Thursday, December 20, 2007

The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 21, 2007, Friday

Copyright 2007 The Chronicle of Higher Education

All Rights Reserved

The Chronicle of Higher Education

December 21, 2007, Friday

SECTION: STUDENTS; Pg. 4 Vol. 54 No. 17

HEADLINE: Harvard's New Aid Policy Raises the Stakes

BYLINE: ERIC HOOVER

BODY:

Harvard University flexed its multibillion-dollar muscles last week. Many observers marveled, but not everyone applauded. After all, how many other colleges could offer giant tuition breaks to middle- and upper-middle income families?

With its $35-billion endowment, Harvard can afford its bold financial-aid program. Next year the university plans to eliminate loans, ask families with salaries between $120,000 and $180,000 to pay no more than 10 percent of their income, and charge its neediest students nothing. The university says it will raise its spending on student aid to $120-million from $98-million annually. "We're trying to reconfigure our whole approach to what affordability and access means," said Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president.

The move reflects the growing concern that all but the wealthiest families need more help paying for college. This month Duke University said it would reduce loans for students with family incomes up to $100,000, and cap loans for wealthier ones. Last week, Pomona and Swarthmore Colleges said they would replace loans with grants for all students.

Harvard's new policy should accomplish two things: improve its accessibility to students from a wide range of economic backgrounds and enroll even more top students. So in the competitive sphere of elite admissions, Harvard can help itself with its own generosity.

'Not Just About Harvard'

The new policy also could have far-reaching implications elsewhere in academe. "It's not just about Harvard," one admissions dean said last week. "It's about a system of education."

That system includes the widening endowment gap between a handful of superwealthy institutions and their many competitors. The growing disparity in student-aid policies puts poorer private colleges and public universities in a bind, says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. "They do not have the resources to compete across the board in the financial-aid-package game with the richest" private colleges, Mr. Ehrenberg said in an e-mail message. "So they will have to make hard choices."

Mr. Ehrenberg speculates that some colleges may try to compete by putting more money into merit aid. A decision to spend more on student aid, though, would force colleges that rely heavily on their operating budgets to make cuts elsewhere.

That's one reason several admissions professionals expressed mixed feelings about Harvard's announcement. Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment management and college relations at Dickinson College, shares the view that tuition is pinching more middle-income families, so he applauded Harvard's intentions. "My only concern is that institutions like Harvard have the resources to act unilaterally," Mr. Massa said.

The entire needs-analysis system, he believes, needs an overhaul, one that would allow colleges with smaller endowments to offer students more "realistic" aid packages.

The time seems ripe. Concern about rising tuition has led some in Congress to consider proposals that would require universities to spend more of their endowments or risk losing their tax-exempt status. Last week, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, praised Harvard's decision. "This could inspire other expensive colleges to make tuition more affordable," Mr. Grassley said in a written statement.

The more affordable colleges are, the more rewarding experiences students will have. So believes William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid, who said many students had a "diminished experience" in Cambridge because of debt.

Some observers, however, did not buy Harvard's line that middle-class families were in financial "pain," at least compared with those several rungs down the income ladder. John Maguire, chairman of Maguire Associates, an education-consulting firm, thinks Harvard and other elite institutions should devote even more of their student-aid dollars to lower-income students.

And how might Harvard's new policy affect diversity in its future classes? "I could see a perverse outcome," Mr. Maguire says, "where they freeze in place the current socioeconomic distribution of the class."

LOAD-DATE: December 18, 2007

PR Newswire, December 19, 2007, Wednesday

Copyright 2007 PR Newswire Association LLC.

All Rights Reserved.

PR Newswire

December 19, 2007 Wednesday 9:21 PM GMT

HEADLINE: eCornell Offers First Online Strategic HR Management Certificate;
- Flexible Learning, World-Class Content Build Future HR and Business Leaders -

DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y. Dec. 19

BODY:

ITHACA, N.Y., Dec. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- eCornell and Cornell University's ILR School (Industrial and Labor Relations) have launched an online Strategic HR Management certificate program to provide rising HR leaders with key concepts, practices and tools to transform today's HR function and drive bottom-line firm performance. Delivered via a flexible online environment, the new program harnesses the ILR School's workplace research expertise with an interactive and accessible format for busy middle- to senior-level HR professionals.

"Chief executive officers are increasingly recognizing the importance of employee talent to their ability to compete," explains Patrick Wright, Ph.D., the ILR School William J. Conaty/GE Professor of Strategic Human Resources and director of the Cornell Center for Advanced HR Studies (CAHRS). "And with that recognition," he added, "HR is being asked to step up to the plate. The eCornell courses we've developed will allow HR managers to do just that -- helping them effectively fulfill the business leader role in ways that have a quantifiable effect on the firm."

The Strategic HR Management certificate program consists of the following six instructor-led, student-paced courses. Each course was developed in conjunction with ILR School faculty and subject matter experts:

-- HR Leadership
-- Aligning HR Strategy with Organizational Strategy
-- Diversity and Inclusion for Bottom-line Performance
-- Building a Talent-Management Culture
-- Measuring HR's Impact
-- Employee Engagement

The course series uses eCornell's Structured Flexibility model, which combines the structure of a traditional classroom learning experience with the convenience of an online environment. eCornell courses unite proven e-learning functionality, such as simulations and interactive content, with live virtual discussions among instructors and a cohort of peers from around the world. HR professionals who complete all six courses will receive a certificate from Cornell University and improve their ability to implement strategic HR practices in their businesses.

"Patrick Wright, Christopher Collins, and Quinetta Roberson -- as professors and subject matter experts -- are honing the theories and practices driving today's modern HR transformation," says eCornell Chief Executive Officer Chris Proulx. "Through our courses, HR managers have an ideal opportunity to learn from these experts' rich organizational experiences and extensive research, while accessing Cornell University resources and forging relationships with peers across industries and around the world."

eCornell, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cornell University, provides many of the world's leading organizations with online, asynchronous professional and executive development in the areas of strategy, leadership and management development, human resources, financial management and hospitality management. Its proven course development model and instructor-led course delivery provide for engaging, rigorous and interactive learning. For more information, visit http://www.ecornell.com/capability .

The Cornell University ILR School (Industrial and Labor Relations) was founded in 1946, with the original mission "to improve industrial and labor conditions in the State through the provision of instruction, the conduct of research, and the dissemination of information in all aspects of industrial, labor, and public relations, affecting employers and employees." Today, more than 60 years later, the ILR School is a unique academic institution with national and international reach addressing the breadth of modern workplace issues. ILR focuses on advancing the world of work through cutting-edge research, excellence in teaching, and commitment to outreach to improve workplace practices and influence government policy -- in New York state and throughout the world. ILR is the nation's only institution of higher education to offer a four-year undergraduate program focused on the workplace, several types of graduate degrees, and diverse continuing education programs and workshops. To learn more about the ILR School, visit http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ .

CONTACT: Ross Pearo, eCornell Vice President, Product Development and

Marketing, +1-607-330-3334, rpearo@ecornell.com

Web site: http://www.ecornell.com/

http://www.ecornell.com/capability

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/

SOURCE eCornell

URL: http://www.prnewswire.com

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 2007

Hemscott (United Kingdom), December 18, 2007, Tuesday

Hemscott (United Kingdom), December 18, 2007, Tuesday

Hemscott.com

Obama comes up short on union support


WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama's appeal among Democrats is undeniable. He's near the top of every poll and he packs rooms wherever he goes. But a vital piece of the Democratic power establishment isn't showing him any love: labor unions.

With the Iowa caucuses just over two weeks away, the Illinois senator is the only top-tier Democratic candidate who has not been endorsed by a national union.

