College tuition costs shot up again this fall, and students and their families are leaning more on the federal government to make higher education affordable in tough economic times, according to two reports Thursday. At public four-year schools, many of them ravaged by state budget cuts, average in-state tuition and fees this fall rose 7.9%, or $555 a year, to $7,605, according to the College Board ‘s “Trends in College Pricing.” The average sticker price at private nonprofit colleges increased 4.5%, or $1,164, to $27,293. Massive government subsidies and aid from schools helped keep in check the final price many students paid. But experts caution that federal aid can only do so much and even higher tuition is likely unless state appropriations rebound or colleges drastically cut costs. “Just when Americans need college the most, many are finding it increasingly difficult to afford,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education . When adjusted for inflation, the tuition increases this fall amount to 6.6% at public four-year colleges and 3.2% at private ones, according to the College Board. Many students are finding relief in expanded federal aid, including tax credits, veterans’ benefits and a record expansion of the Pell Grant program for low-income students. In 2009-10, 7.7 million students received $28.2 billion in Pell Grants — an increase of almost $10 billion from the year before, according to a companion College Board report, “Trends in Student Aid.” Even so, the maximum Pell grant covers just 34% of the average cost of attending a public four-year college, down from 45% two decades ago. For now, government subsidies and aid from schools are helping hold down net tuition and fees — the actual cost students pay when grants and tax breaks are factored in. Estimated average net tuition and fees this fall at public four-year colleges were $1,540, while at private colleges they were $11,320. Both are up from last year, but below what students paid five years ago. “Despite the fact sticker prices have gone way up, there is so much grant aid out there that many students are really paying less than they did before,” said Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst for the College Board and a Skidmore College economics professor. That’s also contributed to a growing gap between those who receive aid and the one-third of full-time students who pay full freight for college, the report says. Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said it’s important to note that tuition is climbing after a decade in which family income did not rise for 90% of Americans, and at a time when many areas of the country face high unemployment. “We’re kind of on a national treadmill,” Callan said. “We’re putting additional aid in that is helping to buffer some students from the severity of this. But the tuition increases and the bad economy are raising the need for financial aid much faster than our investment in aid is moving.” The student aid report found that grant aid per full-time undergraduate student increased an estimated 22% from 2008-2009, while federal loans increased 9%. The Obama administration’s restructuring of the federal student loan program this year will direct more money to Pell Grants and tie future increases in the maximum grant to inflation. But college officials say the impact will be minimal because next year’s increase is small and tuition is rising faster than inflation. Most students attend public schools, and states continue to cut appropriations. After adjusting for inflation, per-student state spending on higher education dropped nearly 9% in 2008-09 and another 5% in 2009-10 — and that spending includes soon-to-expire federal stimulus money . Community colleges, which educate about 40% of college students, remain affordable, with tuition averaging $2,713. Lower income students receive enough aid to attend essentially for free. Still, tuition rose 6% at public two-year colleges. State and local budget cuts paired with skyrocketing enrollment have prompted some schools to cut courses and limit enrollment. The priciest private colleges are creeping closer to shattering the $60,000 ceiling in total cost to attend. David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, emphasized net tuition and fees have declined 7.4% in the past decade in inflation-adjusted dollars because colleges are expanding student aid. “Every institution that I talk to understands the absolutely critical role of aid and it’s going to be the thing they try to hold at the top of the list of priorities,” Warren said. On average, about 55% of bachelor’s degree recipients at public colleges borrow money, and their debt is $19,800 by graduation, the College Board found. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A student at Emory University told a fellow reveler at a fraternity party early Saturday morning that he was gay. In return, he was allegedly showered with anti-gay slurs and dragged out by his neck as onlookers cheered, according to the Emory Wheel . Though the incident is still under investigation, it has already prompted calls for greater campus harmony. Incidents like this, and the suicide last month of the Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, could grow rarer, say legal experts and student advocates, following the U.S. Department of Education ‘s release Tuesday of anti-discrimination guidelines. ON THE WEB: When college is not the best time MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Substitute education for Lysol The “guidance letter,” reportedly in the works for months, tells schools, colleges and universities that bullying should be treated as more than just a breach of campus codes; it also must been seen as a possible violation of federal law. “I am writing to remind you,” wrote Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights, “that some student misconduct that falls under a school’s anti-bullying policy also may trigger responsibilities under one or more of the federal antidiscrimination laws enforced by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights.” Though Ali’s