomes of over $100,000 increased by 19% from 1995 to 2003, while the average grant going to students with family incomes of less than $20,000 actually decreased by 2%.

Higher Ed Commission Confluence?

The College Board has assembled a "Rethinking Student Aid Study Group" that will examine the effectiveness of federal financial aid programs. The group will look at research on grants, loans, and tuition tax breaks and create proposals for program improvements. They plan on evaluating the current system both in terms of efficiency and broader considerations, such as how financial aid affects college completion rates and nontraditional students. Several leading Democrats will participate in the group, including Jacob Jack Lew, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, Marshall Mike Smith, former acting Deputy Secretary and Undersecretary of Education under Clinton, and Tom Kane, former senior economist on Clintons Council of Economic Advisers. It will be worth paying attention to how the College Board groups recommendations either match or differ from those of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which was comprised of many prominent Republicans, including Sara Martinez Tucker, the next Undersecretary of Education. An Education Department official has already said that they are closely watching and "very interested" in the groups work. We will be too.