Such endorsements are prized because of the manpower, money and attention they can garner for candidates in the early voting states such as Iowa and Nevada. For example, the political arm of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, spent $250,000 to air television ads in Iowa urging her victory.

And Clinton has nine other well-heeled national unions in her camp, while former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has four national union endorsements.

Obama, meanwhile, has had to make do with city chapters like the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association of New York City and Illinois state chapters of the American Federation of Teachers, AFSCME and the Service Employees International Union. Other state chapters of the service employees union behind Obama include those in Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kansas.

His politics aren't the problem, analysts and supporters say.

Tom Balanoff, president of the SEIU Illinois State Council, said Obama's voting record is sound, with votes against trade deals like the Central America Free Trade Agreement and support for issues such as the Employee Free Choice Act. 'We know that he's the real thing,' Balanoff said.

Obama himself touts a longtime union record. 'I've been consistent. You can't say that about the other two major candidates,' Obama told a regional convention of the United Auto Workers in Iowa. 'When a candidate says he opposes right-to-work laws or trade rules that hurt workers today, ask him where he's been before. Because America needs a president who will fight for you when it's hard, and not when it's politically convenient.'

But even supporters like Balanoff said that Obama's relatively short time in the national spotlight may be working against him. While labor officials in the Midwest have known Obama for years, he's only been a U.S. senator since January 2005.

Obama 'hasn't had the exposure that Hillary Clinton has -- everybody knows Hillary -- and John Edwards, who has run for president and run for vice president and has done a lot of work with unions,' Balanoff said.

Added Paul Clark, head of the department of labor studies and employment relations at Penn State University: 'Compared to the other candidates, he's a latecomer. Clinton and Edwards have a much longer relationship with the unions. ... I just think he had a lot of ground to make up.'

The lack of major union endorsements early in the race may not be crucial to winning the Democratic nominations. Only one major union endorsed the 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., before the primaries and caucuses -- the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Despite supporting other candidates in the nominations battle, organized labor coalesced behind Kerry in his unsuccessful race against President Bush. Unions are expected to support whoever wins the 2008 Democratic nomination.

Robert Bruno, a professor at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said Obama may be a victim of his desire to be a 'transformative politician' -- someone who appeals to people in all demographics.

Obama's been trying 'to avoid the claim he's just like any other politician, so he doesn't come off as a real advocate,' Bruno said. 'But I think the labor movement wants an advocate, because you're talking significant resources and investment.'

Organized labor put more than $60 million into the 2004 national elections, a figure that likely will be eclipsed by the end of the 2008 elections.

The fact that he's black has nothing to do with Obama's lack of union endorsements, said Richard Hurd, professor of labor studies at Cornell University. Almost 80 percent of union members in the United States are white.

'Forty years ago, a totally different story. Twenty years ago, a mixed bag. Today, I don't there's any chance it has anything to do with it,' Hurd said.

In fact, Hurd thinks race could help Obama. Almost 15 percent of black workers are union members, compared with almost 12 percent of white workers and 10 percent of Hispanic workers.

'Unions actually have more success organizing blacks and Latinos than they do white people,' Hurd said. 'That would be something that would tempt them into endorsing Obama, because most unions have a very high priority on recruiting new members. So I think if race came into play here, it would be in Obama's favor rather than against him.'

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Health & Medicine Week, December 17, 2007, Monday

Copyright 2007 Health & Medicine Week via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net

Health & Medicine Week

December 17, 2007, Monday

SECTION: EXPANDED REPORTING; Pg. 2738

HEADLINE: CORNELL UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS;

ILR report connects disabilities, employment and poverty

BODY:

There is a dramatic employment and poverty gap between working-age people with disabilities and those without disabilities, according to a new Cornell report. The Third Annual Disability Status Report, the only report of its kind in the nation, reveals that almost 38 percent of people with disabilities are employed, compared with almost 80 percent of people without disabilities. There are 22.3 million people with disabilities of working age (21-64), which is 13 percent of the total working-age population.

The researchers also found that Americans with disabilities are more than twice as likely to live in poverty -- 25.4 percent of working-age Americans with disabilities live in poverty compared with 9.5 percent of those without disabilities. People with disabilities constitute 28 percent of the working-age American population living in poverty. The Disability Status Report was presented Nov. 7 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., by Cornell researchers in collaboration with the American Association of People with Disabilities. "The employment gap for people with disabilities is long-standing," said Andrew Houtenville, director of Cornell's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics (StatsRRTC). "They are not participating in the recovery from the 2001 recession." The StatsRRTC, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, is part of the Employment and Disability Institute in Cornell's ILR School and the Department of Policy Analysis and Management in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. The reports, issued annually in the fall by Cornell, "fill a pressing need for timely and relevant statistics about people with disabilities," added Houtenville. "We hope they will become an annual event that policy-makers, advocates, the media and people with disabilities across the United States will anticipate and depend on." The report, which contains a range of statistics about people with disabilities, including statistics by state, is available at http://www.DisabilityStatistics.org (see also Cornell University Communications).

Keywords: Cornell University Communications.

This article was prepared by Health & Medicine Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2007, Health & Medicine Week via NewsRx.com.

LOAD-DATE: December 14, 2007

Inside Higher Ed, December 14, 2007, Friday

Inside Higher Ed, December 14, 2007, Friday

insidehighered.com

The Educational Payoff of Paying an AP Bonus


In recent years, many advocates for low-income students have worried that the growing popularity of Advanced Placement courses was placing disadvantaged students at a further disadvantage. Since wealthier high schools offer more of the courses, and colleges value them in admissions, the theory goes, AP credits were one more way that inequitable educational opportunities were holding some students back.

A new study of an unusual program in Texas, however, suggests that AP can be a tool in promoting better college preparation and a more rigorous high school education. And the new study suggests that a financial incentive can have a positive impact on student performance.

The study, “A Little Now for a Lot Later,” found that adoption of a program that offered cash to students in disadvantaged high schools who pass AP exams and the teachers who instructed them resulted in numerous gains. Not surprisingly, more students took AP courses and the exams and passed them. But the benefits extended well beyond that. Among participants, there was a 30 percent increase in the number of students scoring at least 1100 on the SAT or 24 on the ACT, and there was an 8 percent increase in the number of students who matriculated to a college in Texas.

C. Kirabo Jackson, an assistant professor of labor economics at Cornell University and the author of the study, said it was unclear why the financial incentive was having an impact, “but it is clearly sending a message to the students.” The study was published on the Web site of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.

Jackson analyzed high schools in Texas that participate in the Advanced Placement Initiative Program, a privately funded effort in which philanthropists contribute to provide financial incentives for the AP program, training for teachers on the courses, and outreach to students on preparing for the courses. The program has been offered only in economically disadvantaged areas, so while some of those high schools may have students who are wealthier than average, the overall pool was of high schools that don’t have much in the way of money or AP programs. The payments — both for students who score at least a 3 on the AP exam and for their teachers — are $100 to $500 each, with different high schools offering different amounts.

While Jackson said that the money had an impact, he stressed that there was more than cash involved. Students who don’t take the right courses early in their high school careers can’t just jump into AP work, he noted, and the fact that the largest gains took place when the incentives were in place for three years suggests that students were hearing about the program and making curricular choices early.

Guidance counselors reported to Jackson that the program “changed the culture” of the schools. Teachers had an incentive to “be more inclusive” in recruiting students to AP courses, and students adopted a new attitude about AP. “It used to be uncool,” Jackson said.