letter did not stake out any new policy ground, it did signal the Obama administration’s tighter embrace of its duty to police civil rights infractions. It also more conclusively fleshed out how existing laws will be applied. Most pointedly, it made clear that campus officials must take immediate and appropriate action to impartially investigate harassment allegations and respond in a way that is “reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring.” If not, the full powers of the Department’s Office of Civil Rights will be called upon, Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned. “Are we putting people on notice? The answer is yes,” he said. “If we have to, we’re more than prepared to step in.” In the Emory case, the university already has affirmed its commitment to providing a “safe, inclusive and welcoming environment” for everyone, as well as its intolerance for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, according to a statement attributed to John L. Ford, senior vice president for campus life. The student, unnamed by the campus newspaper, wants to use the incident as a learning opportunity for Emory students, according to Michael D. Shutt, director of Emory’s office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender life. Such campus-wide efforts are welcome, according to the Department of Education’s letter. It recommends not just separating the victim and perpetrator, but also rewriting policy, if necessary, and educating the wider community. “If there’s a culture toward being discriminatory or whatever ‘-ism’ you want to insert there, if there’s a culture there, the institution as a whole has a responsibility to shift that culture or at least educate people,” said W. Scott Lewis, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administrators and a partner in the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. “In the world of student conduct, everything is about accountability and education.” He viewed the letter’s release as properly framing bullying and harassment in the context of civil rights. Advocates for gay and lesbian students and for Jewish students enthusiastically greeted the release of the letter as bolstering protection of victimized groups. “This is a bold step,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, a Charlotte, group advocating for safer college environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. Windmeyer was especially pleased that the department signaled its willingness to use Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination, to guard against abuses based on sexual orientation. Though federal law does not explicitly protect students on the basis of sexual orientation, the letter spells out a more expansive view, one that says sex discrimination can be punished if students are harassed “for exhibiting what is perceived as a stereotypical characteristic for their sex, or for failing to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity.” To Windmeyer, such language is “a great step forward.” Rep. Brad Sherman , D-Calif., hailed the letter for applying Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to incidents of anti-Semitism. Though Title VI does not apply to religion, the letter, here too, stakes out an expansive view. It cites as actionable discrimination against students on the basis of “actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” “The policy is now clear,” Sherman said in a statement. “Colleges and universities will no longer be permitted to turn a blind eye when Jewish students face severe and persistent anti-Semitic hostility on their campuses. The schools will now be compelled to respond.” Colleges’ responses are mandatory, even if a student does not formally file a complaint, according to the letter. In fact, college and university administrators are on the hook for addressing harassment incidents about which they know or “reasonably should have known,” wrote Ali. Such an expectation is troubling to Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education , especially because the letter applies both to K-12 schools and to colleges and universities. “Certainly, in a K-12 environment, there are teachers who come and go in hallways. It’s different from a higher ed situation,” said Meloy. “It’s very difficult for institutions to meet a ‘should have known’ standard — especially when it’s often applied in hindsight.” The emphasis on K-12 creates other problems for higher education institutions looking for guidance on how to respond. Sorting through what qualifies as harassment and what doesn’t depends largely on the specific facts, department officials emphasized. When campus officials receive guidance letters such as the one released Tuesday, they rely on the examples, culled from actual events, that are cited in these guidelines. Tuesday’s letter, however, cited four examples — and none dealt with higher education. “The new guidance reinforces the complexity for colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, in addressing peer-to-peer harassing behavior,” said Ann H. Franke, a lawyer who consults nationally with colleges and universities on academic freedom, workplace issues, and student affairs. “The more fact patterns they put in front of us the more detail we get.” Others saw in the letter an even more unwelcome blending of assumptions of the roles played by K-12 and higher education institutions. The letter urges a paternalistic stance that is inappropriate for colleges and universities and would impinge on the First Amendment right of free speech, wrote Will Creeley, director of legal and public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, in Philadelphia. “At an institution of higher education, students may range in age from 17 to 67 and beyond, and must be treated like the adults they are,” Creeley wrote in an e-mail. “Our nation’s colleges and universities have a legal duty to respond to instances of true harassment. They must also respect the expressive rights of their students. These dual obligations to protect free speech and prosecute actual harassment need not be in tension.”

