The Times on yesterday’s aid reform:

Yale’s change comes after its students demanded financial relief, and is arguably more generous than many of the financial aid overhauls at other schools, public and private universities alike. The University of North Carolina, for instance, no longer requires students from families of four earning about $37,000 or less to take out any loans to cover school expenses. Rice did the same but set the income bar at $30,000. “We wanted to signal that we’re serious about access,” said Richard C. Levin, Yale’s president. He also said Yale would reduce what it expects parents earning between $45,000 and $60,000 to pay. Only about 15 percent of Yale students’ families earn little enough to benefit from the changes, but that is precisely the point, Mr. Levin said yesterday. The hope is that once low-income students know that going to Yale will not financially burden their families, more will apply. Longer-range hopes are for a more diverse Ivy League and a more equitable society…Taken together, the changes in financial aid and foreign study should cost Yale an extra $3 million in the first year, Mr. Levin said, and probably significantly more in the future if more low-income students enroll and more undergraduates travel abroad. Mr. Levin said the university’s endowment – which, at about $12.7 billion, is the nation’s second-largest – is probably the biggest single factor in making the changes possible.

While welcoming aspects of the new financial aid plan, some students contended that it did not go far enough, since it still requires low-income students to supply as much as $6,350 a year toward their educations through some combination of loans, work-study or summer jobs. The University of Virginia, by contrast, has not only stopped requiring loans for low-income students, but has also gotten rid of work-study, essentially giving them what the university calls “a full ride.” “After months of student pressure, it’s very heartening to finally see movement,” said Joshua R. Eidelson, 20, a Yale junior who joined a sit-in protest at the university’s admissions office last week seeking more financial aid. “But we’re going to be working to make sure that movement continues.”

Finally, some real movement on financial aid:

Yale President Richard Levin announced substantial changes to Yale’s undergraduate financial aid policy this morning, eliminating the expected parental contribution for families with incomes less than $45,000. Families with incomes between $45,000 and $60,000 can also expect to see the University reduce their required contributions, Levin said. The University also announced greater funding for international student travel and a larger recruitment effort for low-income students. The Yale Corporation approved the changes at its meeting last weekend, he said. Yale’s decision follows a move Harvard University made last year to eliminate parental contributions for low-income families. “We think we are announcing an important message for low income families in America and throughout the world, that Yale is accessible,” Levin said.

Levin said he did not make up his mind to eliminate the parental contribution until after an open forum on financial aid sponsored by the Yale College Council last week. At the forum last week and at a later sit-in at the admissions office, students protested the University’s previous financial aid policies and called on Levin sharply reduce both the parental contribution and student selfelp portions of aid. Levin said he considered eliminating the student self-help contribution this year as well, but the University’s budget would not allow him to enact both changes simultaneously. “It’s not possible this year to do both,” Levin said. “This seemed like the better option.” Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said he thinks the reduction in parental contributions will alleviate the burden on students at Yale because many of the students working long hours on campus are doing so to help pay off their family’s expected contribution. “Students have explicitly told us these stories,” Salovey said.

The University also announced this morning an increase in the student budget for international students, allowing them one free trip home each year. Currently the University picks up the tab for one trip home over four years for each international student. Earlier this month, Yale officials announced a program to fund Yale-approved summer study and internships abroad for undergraduate financial aid recipients, the first program of its kind at a top American university. Yale officials said this morning that they will also intensify student recruitment in low-income areas across the country by initiating direct mail and e-mail campaigns, and encouraging current Yale students to visit high schools in low-income districts when they return home.

We made clear last week that moving on either the student or the family contribution is not enough. So there’s more work to do.

A staff editorial from Loyola’s student paper:

The Yale protestors have a great idea. If a student gains admission into an institution, that institution should do everything it can to guarantee that students can attend. College is an opportunity that can help a person achieve his or her goals. A higher education should be based on a student’s academic merit, not his or her family’s income. Here at Loyola, students needed to complete their Free Application for Federal Student Aid by March 1. FAFSA takes into consideration the student’s family income, other siblings and various other costs. However, creators of FAFSA had tunnel vision and failed to address special financial circumstances…Merit should be the key to academic success, not money.