In a follow-up study, Jackson plans to focus on exactly why the money made a difference and also to look at what happens to these students in terms of academic success in college, where there is not an additional financial incentive. “Does this actually generate interest that is long lasting or does it die down?” is the question he said he would like to answer.

He thinks that there may be “an intermediate cause” for the success — as much about the attention the incentive creates for academic preparation as about the cash. “I am reluctant to say we have a policy where we throw money at kids, and hope they make the right decisions,” he said. But of the Texas effort, he added, “it does seem to work.”

— Scott Jaschik

Friday, December 14, 2007

Hartford Business.com, December 14, 2007, Friday

Hartford Business.com, December 14, 2007, Friday

Hartford Business.com

New union represents independent workers


By Andrea Kay

Gannett News Service


If you work for one company on Monday and another on Wednesday, migrate from project to project or toil independently from home, you are one of about 42.6 million workers in the U.S. and you've got issues.

As a mobile worker - also known as a contingent or independent worker - those issues include finding your own health care, dental, disability and life insurance at rates you can afford, figuring out your taxes and establishing your own retirement plan.

Sara Horowitz might be able to help. She is a social entrepreneur who understands your issues and is determined to offer a solution. She started a union that supports people like you - whether you're freelance, temporary, part time, self-employed or a consultant. But don't let the word "union" throw you.

The Freelancers Union is not your traditional trade union. To begin with, there is no cost to be a member of the Freelancers Union (www.freelancersunion.org). The non-profit organization brings together independent workers "for mutual support and advocacy in a spirit of friendship and cooperation," forging a new unionism to address their common concerns, says Horowitz, executive director.

The 60,000 members only pay for what they need, such as healthcare, dental, life and disability insurance plans - and at group rates. They also have access to educational events on such subjects as contracts, federal taxes, sole proprietors, S-corporations and LLCs, as well as discounts and networking opportunities.

All types of professions are represented. There are computer repair and system designers, project managers, sales professionals, musicians, nannies, freelance writers, exhibition designers, strategic planning consultants, coaches and appraisers - anyone that fits the description of independent worker.

Structured differently than the traditional union, the Freelancers Union's business model is based on what today's independent workers need, which, says Horowitz, is a way to come together and solve problems. The biggest is the issue of health insurance. A 2006 Freelancers Union survey of more than 3,000 independent workers showed that nearly 40 percent went without health insurance for a period and 80 percent didn't seek medical care when they were uninsured.

The union also speaks on members' behalf to policy makers, elected officials and government to advocate taking a new look at traditional social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, anti-discrimination protections, OSHA and transportation and child-care tax breaks. The survey also found that while 90 percent of respondents vote, 97 percent do not feel elected officials understand the critical challenges they face as independent workers.

The union survey discovered that one third of respondents have saved less than $1,000 for retirement. So next year the group will launch a group retirement plan and offer access to investment advisors. Although they began in New York City, home to the largest independent worker population, they now have members throughout the U.S. and are exploring how to add staff in key cities across the country.

Joining together is how people change things, says Horowitz, a labor lawyer who comes from a family of labor advocates and is well schooled in the labor movement. She attended Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"You have to build an institution to build a social movement," she says, to support the evolution the workplace is undergoing. "And you can't do it alone."

The union provides "a collective voice for change that grows louder with every additional member."

And as the workplace becomes more global, don't be surprised to see more organizations emerge to accommodate the changing needs of workers.

Read more Entrepreneurs & The Economy stories

The Prague Post, December 13, 2007, Thursday

The Prague Post, December 13, 2007, Thursday

The Prague Post

U.S. economist could oust Klaus

As Jan Švejnar names a campaign team, parties debate backing him

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post

The only potential candidate to pose a threat, fledgling as it may be, to President Václav Klaus’ bid for re-election this February is still relatively unknown to a number of Czechs.Jan Švejnar, a 54-year-old Czech-American economist, has the support of the Green Party and is currently courting the Social Democrats and the Communists, yet a new Median poll finds that nearly half of Czechs have never heard of him. More problematic for Švejnar is that his backing in Parliament — whose 281 members decide on the next president — is weak.“Švejnar’s ideology is unknown; we only know that he’s been an expert for the World Bank,” says Charles University political analyst Zdeněk Zbořil. “I know he wants to be president, behaves well and speaks well, but that’s not enough for both chambers of Parliament.” Both the Social Democrats and the Communists are deciding this week whether to throw their support behind Švejnar. Meanwhile, Švejnar himself is deciding whether to run at all. Although he’s put together a five-member team of publicists, businessmen and political scientists to run his potential campaign, according to Mladá fronta Dnes, he has yet to actually announce his candidacy. In the midst of all such indecision, Klaus is still officially the only candidate for president.Unusual suspect Švejnar’s curriculum vitae, which runs 16 pages long, describes an accomplished man and well-regarded economist. In 1970, his family defected to the West and four years later, at the age of 21, he graduated from Cornell University in the United States with a degree in industrial and labor relations. Over the next five years he earned both a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from Princeton University. Several international fellowships, a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, and a position as professor of economics at University of Michigan followed. In 1984, he also became a consultant to the World Bank, a post he continues to occupy. In 1990, he began his work, which he continued through 2005, as economic adviser to the Czech government. In 1991, he became chairman of Charles University’s Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences.Švejnar also works as chairman of the supervisory board of the bank ČSOB. He speaks Czech, English, French, Russian and Spanish.Svejnar did not respond to numerous Prague Post requests for an interview.President Švejnar?Of the 281 members of Parliament, 121 have already promised their vote to Klaus, who now only needs 20 more supporters in Parliament to lock down the presidency, Zbořil says. Švejnar has 16 supporters.“He practically has to gain support from [all] the Social Democrats and the Communists,” to win, Zbořil says.Although Social Democratic leader Jiří Paroubek called on the Communists to support Švejnar, it is unlikely that his own party will follow his lead. Zbořil says, however, that although it’s “very difficult to forecast what the Social Dems will do in this election,” it looks like they’ll probably split their vote between Klaus and his opponent. A STEM poll held last month shows that only slightly more than half of the Social Democrats support Švejnar. The rest want Klaus. The Social Dems are meeting Dec. 15 to discuss which candidate they will back.The problem, Zbořil says, is that Švejnar doesn’t have anything in common with the ideology of the Social Democrats; he is merely an anti-Klaus candidate.“He’s a left-orientated liberal, in an American sense. Something like a Democrat,” but otherwise “nontransparent,” Zbořil says.Parties other than the Civic Democrats are so divided that they cannot produce their own candidate, according to Zbořil. Because Švejnar represents no political party’s ideology but is running more or less as a foil to Klaus, he cannot rally the support he needs.“In my opinion, it is practically impossible for him to gain enough support,” Zbořil says. Only something like a political crisis or “Václav Havel on a white horse” will truly threaten Klaus’ chances at keeping the presidency, he says.In terms of the Communists’ decisions whether to support Švejnar, the STEM poll reports that the party is split roughly into thirds — one favoring Klaus, another Švejnar and a third undecided. The Median poll splits the Communist vote down the middle between the two candidates.“Passing a resolution to support Švejnar would not correspond with the opinions of the people affiliated with or supporting [the Communist Party],” says party spokeswoman Monika Hoření. “Similarly, the support of Klaus is not as some media try to portray it.”As for popular support, Median reports that only 15 percent of the public wants Švejnar to win. The fact that he has spent the majority of his life outside his native country is cited by poll respondents as his biggest negative quality. Švejnar says he spends about one week of every month in the Czech Republic, according to the Czech News Agency.

