Roundup: News You Need to Know, Wed., Nov. 29th

Black Enrollment at Northwestern at a Historical Low

The student newspaper at Northwestern University found that black enrollment has decreased by almost half over the past three decades. In 1976, Northwesterns black enrollment reached a high of 9.6%. By 2005, it had declined to only 5.5% of the undergraduate student body. University officials at Northwestern attribute the trend to increasing competition among colleges for high-achieving minority students and increasing competition in Northwesterns general applicant pool. The university has said that increasing black enrollment is on its agenda and plans to fund a new scholarship for black students and intensify its minority recruitment efforts.

Legislation to Forgive Loans for Public Sector Lawyers to be Reintroduced

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is planning to reintroduce legislation that would give student loan relief to lawyers who choose to enter the public sector. Under the Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act, the Justice Department would pay up to $10,000 a year of law school loans for prosecutors or public defenders who commit to at least three years of service. Only federal loans would be forgiven, and forgiveness would be capped at $60,000. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill last May, but it failed to reach the floor for a vote. Private law school graduates accumulate an average of $78,763 in student loans and public law school graduates accumulate an average of $51,056, according to the American Bar Association.

State Legislatures Report on What States Should do to Improve Higher Education

A report released Monday by a panel of the National Conference of State Legislatures advocates for state lawmakers to become more involved in agenda-setting for higher education. The report places blame on states for failing to adequately invest in and monitor higher education. In the past, states have only made reactive changes to higher education policies, instead of constructing policies to meet long-term strategic goals. The panels 15 recommendations mirror many of the findings of the Secretary of Educations Commission on the Future of Higher Education, including: increasing accountability and creating a system for collecting higher education data, ensuring that colleges are accessible and affordable by restructuring and supporting financial aid programs, and more closely examining whether state money is spent productively.

Basic College Data is Available: See (not so) “COOL” Department of Education Website

Margaret Spellings and the Commission on the Future of Higher Education have criticized what they view as an absence of accessible information on colleges. However, there is currently a website operated by the Department of Education, College Opportunities Online Locator, which provides a lot of the basic data that Spellings has said is lacking: tuition costs, retention and graduation rates, degrees by major field, default rates, according to Inside Higher Education. Further, the individual websites of most colleges supply more detailed information, for example data on job placement and wage levels of graduates. A spokeswoman for Spellings noted that information is not available on the cause of tuition increases and what students are getting in return for higher tuition.

Arizona State Expands Grant Program for Low-Income Students

Arizona State University (ASU) has announced a new financial aid initiative that will provide full tuition, fees, books, and room and board to low-income Arizona students. The “Sun Devil Promise” will be available to Arizona residents with family incomes of less than $25,000 a year, which includes approximately one-quarter of Arizona households with children. The new program is an expansion of a previous two-year old ASU program that covered the full costs of students with family incomes of less than $18,850. The university has increased need-based grant funding by 246% in the past three years. Despite having fewer institutional resources, ASU joins universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in providing full grants to low-income students.