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s Education Department approved a textbook that wrongly claims thousands of black troops fought for the Confederacy. The agency is now warning schools about the mistake after a fourth-grader’s parent discovered the error in the Civil War chapter of Our Virginia: Past and Present . The parent, Carol Sheriff, is also a history professor at the College of William and Mary . Sheriff says blacks occasionally took up arms to defend their masters, but it was illegal to use blacks as soldiers in the Confederacy until toward the war’s end. None of those companies saw action on the battlefront and most worked involuntarily as laborers Our Virginia author Joy Masoff told The Washington Post that she found the passage on the Internet. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WESTCHESTER, N.Y. — October has been a bad month for college towns. On Oct. 2, a raid by New Haven , Conn., police to break up a party by Yale University students led to claims of police brutality and excessive force. One week later, a party by Penn State University students turned violent when a fight between two women spilled out onto the streets of State College, leaving two students with stab wounds. Last week, Pace University football player Danroy “DJ” Henry was shot and killed by police outside a popular eatery frequented by students from the nearby Pace campus. What they have in common is alcohol — a common component in encounters between police and college students that can fuel tensions. “Obviously you’re going to have some standard issues,” said Eugene O’Donnell, professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice . “You’re going to have issues about later-night activity. You’re going to have alcohol-related issues.” The violence outside Finnegan’s Grill in Thornwood, N.Y., came after a celebration of the school’s homecoming game, attended by about 150 people including students and members of the football team. The crowd spilled into the parking lot after 1 a.m. after a fight inside the bar. On Friday, a law enforcement source told The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News that Henry had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13%, exceeding the legal limit of 0.08%. It was hardly the first run-in between police and Pace students. In November 2000, several students were among eight men who trashed a campus townhouse in retaliation for an earlier fight at a local bar. And on April 25, 2008, a 21-year-old student was charged with assaulting his ex-girlfriend in her dorm room during a drunken rampage. “Pace is like a little city unto itself, and they do require police resources,” said Mount Pleasant (N.Y.) Police Chief Louis Alagno. “We’re called there mostly for things such as motor vehicle accidents and aided cases, but we also respond for criminal incidents. There are burglaries, larcenies and the occasional sex crime or assault. It does require police resources.” You don’t have to tell police in New Rochelle, N.Y., a city with three colleges — College of New Rochelle, Iona College and Monroe College. “We’ll have pockets of disturbances,” said New Rochelle police Capt. Robert Gazzola, head of the department’s police services division. “I don’t think there’s any lasting animosity between the police department, the Iona College students, the Monroe College students. A lot of it is isolated incidents that perk up and we have to respond.” The city, plagued for years by rowdy behavior in local bars tackled the problem years ago by passing a stricter “cabaret law” that allowed police to go after and target troublesome bars. Police in Mount Pleasant and Pleasantville, where most Pace watering holes are located, have enforced underage drinking laws for years — a common tactic in college towns. But the bar at the center of a fatal shooting had no recent history of problems involving students, according to state and local law enforcement. Finnegan’s seemed an unlikely place for a violent encounter between police and celebrating college students last weekend. Pace students interviewed by The Journal News said they generally had not had negative encounters with local police. Some went so far as to say they were shocked to hear of the violence outside Finnegan’s last weekend. “I wouldn’t say they’re aggressive, they’re just doing their job,” said student John Tripodi. “I guess what they did (outside Finnegan’s) was a little excessive, but if I was him I don’t know what I would have done.” But Megan Murphy, a freshman accounting major at the Mount Pleasant college, called the police account of the shooting “ridiculous.” “It’s all too iffy right now. I’m not sure,” Murphy said. “I wasn’t there so I can’t say what exactly happened. (Henry) probably just panicked.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When bad weather hits this winter, students in a rural western Ohio school district will hit their home computers as part of an experiment. With the Ohio Department of Education looking on, the Mississinawa Valley Schools in Darke County will try to replace days off for snow and other inclement weather with online learning. Department officials say the test could help the state determine the future of calamity days. School districts are allowed to declare only three this year, down from the previous five. Schools that go over must make up the days on scheduled days off or at the end of the school year. Mississinawa Superintendent Lisa Wendel told The Columbus Dispatch the experience in online education will help students in college, where those classes are more common. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso: no big deal, many college students might say. Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso times three or four, and they still might tell you they’re not intoxicated. Therein lies the danger of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, whose popularity has grown in recent years among college-aged drinkers, drawing the attention of concerned health officials, politicians and college administrators. Experts say that even one is a recipe for disaster, and so do officials at Ramapo College : they banned alcoholic energy drinks on campus this month. Peter Mercer, president of the New Jersey college, said students referred to the above concoction when describing the effects of drinks such as Four Loko, which is particularly popular around the campus. Four Loko is one of a few flashy, canned drinks that take the mixing out of the equation, making it that much easier for students to get dangerously intoxicated, faster. Mercer said concerned students told him the inexpensive 23-ounce, 12% alcohol energy drinks were “all of a sudden very popular,” and Four Loko was involved in a couple of incidents of excessive drinking. Since the start of fall semester, 23 people have been hospitalized with alcohol intoxication. ON THE WEB: Why do students take so long to grow up? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Are prescription drugs “cheating”? Mercer called Four Loko a “cynical product” whose only purpose is to get the drinker intoxicated quickly. Others agree: Glen L. Sherman, co-chair of the Alcohol and Other Drug Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said the drinks are dangerous because of their apparent targeting of underage student consumers and their high alcohol content — drinking one can of Four Loko is the approximate equivalent of drinking four beers, according to an informational page NASPA recently posted on its website. “These beverages are of great concern to us,” Sherman wrote in an e-mail. “Each campus must decide what specific steps make sense to best educate students about and try to protect them from these risks, and to encourage students to make good decisions when they are confronted by them.” Ramapo’s ban is part of a “multi-pronged approach” addressing excessive alcohol consumption, Mercer said. Other measures the college has taken include increasing after-hours security measures in residence halls, tightening visitor policies and holding student focus groups. Those additional steps may be crucial for the ban to have even a shot at success. Kathleen E. Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has studied college students’ use of energy drinks, both with and without alcohol. She said that if the college can’t ban drinks like Red Bull and vodka from local bars, it won’t be able to stop consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. But the college can send a signal. “A college ban will make people take a second look and maybe they’ll be more aware of what they’re drinking,” Miller said. “It’s inherently potentially dangerous to mix caffeine and alcohol because you’re sending your body mixed signals.” The caffeine stimulates the system while the alcohol depresses it, making students feel less drunk than they actually are. Through her research, Miller found that students who consume energy drinks with or without alcohol are more likely to engage in risky behavior like drug use, smoking or binge drinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean the energy drinks cause the behavior, but there is a correlation. Energy drink consumption “isn’t necessarily a gateway behavior, but it is what you might call a red-flag behavior,” she said. In a June 2008 study published in the Journal of American College Health, Miller found that 26% of surveyed public university undergraduates reported consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol in the past month, while about half said they’d done so more than once. Efforts at Ramapo have curbed and will continue to curb consumption of alcoholic energy drinks, Mercer said, but “it’s unrealistic to assume that it’ll be totally eliminated.” That’s not stopping him from trying, though: At the next meeting of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, Mercer plans to make his case to other college and university presidents. “The risk for their students is just as high as the risk for mine,” he said. “I’ll tell them what I’ve done and hope that they may want to follow suit.” States such as New Jersey and New Mexico are considering banning the drinks entirely. The drinks are also on the federal government’s radar. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration threatened to ban the drinks if manufacturers could not prove they were safe for consumption. No regulations have been issued yet, but an FDA press officer, Michael L. Herndon, told Inside Higher Ed on Friday that the agency has received 19 responses from 27 manufacturers and distributors, and plans to evaluate those submissions and other scientific evidence “as soon as possible in order to determine whether caffeine can be safely and lawfully added to alcoholic beverages.” Herndon said the decision is a high priority but “could take some time.” But Mercer doesn’t need FDA regulations to deem the drinks unsafe, especially when it comes to students. “I don’t accept that it’s a rite of passage to collegiate life that people put themselves at risk,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

What if tiny “nano-bots” could autonomously travel though a person’s bloodstream to find and kill cancerous cells, eliminating the need for surgery? Or what if you could hop into a flying car for your morning commute? No science fiction here: “These are real,” say commercials for Planet Green’s new show, Dean of Invention , which premieres Friday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Dean Kamen , the show’s host and inventor of various medical technologies as well as the two-wheeled self-balancing personal transporter, the Segway, says he wants the show to get kids excited about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), although the series is not aimed just at children. Demolishing stereotypes Inspiring and engaging kids in STEM has long been one of Kamen’s goals, which he largely pursues through his FIRST robotics competition, a series of hands-on robotics contests culminating in a large international championship, something of a robot Olympics. “I think the biggest stereotype of all that hurts the world of science and technology is that kids think of scientists as a ‘they.’ Kids think, ‘It’s those scientists who will cure cancer. It’s those weird geniuses. It’s them, those scientists, not me,’ ” says Kamen. Kamen says that he hopes his show will wipe out the image of the crazy or boring scientist by showing kids fascinating technology and fun, exciting scientists of all races, genders and ages. In each show, Kamen takes his audience on “field trips” to labs and other research sites to investigate breakthrough inventions, including a trip to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to study robotic prosthetic limbs, a feature on the first episode. “We want the opportunity to present this information in a way that is broadly interesting and accessible from kids to adults. We want kids to say, ‘I wanna get involved,’ or ‘I wanna build that reality.’ We want to build the army of kids who are going to be the next generation of saviors,” he says. There are educational TV shows that are effective, such as Cyberchase , a science cartoon on PBS Kids that must prove it is reaching kids because the National Science Foundation funds it, says Joe Blatt, Harvard University Graduate School of Education senior lecturer and director of the Technology, Innovation and Education program. Blatt adds, however, that educational shows succeed best when geared toward the appropriate age group. He has not seen Dean of Invention yet, but Blatt says it is not unreasonable to assume that older kids might watch because “teens and tweens” often turn to shows designed for adults as they grow out of kids’ shows. “A lot of the show, from what I can see, is very technically oriented,” says Tony Murphy of St. Catherine University’s National Center for STEM Elementary Education in St. Paul. Murphy watched preview clips of the show on Planet Green’s website. “But it is also done in a way that’s interesting and easy to understand, with graphics and great visuals, that help people to gain an understanding of what’s being done in science and technology,” Murphy says. “It’s very, very exciting, and could be great for parents and kids to watch together.” The show is designed to be accessible to the average adult viewer but stimulating for kids, and informative for professionals in STEM, says Kamen. Although entire episodes may not appeal to some younger kids, Murphy says teachers from elementary to high school could use clips from the show as part of a lesson to get kids thinking about technology, which is vital because by middle school, some children already have negative feelings about those subjects. Outside the typical lab Murphy adds that bringing this show into the classroom could “start kids off with an understanding that we live in a technological world,” and expose kids to scientists and engineers of all cultures and outside of the typical laboratory setting. Kamen says future episodes will feature a range of innovations such as computer programs that can transfer information from the human brain, and the development of human waste as an energy source to be burned like coal.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia ‘s largest school system has won the nation’s top prize in public education, which will provide $1 million in college scholarships for needy students in the district. Gwinnett County Public Schools snagged the Broad Prize for Urban Education, an award the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation gives annually to urban districts that show the most gains in student performance and closing minority achievement gaps. It’s the second year in a row the 150,000-student district was nominated for the prize. The district is 28% black and 25% Hispanic , with about half of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. But last year in reading and math, Gwinnett County schools outperformed all other Georgia districts serving students with similar family incomes. The district has among the state’s smallest achievement gaps between black and white students at all grades in math, and the district narrowed that gap for middle school math by 8 percentage points between 2006 and 2009. In the same time period, the rate of black students taking the SAT college entrance exam rose 9 percentage points. Ninety-nine percent of the district’s schools met federal benchmarks in 2009, compared with 86% of schools statewide, and the superintendent has been in office nearly 15 years, providing consistency at the helm of the large district. Gwinnett County beat out Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, and Socorro Independent School District and Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso. Though Gwinnett County is in suburban Atlanta, the district meets the criteria for the Broad Prize because it has a high percentage of minority and low-income students. The prize, created in 2002 by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, is the nation’s largest education award given to school districts. It is designed to reward schools for increasing graduation rates, improving low-income students’ performance, and reducing differences in achievement rates between minority and white students. Winners are chosen from the country’s 100 largest school systems serving a large percentage of low-income and minority students. The prize money goes to college scholarships for students from each district. Runners-up win $250,000 for scholarships. The Aldine Independent School District near Houston won last year. Other past winners include the New York City Department of Education , Boston Public Schools and the Houston Independent School District. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — National leaders of a fraternity accused of directing Yale University pledges to chant obscenities against women as they marched through campus have scheduled a meeting with the Ivy League school’s chapter. Delta Kappa Epsilon International Fraternity says its director will visit New Haven this weekend to discuss the incident, which it condemned as “deeply offensive.” It also ordered the Yale chapter to stop pledge activities. Some students and the Yale Women’s Center board complained after pledges were videotaped last week, chanting about necrophilia and a specific sexual act. Michael Jones, a Yale senior who also is a New Haven alderman, said the DKE fraternity has apologized. Local DKE leaders referred calls to national headquarters. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

%content% Education Dept. sees 11% spike in civil rights complaints