Inside Higher Ed, December 11, 2007, Tuesday

Inside Higher Ed, December 11, 2007, Tuesday

insidehighered.com

Harvard’s Aid Bonanza


Harvard University on Monday unveiled a new approach to financial aid and a new definition of “middle income.” The result will be substantially more generous aid packages for Harvard students with families that have incomes up to $180,000, who will be assured that family contributions to students’ costs will not exceed 10 percent of family income in a given year. Harvard is also eliminating all loans from aid packages and eliminating home equity in calculations of family wealth.

For Harvard students or prospective Harvard students, the news was clearly great and the university was praised by many for using its resources to try to attract a broader economic cross-section of students. While Harvard has no trouble attracting students, officials said that they were concerned that the university’s high sticker price ($45,620 including room and board) was discouraging some potential students from applying and that the university was losing some talent to flagship public universities. Harvard officials said that they believed the changes would make the university competitive on price with publics for many of these students.

That is but one reason that Harvard’s announcement could have a significant impact outside Cambridge. Most aid experts said that they believed only a handful of colleges and universities could afford to match Harvard’s policies, but that many institutions may feel new pressure to enhance aid packages.

Some predicted that Harvard’s move could further the gaps between “have” and “have-not” institutions as the university becomes more attractive financially to some of the best students who wouldn’t have applied previously. Others predicted that flagship publics would respond with more merit aid to try to hold on to some of these students. And some questioned whether Harvard’s program — officially designated as a “middle income initiative” — had so broadened the definition of middle income that it was blurring the line between need and merit, and between middle income and wealthy.

Harvard’s new plan will do the following, starting with the next academic year:

* Create a “0 to 10 percent standard” under which students from families with incomes up to $60,000 will not be expected to make a family contribution, those with incomes greater than $60,000 and up to $120,000 will be paying a sliding scale of 0 to 10 percent of their income, and those from $120,000 up to $180,000 will pay 10 percent of income. Those in the under-$60,000 bracket are continuing an earlier aid initiative by the university, but those in the other brackets will see substantial reductions in expected family contributions.
* Loans will be eliminated from all aid packages and replaced with grants.
* Home equity will be eliminated from calculations of family wealth, a move that is expected to result in the university spending more than $2.5 million a year extra in aid.

About half of Harvard’s undergraduate student body is in the group with incomes up to $180,000 and so will benefit in one or more ways from the changes, which are expected to cost about $22 million annually. But because Harvard officials said that they hoped the plan would attract new, less wealthy applicants, the share of undergraduates eligible could grow over time.

In a phone briefing for reporters, Drew Faust, Harvard’s new president, said that the university was concerned about two groups of students: Those who currently attend Harvard but whose loan and work obligations are such that they don’t fully experience the university extracurricular offerings, and those who “may not be applying to Harvard” because of concern about costs.

More and more families feel that top colleges are out of reach financially, Faust said. Having reached out to lower income students over the past few years, she said it was time to address “the real stresses” of middle-income families. “We’re trying to reconfigure our whole approach to affordability,” she said.

Harvard’s announcement comes at a time that many members of Congress have been complaining about rising tuition rates, especially at institutions with large endowments (Harvard’s leads the nation at $35 billion). Faust said that the university was also looking at how it sets tuition rates, but she said it was important that a Harvard education be “a shared responsibility and that individuals do contribute to their education.” She noted that those students who will pay full tuition rates are benefiting from endowment funds that pay for much of their education, so “everybody will be subsidized,” not just those officially on financial aid.

In the press conference, there were several references to concerns that Harvard may be losing students to public flagships and to the gaps between the experience of wealthy Harvard students and the less wealthy. William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid, at one point said that it was an “Upstairs/Downstairs” situation, given the amount of time lower income students have to spend on jobs.

In some ways, the most dramatic shift may be the use of a percentage of income as the basis for calculating family contributions. Historically, Harvard and other colleges have used formulas based on a variety of factors (family income, savings, number of students in college and so forth) to arrive at an expected family contribution. While Harvard officials said they, too, would look at a range of factors, they said that the contributions would generally follow the percentage of family income. In so doing, they are in some ways taking the advice of aid experts who have said that simplicity counts for a lot in devising aid programs.

Consider the case of Princeton University, which beat Harvard by years in eliminating loans from aid packages and (until Monday) offering more generous aid packages to students in the income categories on which Harvard is focusing. Princeton uses the traditional method of analyzing students’ family capabilities on a case-by-case basis. That means, said a Princeton spokeswoman, that some in the $120,000-$180,000 bracket are paying 5 percent of family income and others 20 percent. The average is about 16 percent.

That’s a lot less predictable than what Harvard was able to release about what most families will pay under its new program — and the substantial gains that the change will mean for most of those families.

Harvard’s move won immediate praise from some who have worried about the impact of loans on students. Harvard’s approach based on family income “provides simplicity and clarity that families urgently need,” said Robert Shireman, executive director of the Project on Student Debt, which maintains a database of pledges colleges have made on aid policies.

Shireman called on other colleges to adopt similar policies. “It’s not only the Harvards of the world that can afford to adopt policies to reduce student debt,” he said. “Public universities and smaller liberal arts colleges, with humbler endowments and more low-income students, can also limit the use of loans and provide clearer information about what families should expect to pay. Even if schools cannot go as far as Harvard did, many more can and should take steps in the same direction.”

Publicly, aid experts and officials of other colleges agreed: What Harvard has done is great for its students and could inspire others. It’s always wonderful when more money is spent on student aid. Anything that makes the best colleges more welcoming and accessible to more students is worthy of praise.

Privately, however, there was some grumbling. Colleges with a fraction of Harvard’s endowment and larger proportions of low income students struggle to meet full need and some aid officials said they have a hard enough time focusing aid on the most needy without Harvard announcing that families with incomes up to $180,000 need financial aid. More than one aid official ended up yesterday at the Census Bureau to be able to quote real median family income (just over $48,000) and to express wonder at the idea of $180,000 being “middle” income. But, expressing fear of looking jealous of Harvard’s wealth, these aid officials said they wouldn’t be quoted at all by name.

“At what point does the generosity begin to look more like merit aid,” asked one aid expert.

This expert also questioned the university’s announcement that home equity would no longer be used in calculations of wealth, noting that for many families in the upper middle class, home equity has grown enormously in the last 15-20 years and represents genuine wealth. “There is a philosophy that an asset is an asset is an asset,” said this expert.

When Stanford University this year announced it was dropping home equity from family wealth calculations, some praised it, and others said that the policy would end up provide more aid to students who might not need it. Many have noted, for example, that while black incomes have, on average, increased relative to white incomes in recent decades, home equity is overwhelmingly held by white people, so policies shielding home equity shield white wealth.

James Belvin Jr., director of financial aid at Duke University, is among those who think home equity should be considered, provided there are ample protections for families so people don’t need to lose their home or entire nest egg to pay for college. “Let’s face realities,” he said. “Home ownership makes a difference. It is indicative of a family’s financial status,” and provides most families with a base of wealth and considerable tax breaks. “It is appropriate to consider home equity. To not do so is to be unfair to those who don’t have home equity.”

Belvin stressed that “it’s not for me to criticize Harvard” and that he applauded the university for putting more money into financial aid. While Belvin showered praise on Harvard, it might be understandable if he felt a little frustrated Monday (which he showed absolutely no signs of being). Over the weekend, Duke announced a major expansion of its aid programs — but most of the benefit will go to students with incomes up to $100,000, and while loans are being capped, they aren’t being eliminated. A special fund raising drive is paying for the better aid packages.

