Monthly Archives: October 2008

“Michigan colleges brace for shrinking pool of students”

Posted on October 15, 2008 by | 10 Comments

An interesting (albeit gloomy) article in today’s Detroit News, “Michigan colleges brace for shrinking pool of students.” It’s always difficult to predict these kinds of trends about the future, but the demographics of the state suggest that higher ed in Michigan could be in for some changes sooner than later:

A couple of paragraphs from the beginning:

Over the next 10 years, the size of Michigan’s high school graduating classes will drop markedly — one of the biggest declines in the country — as the last wave of the baby boomers’ kids head to college. Now, colleges are ramping up their marketing, adding courses, sprucing up residence halls, recruiting overseas — all in a race to maintain enrollment, with most schools hoping to grow even more.

Over the next 10 years, the size of Michigan’s high school graduating classes will drop markedly — one of the biggest declines in the country — as the last wave of the baby boomers’ kids head to college. Now, colleges are ramping up their marketing, adding courses, sprucing up residence halls, recruiting overseas — all in a race to maintain enrollment, with most schools hoping to grow even more.

What’s EMU doing about this? Well, according to the article, “Eastern Michigan University is working to increase the number of foreign students.” That seems to me one strategy to pursue, but can we really make up in the long-run falling numbers of Michigan students with students from overseas? And given that the “bread and butter” programs at EMU are still tied to K-12 education, will enrolling more foreign students help those programs?

I’m not going to pretend to have the answer here, but I have two thoughts. First, I think that EMU as an institution ought to work even harder at recruiting so-called “non-traditional” and returning students. Second, I think EMU has to diversify a bit and foster programs that are not tied to education. It’s not that I have anything against these programs of course; I just think it’s risky to have that many eggs in one basket is a good idea, especially given the demographics in Michigan that will likely impact higher ed in the next ten years.

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life

EMU hosts 2nd annual “Dig Pink” fundraiser, not to mention band day

Posted on October 15, 2008 by | Leave a comment

Below the “read more” is a press release I received about a fundraiser/volleyball match that is going on this Saturday, October 18, the “Second Annual ‘Dig Pink’ Breast Cancer Awareness” fundraiser, which is part of a national effort to raise money to eliminate breast cancer. A fine cause indeed. The match starts Saturday at 7 pm.

Incidentally, one could have a full-blown EMU sports day on Saturday. EMU plays Akron at home at 1 pm, and, according to the web site, it is “band day,’ which will include 10 local high school bands playing in a pre-game and halftime show.

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Fund Raising, Sports

Hendrix is one of 18 candidates

Posted on October 15, 2008 by | Leave a comment

In the “for what it’s worth” category of things:

There are stories about the Detroit mayoral race at a number of places, including the Huffington Post web site and the Detroit Channel 4 web site. I couldn’t find it on the channel 4 site, but I saw the poll numbers again and Hendrix was in the middle of the pack at 6%. The good news for him (and everyone else running, I guess) is that “undecided” was way out in front at 35%.

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Posted in Administrator Life, In the media..., State Government

The EMU good news edition

Posted on October 14, 2008 by | 2 Comments

Not a lot of news around campus lately– unless you count various good news stories. In no particular order:

  • “EMU’s ‘Romeo’ is refreshing,” from today’s AANews about the current play on campus. The short version: it seems to be a pretty good play. Sadly, no more matinees this coming weekend (which messes up my plans), but for the rest of you, check it out at 7 pm Thursday through Saturday.
  • “EMU College of Business again ranked with top schools in U.S.,” from the Eastern Echo. I don’t know exactly know what this means, but I have to assume it’s better to be ranked than to not be ranked, so congrats to the CoB.
  • This isn’t quite EMU news, but close and it too was in the Echo: “Yoko Ono writes veterans $10,000 check.” From the article:

    When Bob Krzewinski, secretary of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, called Yoko Ono’s agent to seek approval for a John Lennon tribute concert, he received the thumbs up and thought that was that.

    A couple weeks later Krzewinski received a nondescript envelope in the mail, in it a check for $10,000, signed by Ono.

    “Oh my God, is this real?” he remembers saying after discovering the check. “It’s just fantastic.”