Lest there were any doubt:

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Friday that Social Security should be phased out rather than saved. “I think if you leave people free to choose, it will be phased out by competition,” the former Republican congressman from Lewisville told reporters before sharing a President’s Day Dinner with the Smith County Republican Club…He said Social Security must remain solvent long enough to ensure older Americans collect on their lifelong payments into the system. But Americans who are at least younger than 50 should be allowed to divert their Social Security payments into personal accounts, he said. “If it is such a great deal, why does the government have to make it mandatory,” he said.

Looks like it’s not just College Republicans owning up to wanting the most popular government program of our time eliminated.

The Times reports on the release of GESO’s new report, The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League:

Minorities and women have made little progress in breaking into the faculty ranks of the Ivy League, according to a new report. In 2003, Ivy League campuses hired 433 new professors into tenure-track jobs, but only 14 were black and 8 were Hispanic. Women received 150 of the jobs. The figures, culled from a federal database by a graduate student group at Yale University, shows the slow progress these highly visible universities, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton, are making in diversifying their faculties. “The tenure-track faculty jobs are where all the change is supposed to be taking place,” said Rose K. Murphy, a senior research analyst at the Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, a group of graduate teaching assistants seeking union recognition there, and a co-author of the study. “But most of the new positions are still going to white men.”…From 1993 to 2003, the percentage of tenured black professors on the Ivy faculties remained essentially flat at 2 percent. The only Ivy campus where black professors accounted for more than 3 percent of the tenured faculty in 2003 was Brown, which had 17 black professors with tenure, or 4 percent of its tenured faculty. There was also little change in the tenure-track positions, the entry-level jobs that give professors a chance to earn permanent positions. In 2003, black professors had no more than 4 percent of the tenure-track positions at any Ivy university, and at Brown there were none…

The report, “The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League,” was based on data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System at the United States Department of Education. The Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, which compiled the study with help from graduate students at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, said it planned to post its findings on its Web site, http://www.geso.org, today, and deliver its findings to the Ivy League presidents…The study also noted the sharp rise in faculty jobs that were not on the tenure track at all: to 7,792 slots in 2003 from 4,266 slots in 1993. The 83 percent increase far outstripped the growth in other faculty jobs. Such jobs represented less than a third of the Ivy faculty in 1993 but climbed to 45 percent by 2003. The nontenure-track jobs, which carry titles like lecturer, instructor or researcher, generally pay less and provide fewer benefits, if any. They are usually short-term, and involve heavier teaching loads, the report said, even though they often require a doctorate. Blacks and women hold higher proportions of these jobs than of the tenure-track positions.

Check out the full report here.

Check out the Financial Aid Reform Blog, where several of us have posted accounts of Thursday and of experiences like this:

In the fall, I went back to my public high school to recruit top students to come to Yale. I did not tell them that Harvard or Princeton would probably give them a better financial aid package, because I genuinely wanted more of them to come to Yale and experience the excellent education and unparalleled opportunities here. Part of me feels that I lied to them. Should I have told them that I have gotten a great education at Yale because my family can pay for it? Should I have told them that my friend Amara, who attended the same high school as I did, has not had the same opportunities at Yale because her family can’t pay?

Lebanon’s government resigns:

The Lebanese prime minister, Omar Karami, announced the resignation of his pro-Syrian government today, two weeks after the assassination of his predecessor triggered huge street protests and calls for Syria to withdraw thousands of troops. “I am keen that the government will not be a hurdle in front of those who want the good for this country. I declare the resignation of the government that I had the honour to head. May God preserve Lebanon,” Mr Karami said. The resignation was a huge victory for the opposition and the most dramatic moment yet in the series of protests and political manoeuvres that have shaken Lebanon and its Syrian-backed government since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Mr Karami’s cabinet will continue as a caretaker government. The next step is for the president to appoint a prime minister after consulting with members of parliament. The new prime minister will then consult parliamentary blocs to form a cabinet that must withstand a parliamentary vote of confidence. Jubilant demonstrators immediately called for the country’s pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, to step down next, shouting “Lahoud, your turn is coming”, “Syria Out” and “freedom, sovereignty, independence”.