Asked about Harvard’s definition of middle income, Belvin said “if Harvard wants to define middle income at that level, that’s their decision, but what does that make high income mean?” Noting that in the United States, many have quipped that just about everyone self-identifies as middle income, Belvin did say: “If you go into the factories and shops, and ask them to pick a middle income figure, you might get a different take.”

Belvin said he was “very proud” of Duke’s aid improvements, and believed it was more important to focus on that than the gaps between his aid plan and the one in Cambridge. “I don’t look at this as saying ‘oh no, we’ve been trumped,’” he said. “Harvard has the resources to do things that most institutions can’t do. It is just the nature of the reality we face.”

Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and a leading analyst of colleges’ tuition and financial aid policies, said that it was very hard to predict how the Harvard aid plan would play out with regard to which students enroll where. If Harvard attracts more applicants from middle-income families, those students would not be going to other institutions, but in turn “there is going to be one student who is almost equivalent who is no longer going to get into Harvard.”

Regardless of individual enrollment choices, Ehrenberg said, “this puts extraordinary pressure on the less well endowed institutions to do more. Harvard is demonstrating to Congress, as Princeton has demonstrated that ‘we are socially responsible,’ but now the less well endowed have to do something, but it’s very very difficult for them.”

Given that only a few institutions can match Harvard or come up with comparably generous plans, Ehrenberg said that he fears “a greater concentration of talent” in fewer universities. Just as the gap in faculty salaries between Harvard and a few others on the one hand, and everyone else on the other, has grown, the same may now be happening in enrollments. Even if Harvard has always attracted a disproportionate share of talent, that could now increase. Whether that’s good or not, he said, depends on whether you believe that the best students benefit only from one another or from being part of larger communities.

Harvard’s Ivy League competitors and some other elite colleges reject the idea of merit aid, and Ehrenberg predicted that those policies would not change. But he speculated that the better public flagships, potentially losing their price advantage against Harvard, would respond with more merit scholarships.

The leader of one such institution, in fact, said in an interview that he would do just that. James C. Moeser, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has pushed for expanded aid for low-income students there. But Moeser said that he does see how Harvard’s policies could have an impact. Harvard is among the top five “overlap” institutions to which Chapel Hill students also apply, he said.

Of Harvard’s new program, Moeser said it was “good for the students and good for the country,” and he said the university’s leaders should be praised. But Moeser said that it was wrong to assume that all students Harvard may recruit will prefer it to his institution or other public flagships. For some students, Harvard may be the best choice, but for others “the opportunities of a flagship” are superior. And if cost is a factor, he noted that the university is pushing hard to raise more money for merit scholarships — on top of a $100 million gift in February to expand existing merit scholarships.

Competition can be a good thing for everyone, Moeser said. “We’ll just redouble our efforts.”

— Scott Jaschik

Business Week, December 10, 2007, Monday

Copyright 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. http://www.mcgrawhill.com

All Rights Reserved

Business Week

December 10, 2007, Monday

SECTION: In Depth; Pg. 38 Vol. 4062

HEADLINE: THE DANGEROUS WEALTH OF THE IVY LEAGUE;

Higher education is increasingly a tale of two worlds, with elite schools getting richer and buying up all the talent

BYLINE: By Anthony Bianco, with Sonal Rupani in New York

BODY:

It's only fitting that Whitman College, Princeton's new student residence, is named for eBay CEO Meg Whitman, because it's a billionaire's mansion in the form of a dorm. After Whitman (Class of '77) pledged $30 million, administrators tore up their budget and gave architect Demetri Porphyrios virtual carte blanche. Each student room has triple-glazed mahogany casement windows made of leaded glass. The dining hall boasts a 35-foot ceiling gabled in oak and a "state of the art servery." By the time the 10-building complex in the Collegiate Gothic style opened in August, it had cost Princeton $136 million, or $272,000 for each of the 500 undergraduates who will live there.

Whitman College's extravagance epitomizes the fabulous prosperity of America's top tier of private universities. Princeton and its "Ivy Plus" peers (the seven other members of the Ivy League, plus Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have long flourished as elite institutions, both socially and academically. Increasingly, though, their predominance is defined by the great magnitude of their wealth relative to their modest size and to the rest of the higher-ed universe. The gilding of the Ivies offers a striking manifestation of the contemporary American tendency of the rich to get much richer.

Fancifying campus living isn't the half of it. The Ivy Plus schools also are investing huge sums to enlarge their central role in research. Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania are developing whole new science-centric campuses, and Yale just acquired one ready-made, buying a 30-building complex from pharmaceutical giant Bayer. The schools are adding more top-notch faculty members and shrinking class sizes. And they are increasing financial aid outlays for lower-income students who otherwise couldn't afford to attend.

The question of whether all this spending is a good thing defies easy answers. Gold-plating new dorms raises issues of taste and donor ego. More than before, impressionable students and ambitious parents have come to view college as a form of conspicuous consumption. But there's no evidence that the tilt toward super-luxury on some campuses has hurt the quality of Ivy Plus education. Smaller classes draw universal applause. Graduation rates remain impressive, and products of the Ivy Plus schools continue to ascend to leadership positions in business, science, the arts, and politics.

However, the increasingly plush Ivy Plus model casts into sharp relief the travails of America's public institutions of higher learning, which educate 75% of the country's college students. While the Ivies, which account for less than 1% of the total, lift their spending into the stratosphere, many public colleges and universities are struggling to cope with rising enrollments in an era when most states are devoting a dwindling share of their budgets to higher ed. "Policymakers seem to have concluded that flat funding is all that public higher education can expect from the state," says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, an economist who directs Cornell University's Higher Education Research Institute.

STEALING STARS

The Ivies cannot fairly be blamed for public education's financial predicament, but they certainly are exploiting it. Even the most prestigious of public universities are increasingly hard-pressed to repulse richly financed Ivy Plus raiding sorties seeking to steal distinguished faculty members and their research grants. Public schools are being drained for the benefit of the ultra-elite, says Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. "The further you project into the future, the more frightening it becomes."

It's unlikely that more money has ever been lavished on the education of so few. Even as Ivy Plus budgets have spiraled upward, the schools' enrollments have barely budged. From the 1997-98 academic year through 2006-07, graduate enrollment at the 10 institutions inched up by 10%, to 55,708, while the number of undergraduates actually fell by 1.4%, to 68,492.

Meanwhile, the wealth gap between the Ivies and everyone else has never been wider. The $5.7 billion in investment gains generated by Harvard's endowment for the year that ended June 30 exceeded the total endowment assets of all but six U.S. universities, five of which were Ivy Plus: Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia. Ivy dominance extends to fund-raising. A mere 10 schools accounted for half the growth in donations to all U.S. colleges and universities last year. All of the top five on the list were Ivies, led by Stanford, which set a record for higher education in 2006, collecting $911 million in gifts.

During 2006-07, the Ivy "Big Three"--Harvard, Yale, and Princeton--collectively spent $6.5 billion on operations, up over 100% from a decade ago. This was more than double the 41% average budget increase for all U.S. colleges and universities over this period and quadruple the 26% rise in the consumer price index. The Big Three sank a further $1.2 billion into new construction and other capital spending last year. "Yale is wealthier now, so we can add resources in almost every dimension," says its president, Richard C. Levin.

The benefits of the Ivies' surge in prosperity range all across campus, and in some cases seem less than central to a liberal arts education. Stanford spent $4 million to restore the Red Barn, a Victorian-era structure that's part of the university's equestrian center and now provides a place for undergraduates to house their own horses at a cost of $500 a month. Seven employees groom and feed the steeds and clean their stalls.