    Of course, I think that’s great for Veterans for Peace, and kudos to Yoko as well. And hey, if she wants to support any other EMU causes or this little blog project…

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Posted in EMU Events, In the media..., Ypsilanti

“A message regarding financial aid, student loans”

Posted on October 14, 2008 by | Leave a comment

After the “more” part, I have the entire message that was sent around by Bernice Lindke yesterday afternoon about financial aid and student loans. Basically, she says that the federal loan programs are fine, but private loan programs are not:

The only market that is experiencing significant change due to the economic turmoil is the private, or alternative, educational loan market. The same lenders who offer mortgages and car loans have become more conservative in approving private educational loans. Private loan lenders such as JP Morgan/Chase, Sallie Mae, CitiBank, US Bank and others are instituting higher credit standards for applicants to qualify and are requiring a creditworthy co-signer for most applicants. As a result, fewer students are qualifying for private loans.

In a way, this kind of speaks a bit to my very naive and very layman’s take on at least aspect of the credit crisis. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but these private loans are not a whole lot different than credit card debts/personal line of credit, and this doesn’t seem to me to be a very good way for students to pay tuition and expenses. Or really, this doesn’t seem to be a very good way for just about anyone to pay for everything.

I realize that sometimes folks just have no choice. I speak from personal experience regarding credit cards, though I am no longer carrying a balance on one. Still, maybe one of the things we need to do to ultimately get out of the current financial mess is to reduce the amount of debt we all have.

Anyway, the entire message here:
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Posted in Budgets, Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

WiFi wins over beer

Posted on October 12, 2008 by | Leave a comment

From Inside HigherEd last week (just catching up to it now):

Today’s college students value a wireless campus environment. That’s not surprising, but the Wi-Fi Alliance, a wireless industry group, commissioned a poll of college students to see just how much wireless matters. Large majorities of students said wireless access was essential to their educations. The poll also found evidence that wireless may hinder their educations — with more than half saying that they have checked Facebook or MySpace and sent or received e-mail during class. How important is it to have wireless access? Almost half (48 percent) of students said that they would give up beer before giving up wireless access.

I personally prefer to not contemplate an “either/or” scenario.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Student Life

Pray-Harrold shows the progress at EMU

Posted on October 12, 2008 by | 1 Comment

In the comments for the post about Hendrix running for mayor of Detroit, Mark Higbee alerted me to an editorial that was in the AAN that I missed (too much essay commenting/grading as of late with my day job, I’m afraid), “Pray-Harrold shows the progress at EMU.” An excerpt:

Much has changed at EMU. The school’s regents, led by Chairman Tom Sidlik, have transformed themselves into a strong and credible leadership group on campus. Susan Martin, the school’s president, enthusiastically embraces the challenges facing the school – on campus, in Lansing and in the neighboring communities. And faculty leaders seem willing to consider the possibilities of a future shaped not only with students, but administrators as well.

I think this is basically true, though everything I’ve heard suggests the renovations that will be happening in PH are largely going to be to infrastructure, which means it’s probably going to remain a pretty ugly building. And, as one of the commentators at the AAN site mentions, I still think they ought to use the money to build a new building with the goal to eventually tear PH down.

By the way, there’s still time to enter the Pray-Harrold construction pool!

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, In the media..., Pray-Harrold Renovation Pool

Football bad news/good news

Posted on October 11, 2008 by | Leave a comment

Well, the bad news is that EMU lost a tough one at Army, a game that they were picked to win. The good news is that U of Michigan lost at home against Toledo. That combined with an Iowa win over Indiana makes for not a great but okay football day.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports, University of Michigan

Hendrix running for mayor of Detroit again

Posted on October 10, 2008 by | 15 Comments

I don’t know why this just came up tonight on my newsfeed since it appears to have been something that happened on Tuesday, but according to the Eastern Echo, EMU’s lobbyist/government guy Freeman Hendrix says he’s going to run for mayor of Detroit. I don’t know what his chances are with the current mayor (until an election, of course) Ken Cockrel, but then again, I don’t understand Detroit politics anyway.

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Posted in Administrator Life, In the media...

Bruce… Bruuuuuce….

Posted on October 10, 2008 by | Leave a comment

Just thought I’d share a video of Bruce Springsteen from his appearance on campus this past Monday. I like this one because it’s where Springsteen said he couldn’t spell Ypsilanti:

There are lots of other videos on YouTube for your Springsteen fans. Just do a search for “Springsteen Eastern Michigan” and you’ll see what I mean.

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Posted in EMU Events, In the media..., Ypsilanti