Quick Takes

Arizona State University announced Monday that a graduate student had committed suicide -- and The Arizona Republic reported that the suicide took place in a professor's office when the student walked in, pulled out a gun, and shot himself. The article said that the student was on track in his program and had battled depression for years. According to the article, university officials said that the student had once studied under the professor.

Southwestern College, a community college outside San Diego, has been under fire since last week's suspension of four faculty members, following a protest that criticized the administration. With professors saying that they are being punished for expressing their views, the college late Monday issued a new statement -- but that statement (while noting that one suspension has been lifted) only further angered the professors. The statement says: "Four faculty members were placed on paid administrative leave on Thursday, October 22, 2009, and three faculty members remain on paid administrative leave at this time, pending the outcome of the investigation. Please understand that no formal charges or allegations have been made against any College faculty member or employee at this time. The student rally held between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. on October 22, 2009, is not the focus of the investigation. The college is investigating safety and security issues that arose after the approved organized student rally. The college respects, values and is committed to lawful free expression and the student rally provided an opportunity for our students to voice their concerns and to underscore the challenges that all community college students, and community colleges, are experiencing. The college is committed to maintaining a safe environment for our students and staff, which is the focus of the investigation."

College officials did not respond to requests for clarifications on the statement. But Philip Lopez, an English professor who is president of the faculty union, said that the statement only added to the questions about the incident. If the college is now on record as saying that there are no charges or allegations, why is it appropriate to remove faculty members from their classes and ban them from campus, he asked. Lopez said this action violates basic due process rights. "If there are no charges, why were we placed on leave?," he asked. "Rumor? Reputation? Union-busting? Poor personal hygiene?"

The University of Kentucky is considering and expected to approve a plan to accept a $7 million gift for a new men's basketball dormitory that would be called the Wildcat Coal Lodge and the word "coal" has frustrated some on the campus, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported. The donor heads a coal company and has made the name a condition of the gift, but some students and faculty members question the link to a source of energy that they don't favor. The Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper, has been publishing letters to the editor opposing and defending the proposed name. Others, including a Kernel cartoonist, have noted that while defenders of the name talk about the dedication of the state's coal miners, the honor of the name would go to "coal" (an object), not those workers.

Hope College, in Michigan, has barred Dustin Lance Black, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of "Milk," from joining a campus roundtable on sexuality issues because Black is an advocate for gay rights, The Holland Sentinel reported. Black was invited to campus to appear at the roundtable (for which students also wanted a screening of "Milk") and to appear in an English class. The class appearance is being permitted, but not the public talk or screening. College officials said that they were bothered by the idea that there would be "advocacy" in his talk.

Data released by the U.S. Education Department this month showed that the share of federal student loans disbursed through the government's direct loan program rose by 47 percent from 2008 to 2009, while the share distributed through the lender-based Family Federal Education Loan Program fell by 17 percent. Much of that shift was attributable to the turbulence in the financial markets that threatened the capital available to private-sector lenders, leading Congress and the Bush administration to step in last year to pass legislation ensuring the continued flow of student loans.ensure Even the dramatic shift in loan volume over the past 12 months, though, has left the guaranteed loan program with 58 percent of all federal loans disbursed in the first quarter of the current 2009-10 fiscal year -- even though, under legislation promoted by the Obama administration and now before Congress, the lender-based program could vanish by the start of the 2010-11 fiscal year, a mere nine months from now. That prospect has created some anxiety (readily stoked by supporters of the bank-based program) among financial aid officers, many of whom like the guaranteed loan program, are nervous about the switch, and/or are feeling pressure from the Education Department to make the switch, as if passage of the bill is a legislative fait accompli. (Some college officials have bristled at the oft-repeated suggestions that the guaranteed loan program "is on life support.") On Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to college presidents Monday with a slightly softer tone, though the same basic message. It urged them to take a series of steps to make sure their institutions are "Direct Loan-ready," so that "loan access for your students will be assured." "As you may know, President Obama has proposed that Congress make the loan system more reliable by moving to a 100 percent Direct Loan delivery system," Duncan wrote. "In any event, under current law, [the 2008 law that provided federal money to buttress the bank-based program] will expire, and the continued participation of FFEL Program lenders will be in question."

Carnegie Mellon University must defend itself against charges that it fraudulently and negligently misrepresented the state of its research on microwave technology to an investor who lost millions on the work, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Monday. The court's decision, which overturned a lower court's 2007 judgment, finds that the investor in question, Christian Bouriez, presented sufficient evidence to suggest that Carnegie Mellon's alleged misrepresentations -- about whether researchers had “proven” and “demonstrated" that their microwave technology actually worked, among other things -- were a "substantial factor" in the eventual loss of the $5 million that Bouriez invested in the project, which was later the subject of an arbitration process through which Carnegie Mellon was ordered to pay nearly $10 million to its former corporate partner. Carnegie Mellon officials did not respond to a request for comment on the appeals court's ruling Monday.

The damage done by law school accreditation has become a cause célèbre in some public policy circles, notably among libertarian and some conservative commentators concerned about diversity requirements that they perceive to encourage law schools to inequitably, if not illegally, favor applicants from underrepresented minority groups. Another major argument in some legal education circles is that the American Bar Association's accreditation process piles on unnecessary requirements that discourage innovative practices (and stifle competition from new schools) and, more concerning in some quarters, drive up costs for students. "[A]ccreditation standards effectively raise faculty salaries; limit faculty teaching loads; require high numbers of full-time faculty rather than cheaper part-time adjuncts; and require expensive physical facilities and library collections," Sens. Jon Kyl and Orrin Hatch wrote in 2007 in explaining a piece of legislation that year that sought a Government Accountability Office study to examine the topic. "The requirements probably cause law schools' costs to more than double, increasing them by more than $12,000 per year, with many schools then passing the increased costs along to students by raising tuition." That bill didn't pass, but the mandate for a GAO study was incorporated into 2007's renewal of the Higher Education Act. On Monday, the GAO released its report, and Hatch and others who share his view are unlikely to like the results. Law school tuition and fees have risen since 1994, the GAO found, but "the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main factors driving law school cost, while ABA accreditation requirements appear to play a minor role. Additionally, recent decreases in state funding are seen as a contributor to rising tuition at public schools." Hatch's office did not respond to a request for comment, and ABA officials could not be reached.

In 2005, Syracuse University created MayFest, a one-day festival of academic events, with regular classes called off for the day. The Syracuse Post-Standard reported that students responded by organizing massive off-campus parties on that day. So this year, the university has renamed the event -- and will not cancel classes.

The following meetings, conferences, seminars and other events will be held in the coming weeks in and around higher education. They are among the many such that appear in our calendar on The Lists on Inside Higher Ed, which also includes a comprehensive catalog of job changes in higher education. This listing will appear as a regular feature in this space.

• National conference, Community College Humanities Association, October 29-31, Chicago.
• 23rd annual meeting, Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities, October 31-November 2, Orlando.
• International conference, Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, November 18-20, Chicago.
• Annual meeting, American Historical Association, January 7-10, San Diego.

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