It's hard to imagine now, but for most of the Ivy League's long history many students lived austerely, as befitted schools with roots sunk deep in New England Puritanism. This began to change noticeably in the 1990s as schools used growing endowment incomes to modernize classrooms and dorms and to build lavish new student quarters. One of the last remnants of Ivy asceticism vanished last year when Yale gave in to student demands and began supplying dormitory bathrooms with hand soap, at a cost of $100,000 a year. "People used to look at every penny," says John Meeske, Yale's longtime dean of administrative affairs. "The mind-set is different now."

Beyond the over-the-top comforts of Whitman College, Princeton bestows ever more comprehensive counseling, health care, and other services on its students. Starting this year, all PhD students who give birth will receive their full stipend during a three-month suspension of academic work. Princeton also has begun covering the living expenses of foreign undergraduates who remain on campus during breaks.

The Ivies have steadily raised the list price they charge their traditional clientele: the wealthy and the well-born. Tuition, room and board, and fees now run an average of $45,000 a year, which, the schools are quick to point out, covers only one-half to two-thirds of operating costs. But even at those prices, demand, in the form of undergraduate applications, continues to soar. On average, the Ivies rejected about 90% of applicants for the Class of 2011.

Extraordinary wealth has allowed the Ivy Plus schools to mitigate their extreme exclusivity by offering bigger discounts to more students of modest means--a move that few would object to. Princeton has doubled its budget for grants, loans, and other aid since 2001-02, to $82 million, as the percentage of undergrads receiving financial support has jumped from 44% to 53%. The average award is $32,200, against total charges of $44,950.

SALARY GAP

The Ivies' biggest expense category by far is labor. At Harvard, compensation and benefits accounted for 49% of its $3.2 billion in operating expenses in 2006-07. Although salary gains have consistently outpaced inflation, it is the addition of new teaching positions that is chiefly responsible for driving up the cost of instruction. Harvard, the largest of the Ivies, employs 2,164 faculty members, 55% more than in 1997-98. All of the Ivies increasingly are emphasizing small-group learning, independent study, and hands-on experience. "It's a much more personal connection between teacher and student, and a lot less delivering education in large lecture halls with armies of teaching assistants," says Carol L. Folt, a Dartmouth biology professor who doubles as its dean of faculty.

The Ivies' heavy spending to enlarge and upgrade their faculties has contributed to an ever-widening salary gap between private and public universities. The $106,496 average salary earned by full professors at PhD-granting public universities in 2006-07 amounted to just 78% of what their counterparts earned at private universities, according to the American Association of University Professors. This figure was 91% in 1980-81.

The Ivies' superior spending power puts even the finest public universities at a disadvantage in the competition for faculty. One of the many academic areas in which Yale has brought its financial muscle to bear is physics, which until recently was chaired by Ramamurti Shankar. "Yale told us: Let's go after who you want. We will make it happen,'" says Shankar, who is particularly proud of having bested several other top private schools to lure the quantum mechanics expert Steven M. Girvin away from Indiana University, a Big Ten public stalwart. "There was a huge war," Shankar says. "Everybody wanted him." Shankar declines to disclose the price he paid for Girvin in 2002, but says that the going annual rate today for theoreticians of his caliber is $400,000 to $600,000, which includes salary and research support. This is for an assistant professor, the level at which Yale does most of its hiring. The price tag for top experimentalists, who have far more extensive laboratory needs, is $1.5 million to $2 million, according to Shankar, who remains on the Yale faculty.

To house their enlarged faculties, the Ivies have turned their campuses into continuous construction zones. Each now boasts a new science facility that is its most expensive structure ever. At Stanford, the distinction belongs to the $140 million "Bio-X" building. Designed by the famed British architect Norman Foster, the glass-walled center provides offices and labs for 30 faculty members whose research combines cutting-edge subspecialties in biology and medicine. Over the next few years, says Stanford President John L. Hennessy, the school plans to invest an additional $600 million to put up five more buildings at an astronomical cost of $800 per square foot on average. Under President Amy Gutmann, Penn is launching its expansion onto 24 acres adjoining its Philadelphia campus by building three high-tech medical research facilities at a total cost of $682 million. Harvard is beginning work on a $1 billion complex that includes a new stem cell institute, the first stage of a planned 200-acre adjunct campus in Allston, Mass.

THE RESEARCH EDGE

Ivy administrators argue that gathering the best researchers in resource-rich havens has a synergistic and broadly beneficial effect. Scientists are more likely to do their best work, expanding knowledge and improving lives, when attached to academia's deepest pockets, or so holds the rationale for Ivy aggrandizement. The research productivity of elite private universities is roughly twice that of their public counterparts, according to a recent study of America's 102 top research universities by economists James D. Adams and J. Roger Clemmons. The study measured volume of academic papers and citations during 1981-99. "You are going to have an edge in research if you have great students, but not too many students; freedom from bureaucratic and political meddling; and generous alums who are more interested in academics than the football program," says Adams, acting head of economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a private college in Troy, N.Y.

But even if the Ivies succeed in making one plus one equal three, will the benefits to society outweigh the damage to the public universities they are stripping of star professors, who tend to take their outside research money with them when they go? There is not likely to be enough talent or funding to go around as the Ivies pursue their ambitious goals. "One thing we all must worry about--I certainly do--is the federal support for scientific research. And are we all going to be chasing increasingly scarce dollars?" says Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's new president.

Not that Faust seems worried about Harvard or other top-tier research schools. "They're going to be--we hope, we trust, we assume--the survivors in this race," she says. As for the many lesser universities likely to lose market share, she adds, they would be wise "to really emphasize social science or humanities and have science endeavors that are not as ambitious" as those of Harvard and its peers.

Administrators at many public research universities are not willing to accept Faust's invitation to surrender. "We have no choice but to recognize the realities of the marketplace we work in," says Patrick V. Farrell, provost and vice-chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "But we intend to remain at least as good, if not better, a research-intensive institution as we have been in the past."

These are brave words, especially given that the state of Wisconsin ranks among the least generous funders of public higher education. Over the past decade, Wisconsin's state tax appropriations have risen by a total of 21.7%, or about half the increase in the Higher Education Price Index, compiled by the nonprofit Commonfund Institute. This puts it 41st among all states, according to the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University. Other conspicuous laggards include Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio.

Today, twice as many Wisconsin-Madison professors are leaving to work elsewhere as was the case five years ago. Huge piles of cash aren't always the issue; sometimes it's the bureaucratic or political constraints more common on public campuses. Among the faculty that Farrell particularly regretted losing was Robert W. Carpick, a fast-rising associate professor specializing in nanotribology (the study of friction at the atomic level) who defected to the University of Pennsylvania a year ago. Carpick, who took much of his $550,000 in outside research grants with him to Penn, accepted a salary only 10% higher than the $90,000 he was making. The main reason he left Wisconsin is that it is prohibited by state law from paying domestic partner benefits, Carpick says. "I also was concerned about the effects of dwindling state support on the public university model."

The spending explosion within the Ivy Plus ranks strengthens those already-potent institutions and makes campus life cushier for many of their students. Will it lead to scientific breakthroughs that otherwise wouldn't have been possible? Or will it mainly serve to accelerate the deterioration of many other schools that have a vital role to play in training the next generation to compete more successfully in math and the sciences? The benefits of more generous undergraduate financial aid are obvious. The answers to these questions, much less so.

For better or worse, the infusion of riches at the Ivy Plus schools has dramatically extended their lead over everyone else, especially the public colleges and universities that collectively serve the vast majority of American students. This dominance--and the inequities that it fosters--are likely only to grow.