Human Rights Watch releases a new report on Egypt’s response to last year’s Taba bombing:

Egyptian human rights groups said that security forces had rounded up as many as three thousand persons, including several hundred persons detained solely to secure the surrender of wanted family members. The government has officially neither confirmed nor contested that figure, although one North Sinai security official insisted anonymously that the number being held in early December was “only” around eight hundred. As of early February, the government has still provided no information to families or legal counsel regarding the number of persons in detention or their whereabouts. On January 28, between five hundred and one thousand demonstrators reportedly clashed with police in al-`Arish when they tried to stage a march protesting the detentions…In every one of the score of cases that Human Rights Watch investigated, the SSI had detained persons without informing them of the reasons for their detention. They were usually picked up in pre-dawn raids on their homes. Officials typically kept detainees in local SSI offices for three or four days, and in some cases well over a week, without charging them. The authorities released some but most of the detained individuals were transferred to Tora prison in Cairo and Damanhur Prison in the Nile Delta. Human Rights Watch has been unable to learn if these detainees were charged at the time of transfer or since. Most of those detained, it appeared, were or were considered to be Islamists—that is, persons favoring a system of governance that accords with what they consider to be core Islamic principles.

Family members told Human Rights Watch that they were afraid to “cause trouble” by pressing officials for information about detained relatives. They learned only informally, if at all, about the whereabouts of their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers from those who had been with them in detention but were now released. This lack of knowledge was especially painful to families because of widespread reports that detainees were subjected to torture and ill-treatment during interrogation. These reports were consistent with documented practices of the SSI in politically-charged investigations. Human Rights Watch interviewed several former detainees who provided credible accounts of torture they underwent at the hands of SSI interrogators. Others spoke of seeing fellow detainees who had been badly tortured, and hearing the screams of those being abused. Given that those most likely to have been tortured are among the hundreds if not thousands of persons still in detention, and that many of those released fear the possible consequences of meeting with independent human rights monitors, Human Rights Watch believes that torture and ill-treatment by the SSI has been widespread in connection with the investigations into the Taba attacks.

Wal-Mart Watch: Good news:

Facing intense opposition, a large real estate developer has dropped its plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a Queens shopping complex, thwarting Wal-Mart’s plan to open its first store in New York City, city officials and real estate executives said yesterday. The decision by the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, is a blow to Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and comes after company officials said that New York City was an important new frontier in which Wal-Mart was eager to expand. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company was still exploring other sites in the city, but the possibility that the company would open a 132,000-square-foot store in Queens had immediately stirred a storm of opposition by neighborhood, labor and environmental groups as well as small businesses. Wal-Mart also faced opposition from many City Council members and several members of Congress. Labor unions fought Wal-Mart with a special intensity because they believe its wage levels and benefits are pulling down standards for workers through the United States.

And bad:

Tire shop workers at a Colorado supercenter operated by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Friday voted “No” to union representation, dealing another blow to efforts to unionize employees at the world’s largest retailer. Wal-Mart — which recently shut down a Canadian store that voted in favor of a union — said tire and lube express associates at its Loveland supercenter voted 17-1 to reject representation by the United Food & Commercial Workers Union. The union has been spearheading the Wal-Mart unionization drive for more than a decade, with very little success. The vote at the Loveland tire center coincided with growing criticism that Wal-Mart mistreats its workers, and a UFCW spokesman said the outcome showed just how well Wal-Mart’s fear tactics work. “Wal-Mart did what it does best. It scares people. They are very good at putting the fear of God in their employees,” said Dave Minshall of the UFCW…Another UFCW official said before the results were made public that the balloting had been itself a big victory because the company had resisted previous attempts by the tire workers to vote.