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News Brief for the week ending May 17, 2013

Montana University System News:

UM Now Considering Two Locations for Missoula College- University of Montana administrators are considering two sites for the new Missoula College building, President Royce C. Engstrom announced Thursday, May 16. In addition to the South Campus site, the University will consider a location on University-owned property across the Clark Fork River, he said. The East Broadway property is immediately east of UM’s Montana Technology Enterprise Center (MonTEC) facility on a seven-acre parcel of land.  “We believe this site has similar attributes to the South Campus site,” Engstrom said. He noted it includes space for a building and adequate parking, service by existing bus routes and connectivity to infrastructure such as water, sewer and power. The East Broadway location, like the South Campus site, also satisfies the conditions of developing on University-owned land in close proximity to the central Mountain Campus, he said. South Campus remains a viable option for the new Missoula College building. Read More

Helena College Graduate Finds Calling in Nursing- “Charlotte Skinner says that as a teenager she had her heart set on going to medical school, but when she got appendicitis as sophomore in college, she realized that being a nurse was her true calling,” reports the Helena Independent Record.  “When I was a patient I realized I barely saw my doctor,” she said, sitting in St. Peter’s Hospital, where she was recently hired as an LPN on the surgical floor. “It was the nurses who were there 24/7. They got to take care of me. They really made a difference and that was when I decided, yeah, nursing is more what interests me.” “Nursing is a tough profession, but a rewarding one, said Skinner, who recently graduated from Helena College with an associate’s degree in nursing.” Read More

MSU Professor: Businesses Must Adopt Mobile Technology: Many Customers Already Using it, Oakley Says- “The way consumers get information about businesses changed rapidly, especially through increased use of smart phones and other mobile technology, so businesses should keep pace and take advantage of the trend,” reports the Great Falls Tribune. “Those are the views of Montana State University Associate Marketing Professor James Oakley, who will tour Montana to discuss the changing landscape of customer interaction in the marketplace in mid-May through early June.” (See schedule.) “The technology is influencing customer behavior already,” he said, “so business owners need to embrace it.” Read More

UM Archaeologists to Resume Dig in Upper Rattlesnake Valley- “Before summer wildfires chased them off the upper Rattlesnake last summer, archaeologists discovered a lithic scatter site and a 2,000-year-old projectile point,” reports the Missoulian. “A University of Montana archaeology team, in conjunction with the Lolo National Forest, will return to the region this summer to complete the second leg of their two-year study. Log cabins and dams — historic by today’s standards — have been documented throughout the upper Rattlesnake. Yet little is known about the area’s prehistoric visitors, who frequently traveled old mountain trails connecting western Montana’s sweeping valleys.” Read More

National News:

Smart Legislation Could Take the Guessing Game Out of Higher Education- As you look around Boston during the next few weeks and find a sea of mortar boards and graduation gowns, it’s worth wondering what, exactly, the class of 2013 will accomplish in the coming years (one imagines it involves lots of selfies, if Time magazine has any say in the matter). Universities like to tout the outstanding work of their esteemed graduates—pick up any alumni magazine to find out more about the start-up businesses, service projects, or groundbreaking research of their former students. But what if we actually had a picture of what the entire student body of every university accomplished after graduation? Wouldn’t it be helpful for students applying to colleges to know the average salary an English major makes five years after graduating? Or how much debt a student takes on after they leave campus? New bipartisan legislation announced last week, sponsored by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), aims to do that and more. And it’s a smart idea. Read More

Senate Democrats Urge Delay in Student Loan Rate Increase- U.S. Senate Democrats today called for a two-year postponement of a scheduled increase in the interest rate charged on education loans to millions of college students. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other top Democrats unveiled legislation that would head off an increase set to hit in July and would instead extend the current 3.4 percent rate into 2015. They rejected President Barack Obama’s call for more sweeping changes in the loan program, including replacing its fixed rates with ones that would vary with market conditions. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said that while he supports allowing rates to float, with certain conditions, lawmakers don’t have time to sort out such big changes before July. “We just want to do something very simple,” said Harkin, whose panel has jurisdiction over the loan programs. “Just leave it the way it is.” Read More

Republicans Move Forward with Student Loan Plan that Could Mean Higher Rates Later- The days of fixed-rate student loans could be coming to a close, with House Republicans on Thursday advancing a proposal that would link rates to financial markets. The GOP-led House Education and the Workforce Committee sent to the full House a bill that would offer some students a better deal at first. Democratic critics warned that graduates would face steadily climbing rates and costs over the long haul if the markets change. “Our families deserve better than this bait and switch,” said Rep. George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the committee, who led the opposition. The Republican chairman of the panel, Rep. John Kline, said critics were giving too much credence to Congressional Budget Office figures that anticipate future interest rates and don’t accurately measure real costs for the program that helps 36 million students. Read More

Lack of Financial Literacy Complicates Student-Aid Process, Report Says- A lack of reliable and transparent data on college costs and a complicated financial-aid-application process create an information gap that makes it difficult for students to pay for their higher education, according to a new report on overhauling the federal student-aid system. The report, released last Wednesday by America's Promise Alliance, suggests that the gap could be closed by increasing financial literacy, strengthening college-readiness courses in high school, and simplifying the application process for federal student aid. The alliance describes itself as a partnership "committed to ensuring children experience the fundamental resources they need to succeed."
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Andrea Opitz/Outreach Coordinator
406.444.0681