GRAPHIC: illustration, Illustration: Chart: The Ivy Plus: America's Richest Universities

illustration, Illustration: Chart: Big Spenders

photograph, Photograph: Designed by Norman Foster, Stanford's "Bio-X" facilities cost $140 million Photography by Brad Trent

photograph, Photograph: Yale's Levin says: "We can add resources in almost every dimension" Photography by Brad Trent

photograph, Photograph: The University of Pennsylvania's Gutmann at a 24-acre campus expansion Photography by Brad Trent

photograph, Photograph: EBay's Meg Whitman gave Princeton $30 million toward Whitman College, a new dorm complex Photography by Brad Trent

LOAD-DATE: December 6, 2007

The Chief-Leader - December 7, 2007 , Friday

The Chief-Leader - December 7, 2007 , Friday
(The Chief-Leader is NewYork City’s civil service weekly newspaper with a weekly circulation of 35,000 and a readership of approximately 100,000.)

The Chief-Leader.com

Toussaint Wants National Health Care Reform
By ARI PAUL

Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint reflected on his last eight years of negotiating health-care benefits, doling out advice to union activists on how to approach labor's health agenda, during a Nov. 30 seminar at the Manhattan office of Cornell University's Industrial and Labor Relations School.

He joined Richard Lanigan, secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional International Union Local 153, and United Automobile Workers Local 2120 President Maida Rosenstein, in a discussion, which drew a crowd of 50, moderated by Gene Carroll, the director of the school's Union Leadership Program.
Inherited Debt
All of them recognized that union negotiators faced the challenge of health benefits, the costs of which are skyrocketing, as part of the entire wage package. Mr. Toussaint said that when he became president in 2000, the union had inherited a health-care trust that was millions of dollars in debt.

"In 2002 we were able to get the [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] to absorb the entire $40 million-plus debt or deficit with the condition that they were allowed to administer the plan directly," he said.

This came at a cost, as it meant there would be no wage increases, he said.

"We kind of flipped the script," Mr. Toussaint said, noting that usually unions have accepted health-care contributions in exchange for wages. "But we told the members the truth."
Explains Concession
Then came the 2005 contract fight, where the MTA wanted workers to accept a 1.5-percent-of-pay contribution for health coverage, a factor leading to the initial rejection of the contract after the three-day strike in December of that year. The 1.5-percent plan eventually went into effect, and Mr. Toussaint argued that in exchange the union scored a big victory for retirees, who until then had no contractual health coverage.

"There's now a seamless cradle-to-grave coverage as far as health benefits go from active life to retired life to Medicare coverage," he said.

New York City Transit Cleaner Marvin Holland was in attendance and disagreed with Mr. Toussaint's rosy assessment of the current contract for transit workers.

"We're the only ones in town doing it," he said after the talk, referring to the fact that other municipal workers do not pay a portion of their premiums. "I think he's trying to defend his last couple of rounds of contract negotiations, which were failures."
No Policy Partnership
Mr. Carroll asked the union leaders if they had plans to work with employees to lobby for dramatic health-care reform, as Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern has often advocated, bringing the leader of the nation's largest union into an awkward coalition with H. Lee Scott, the C.E.O. of Wal-Mart, a notoriously anti-union retail company.

Mr. Toussaint was skeptical of the idea, as this would mean MTA Executive Director Elliot G. Sander would have to campaign against the very government machinery that appointed him.

Ms. Rosenstein also had mixed hopes about management/labor partnerships in this regard. She recalled that while bargaining with Columbia University, which she described as "buying up half of New York," management's negotiator argued that since health-care coverage should be the government's responsibility, the onus to fully fund coverage for employees in the meantime was no longer on the employer.

"We can't let our employers off the hook," she said.

Mr. Toussaint stated that unions should stop framing health-care benefits as a part of the wage package, as this would encourage employers to try to shift health-care costs onto workers while giving them wage increases. But overall, he was in agreement with the other leaders that the current system of a private, for-profit health-care system has proven inadequate, as most industrialized democratic countries throughout the world have some form of government-guaranteed health care, and that it was incumbent upon union leaders to educate and mobilize their members to advocate change.

"We need a serious fight for health-care reform," he said. "Labor has not stepped up in the way that it needs to."


Ari Paul
Reporter, The Chief-Leader
212-962-2690, ext. 107
aripaul@rcn.com

US States News, November 27, 2007, Tuesday

Copyright 2007 HT Media Ltd.

All Rights Reserved

US States News

November 27, 2007 Tuesday 1:42 AM EST


HEADLINE: BROOKLYN BOROUGH PRESIDENT MARKOWITZ NOMINATES SHIRLEY ANN MCRAE OF FORT GREENE AS CITY PLANNING COMMISSIONER REPRESENTING BROOKLYN

BYLINE: US States News

DATELINE: BROOKLYN, N.Y.

BODY:

The Brooklyn Borough President issued the following press release:

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced today the nomination of Shirley Ann McRae of Fort Greene as the City Planning Commissioner representing Brooklyn.

"Shirley richly earned this nomination for her years of tireless dedication to Community Board 2, her involvement with grassroots issues, and her love of Brooklyn. The City Planning Commission will be fortunate to have such a strong advocate representing the best interests of Brooklynites and all New Yorkers on planning and land use matters as we turn our dreams for the future of Brooklyn into a reality," said Borough President Markowitz.

"I am honored to be chosen to represent Brooklyn on the City Planning Commission," said McRae. "I look forward to working with the Brooklyn community as we move forward in planning the Brooklyn of tomorrow and making it an even greater place to live and visit."

BP Markowitz has formally submitted McRae's name in a letter to the City Council, beginning the review and approval process.

For the last five years, McRae has served as Chair of Community Board 2, of which she has been an active member since 1996. During her tenure, she has sat on various board committees, was the Chair of the Open Space Subcommittee, and held the position of First Vice Chair for three years.

In addition, McRae has been a member of the executive board of directors of the Atlantic Center Homeowners' Association since its inception, and served as the board's president for the last seven years. She is a member of the Central Fulton Street Business Improvement District Steering Committee, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, and the board of directors of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition.

From 1979 to 2002, McRae worked for MTA New York City Transit as Senior Director of Employee Programs and Registrations within the Employee Development Unit of the Office of Human Resources. Prior to that, she was a Police Administrative Aide with the New York City Police Department.

McRae graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management from Nyack College, and received Advanced Certificates in Labor Relations from Cornell University's New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

She has two grown children: a daughter, Dr. Alexis N. McRae, and a son, Jason C. McRae.

The City Planning Commission is the body responsible for the review and approval of all land use matters in New York City, including zoning map and text amendments, the mapping of parks and streets, the designation of urban renewal areas, the disposition of property by the City and the selection of locations for City facilities. The Commission has thirteen members--seven who are appointed by the Mayor, one by each of the five Borough Presidents and one by the Public Advocate.

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 2007

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Houston Chronicle, December 5, 2007, Wednesday

Houston Chronicle
December 5, 2007, Wednesday

Houston Chronicle.com

Union representing Houston city workers walks fine line

By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

After months of labor negotiations, the talks between the city of Houston and HOPE, the union that represents 13,000 municipal employees, are still slogging along.

To get things moving, the Houston Organization of Public Employees is stepping up the pressure. The union is running critical — and according to city officials, untrue — radio ads about staffing of key city services, it drafted Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards to berate the city in a video clip over its "second-class wages," and it's sending employees to vent their grievances regularly at City Council meetings.

But is that a wise strategy for the union that is the combination of the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees?

City employees can't strike, according to state law, nor can they engage in organized work stoppages.

Their power is largely based on their persuasive abilities. However, under the meet-and-confer law that gave the union collective bargaining rights, either side can walk away from the negotiating table.

