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Welcome to The EDU Ledger! We’ve moved from Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.

Section: Opinion

The Power of Student Giving and Black College Fundraising Success

This post is co-authored by Nelson Bowman III, the Director of Development at Prairie View A&M University. Many elite universities, such as Penn, Chicago, and Princeton, have very successful student philanthropy programs. They spend ample time and effort educating students about philanthropic giving as well as the fundraising operation within colleges and universities. Why? Because […]

May 7, 2012

Congress – Bail Out the Indebted Students

We were told in 2008 that certain financial institutions, certain industries were too big to fail. As the Great Recession sent the global economic system into a tailspin, we were told that certain financial institutions and companies were so large and interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to our economy. We were then told […]

May 6, 2012

Commentary: Congress – Bail Out the Indebted Students

While Congress dished out trillions in the last decade to fund foreign wars and bailouts, student debt rose like the hand of an attentive student in a classroom, writes SUNY College-Oneonta historian Ibram Rogers.

May 2, 2012

Dr. Ibram H. Rogers

The Ongoing Saga of Racial and Gender Identity Politics Among the Millennials and Others

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about race and gender on American television. One thing can certainly be said, the conversation has not been dull. Internet blogs have been in overdrive, and the conversation has managed to find its way into the halls of academia. In my “Sexual Politics Since World War II” […]

May 1, 2012

Is George Zimmerman on Your Campus?

In the weeks leading up to the arrest of George Zimmerman, many people were shocked to find him on campus at Ohio State University. Of course, he wasn’t there in physical form, but his name and the phrase “Long live George Zimmerman” was written (presumably by a student) on the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural […]

April 29, 2012

Will I Ever Wear My Hoodie Again?

I didn’t ever think my hoodie would become a modern day fashion piece or a source of social unrest and discord. Well it appears that it has become both! Would you have given any thought to the idea that this piece of clothing attire would become a must-have item. I am an old school guy […]

April 26, 2012

Black and White: Making Cross-Race Mentoring Work and Work Well

Note: This post is co-authored with Ufuoma Abiola, a current graduate student in the Higher Education program at the University of Pennsylvania. Mentoring can be defined as a long-term relationship between a more experienced individual and a less experienced person that fosters the mentee’s professional, academic, or personal development. Mentoring can enrich the lives of […]

April 24, 2012

It’s About Time to Break the Glass Ceiling for Women in STEM

Earlier this month, The White House Council on Women and Girls released the report Keeping America’s Women Moving Forward: The Key to an Economy Built to Last — a release that coincided with the April 6 White House Forum on Women and the Economy. Among other policy issues, the report points to the underrepresentation of […]

April 22, 2012

The Struggle for Tuition Equality

Should public institutions make undocumented state residents pay out-of-state tuition? In Michigan, Western Michigan, Wayne State, and Saginaw Valley State allow non-citizens to pay in-state tuition. Yet, its flagship campus—the University of Michigan—does not. “We just want tuition equality.” That is the proclamation of Daniel Morales, a freshman at U-M, who recently co-founded the Coalition […]

April 12, 2012

Wanted: More Under-represented Minority Professors in the Life Sciences

If you ask minority high school students interested in biology what they want to do as a future career, they typically tell you that they want to be a physician or dentist. Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you is that they want to be a professor or researcher. This lack of interest is often due […]

April 1, 2012

Probing the Comparison – Trayvon Martin/Mass Incarceration and Emmett Till/Segregation

Protests are blooming this spring. Black Americans are enraged and emboldened, shouting entreaties for justice, justice, justice. Stoking even more rage—or rather placing the rage in historical context—has been the continuous comparisons made between the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, murdered recently by a neighborhood watchman of a majority White gated community in Florida who is […]

March 30, 2012

Until Justice Weighs Down — Trayvon’s Story

Trayvon Martin has really been weighing heavily on my mind. I thought of him as I watched my daughter and her little elementary school classmates recite their winning oratories at their Speech Meet earlier this week. I sat there thinking that what happened to Trayvon could happen to any one of those little Black boys […]

March 19, 2012

Commentary: Until Justice Weighs Down — Trayvon’s Story

Trayvon Martin’s story should be the proverbial smack across the face that most Americans need to disabuse them of the notion that we are somehow living in a “post-racial” or “post-Black” era.

March 15, 2012

Using Dr. King’s Leadership to Extend Black History Month

“This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country, tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We have […]

March 14, 2012

The Case for Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education

Every day, it seems — and rightly so — there are new calls to strengthen and diversify the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pipeline by leaders from across the political spectrum. The education community knows this cause well. As many researchers will tell you, interest in STEM majors and careers by underrepresented students is […]

March 13, 2012

When Teachers Are Publicly Questioned

How the Untied States decides what a “good teacher” is and what we do with that information has gained national attention in the past two weeks. The controversy involves “value-added” measurements of teacher effectiveness, which evaluate teachers based upon their students’ one-time standardized test scores. In places such as New York City and Los Angeles, […]

March 10, 2012

Commentary: The Case for Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education

Of all Black, Native American, and Hispanic students who seek a STEM degree in their first college year, just 19 percent, 20 percent and 22 percent, respectively, graduate in a STEM discipline, UCLA researchers report.

March 8, 2012

Dr. Lorelle Espinosa

How to Excel at Elite Institutions: A Guide for Students of Color

Note: This post was co-authored by Ufuoma Abiola, a graduate student in the Higher Education program at the University of Pennsylvania. Elite research institutions with myriad resources can be wonderful places to gain an education; they also can be daunting for a student unfamiliar with the surroundings. We offer the following strategies for student success. […]

February 27, 2012