Quick Takes

Monday was the deadline for colleges to sign up for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill's Yellow Ribbon Program, which allows colleges to enter into matching agreements with the federal government to cover any difference between the base GI Bill benefit and total tuition and fees. The Department of Veteran Affairs' final list is not yet posted, but a preliminary list is -- and so far the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities counts 361 private, nonprofit colleges as participating, and knows of 55 more -- including Harvard University -- that have announced plans to participate but don't yet show up in the official count. Scores of for-profit colleges have also signed agreements; the VA expects the final list of participating colleges to be published by Monday, June 22.

Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council issued a statement Monday indicating that it has accepted assurances from York University that an upcoming controversial conference that received a grant from the agency is largely unchanged from when the council awarded the funds. The council "accepted their assurance that planning for the conference is proceeding in a manner consistent with provisions of the Grant Holder’s Guide for the program," said the statement -- but that is not ending the controversy. Faculty leaders in Canada say that the additional questioning about the conference shouldn't have taken place at all. The conference is called “Israel/ Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace,” and many of the papers to be given at the conference promote the idea of the "one-state solution" in which Israel and Palestinian areas would be combined into a single, secular state – an idea many in Israel view as equivalent to giving up their right to exist as a nation. Many of the papers also compare the current situation in Israel with that of apartheid-era South Africa. The additional inquiry by the social science council came after Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science and technology, asked for reconsideration of the grant for the conference -- and faculty groups see that request and the council's additional questioning as an inappropriate case of political meddling. The Canadian Association of University Teachers issued a letter to the council Friday saying it was "deeply troubled" that the council complied with the minister's request for an additional review. The letter, to the president of the council, said: "At the very least, you owe an apology to the conference organizers for your failure to protect the integrity of the granting process of SSHRC. You need publicly to assure the Canadian academic community that your bowing to political pressure will not happen again. If you cannot or will not do this, we question your fitness to continue in your present position."

The scandal over admissions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- in which the politically connected received preference, many times over the objections of admissions officials -- is following its provost to California. Linda Katehi, the provost, was recently named the next chancellor of the University of California at Davis, and now legislators want to know what role -- if any -- she played in admissions, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Katehi declined to comment to a California reporter on the situation last week, leading to a demand from one lawmaker that she respond to "corruption charges." While the legislator was not aware of it at the time, Katehi had distributed a note to some at Davis indicating that she was not involved in the scandal. "I want to be clear to you and others at UC Davis that I was not involved in the admissions decisions," she wrote. "The so-called 'Category I' admissions process was not part of the regular admissions system and was handled at a higher level in the institution," she wrote, adding that she supported "transparent" admissions systems. State Sen. Leland Yee, who is pushing for more state oversight of the University of California, was not impressed with her answer, and told the newspaper: "It's interesting that she says, 'It's above my pay grade,' and that's that.... Is she going to continue this 'see no evil, hear no evil,' approach, and just cover up what may be going on?"

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider an appeal of a dispute over the circumstances in which bankruptcy plans that include student loans can include a lower level of repayment than would have been the case under normal circumstances. The court is considering the case of Francisco J. Espinosa, whose repayment plan was seen as too lax by United Student Aid Funds. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with Espinosa, but other circuits have been more favorable to lenders in similar situations.

Americans who are college educated remain more likely than other Americans to participate in the arts, according to a survey released Monday by the National Endowment for the Arts. But the survey -- conducted periodically by the agency -- finds significant declines in the percentages of college-educated Americans who reported that they had attended arts related events. Compared to the NEA's 1982 survey, the steepest decline was in ballet, which that year was seen by 11.0 percent of college-educated adults, but in 2008 was seen by only 6.3 percent. Declines were seen in every type of art considered: jazz (from 19.4 percent to 14.9 percent); classical music (33.1 percent to 20.1 percent); opera (8.0 percent to 5.2 percent); musicals (40.5 percent to 32.7 percent); non-musical plays (30.2 percent to 19.8 percent); and art museums (49.2 percent to 44.5 percent).