"The union is trying to figure out how far it can go — it doesn't want to alienate the public and its members — and (Mayor Bill White) is also trying to figure out how far he can go," said Richard Hurd, a labor studies professor at Cornell University. Neither side really knows how it will turn out, he added, especially since it's the first time the city's civilian employees are negotiating a contract.

In a written message to city employees in October, White let the union know he was listening to the concerns of workers but he had little patience for civil disobedience, especially the variety favored by SEIU, which led the Justice for Janitors strike last year.

"Now, I hear that some public relations specialists are being brought in from outside the state in order to mount a campaign, to claim city employees are being treated unfairly. I hope these are not the same people from outside of Texas who came down and sat in the middle of traffic intersections and caused a public backlash against janitors," the message read.


Wages a key issue
After months of negotiations over vacation time, grievance procedures and other matters, several sticking points remain unresolved. For instance, the city wants to reserve more than half of the money for merit increases — like most private sector workers get — while the union wants a much higher proportion distributed in across-the-board raises.

Some of the problems facing the city stem from not paying its employees enough money, said Jere Talley, a member of the negotiating team for HOPE. Low wages create turnover that puts additional pressure on remaining workers, she said.

"I want to stress the point that it's truly about quality public service and what's on the table now won't remedy that," said Talley, a city employee.

The union is hoping to gain traction through radio ads that claim high school student interns are answering 911 emergency calls.

City spokesman Frank Michel said high school students are not permitted to field emergency calls and he criticized the HOPE radio ads that featured a retired supervisor claiming that he supervised the students as they answered the phones. However Michel concedes that after the supervisor retired this summer, another supervisor improperly allowed four high school students to answer emergency calls, a practice since stopped.

"The ads just aren't true and I can only guess they're desperate and they're misleading people in an effort to put public pressure on the mayor and City Council to come to some agreement," said Michel. The mayor is working on his own radio ad to answer some of the union's criticisms.


Test of brinksmanship
It's a game of brinksmanship with each side wanting to push as far as they can, said A. Kevin Troutman, an employment lawyer with Fisher & Phillips in Houston who has represented companies involved in labor disputes with SEIU.

However, there's a fine line.

"I don't think they want to get into an all-out war with the mayor," said Troutman.

The challenge of public sector unions that deliver key services is not to alienate the public, said Mark Sherman, an arbitrator and mediator and associate professor of management at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. It's an automatic public relations problem if they stop collecting the garbage or responding to citizens' problems.

Those unions can't afford to lose popular support, he said.

"If you do, you just play in the hands of the (city)," said Sherman. "Then they can drop the boom on you — and they can use public disenchantment as the reason."

lm.sixel@chron.com

The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2007, Wednesday

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

Cracks in Producers' United Front

By MERISSA MARR
December 5, 2007, Wednesday

On a recent picket line of striking writers, a giant inflatable pig smoking a fat cigar bobbed above a crowd of chanting screenwriters. The image was classic Hollywood, portraying the producers as a united force of greed.

But behind the scenes, the producers are anything but united in their needs and ambitions. The major entertainment companies that dominate the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers each have starkly different stakes in the strike's outcome.

The fate of talks between the AMPTP and the Writers Guild of America, which resumed yesterday, could depend on that dynamic. The diverging agendas of the companies' television and movie interests have resulted in the emergence of two camps: the moderates, which are angling for a swift resolution, and the hard-liners, which can withstand a strike longer.

At one end of the spectrum is CBS Corp., which analysts say could be the most vulnerable to the strike. Walt Disney Co. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal also have reason to want a quick settlement of the four-week strike. But News Corp. and Time Warner Inc. can better afford to hold firm on the most contentious issues, say people close to the talks.

As in any labor negotiations, though, the positions of the producers are also fluid. They want to present a common face at the bargaining table, where one of the core issues is how writers should be compensated when their work is reused in digital forms. But the perception of divisions among the studios could work in their favor, creating a good cop/bad cop scenario that might be key to getting the best deal. Indeed, News Corp., among others, has at times floated between the two camps. And if the writers ever look ready to compromise, several people on the producers' side say they would pull together pretty quickly.

After rebuffing a proposal by the producers last week, the writers returned to the negotiating table yesterday after a four-day break with a counterproposal that addressed some of the hot-button issues such as online streaming. The AMPTP said in a statement afterward: "We will spend the evening studying what the WGA had to say today, and we look forward to returning to the bargaining table tomorrow."

At the heart of the divide between the producers is broadcast television. The companies most exposed to scripted shows have been forced to halt most of their production because they have no writers. A strike that runs into next year could decimate the television pilot season and disrupt advertising sales for the next fall season at a time when viewers and ad buyers are already fleeing to the Internet. "I think it would go a long way toward changing how network entertainment is created and sold," NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker said Monday at a media conference in New York.

If the strike drags on, CBS may be more exposed because its network is a bigger part of its company compared with its counterparts, analysts say. Some executives at other studios have privately expressed concern that CBS might lose its nerve in the face of a protracted strike. But CBS disputes the notion that it is most exposed. A CBS spokesman says the company is diversified in other businesses, which make up a significant part of its profits.

CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said at the media conference yesterday that ratings may not be as high if the strike persists, but costs will go down and there will be no near-term or even mid-term impact on its bottom line. He said he was "hopeful" but "not terribly optimistic" about the talks, adding that "it's important that both sides stay in the room and discuss what's on the table and come to a resolution."

Like CBS, Disney relies heavily on episodic TV shows: Its ABC Television network airs the hit shows "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy," both of which have halted production. The casts of those shows have regularly joined writers on the picket line. At one picket, "Grey's Anatomy" actress Katherine Heigl carried a banner saying "Nick Counter is a Weiner," a reference to the AMPTP president.

NBC Universal is in the same boat, except that its network is in fourth place. It has some protection because it's part of GE, though. Mr. Zucker noted this week that NBC's primetime schedule represents only 10% of NBC Universal's bottom line and that he expects NBC to have enough new programming to get through March.

Taking a tougher stance, News Corp. President Peter Chernin responded to a question during a recent earnings conference call by saying that the strike could be "a positive for the company." News Corp. owns a network that relies less on scripted programming than its rivals, and it has a considerable cushion in its blockbuster reality show, "American Idol," which returns in January and doesn't rely on unionized writers. It is also airing the Super Bowl in February and can dip into a backlog of animated shows, including "The Simpsons," that work with so much lead time they still have many episodes in the can. (News Corp. has agreed to buy Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

Still, Mr. Chernin was one of a handful of CEOs involved in behind-the-scenes talks with writers early on that were aimed at getting the two sides back to the negotiating table, according to people close to those talks.

Time Warner is also more insulated from the strike because of its far-flung assets in cable operations and movies. And its broadcast network is the relatively small CW. Time Warner owns a heavyweight movie studio, but the studios already have their movies for 2008 in the bag. As a result, the movie business isn't expected to feel real pain unless the strike drags well into next year. That also applies to such companies as Viacom Inc., whose main vulnerability is its movie studio, Paramount Pictures.

The guild has been making noises about being willing to negotiate with the companies individually, urging the moderates to ditch the hard-liners. Nikki Finke, whose blog Deadline Hollywood Daily has closely followed the strike, wrote in a posting Monday night: "There is not unanimity within the mogul camp on how to proceed with these resumed AMPTP-WGA talks."

Harry Katz, dean of Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, says it's unusual that the management side of a labor negotiation is made up of so many parties of "different sizes, financial resources and interests." He adds: "Which coalition breaks first will be the critical element."

--Sam Schechner and Rebecca Dana contributed to this article.