The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has started a formal investigation to see to what extent liberal arts colleges discriminate against female applicants in an attempt to balance genders in the student body.

On Oct. 30, the commission decided on a set of colleges to investigate, but declined to release the full list.

In recent years, many liberal arts colleges have worried about their gender ratios that show the colleges’ difficulty in attracting both male and female applicants.Private undergraduate colleges are exempt from the admissions provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, so they have the right to consider gender in the admissions process.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual executive compensation survey, 23 private college presidents made over $1 million in total compensation, and 110 made more than $500,000 for the 2007-8 fiscal year.

These large pay packages are still relatively new in higher education. In 2002, there were no presidents making over $1 million: only four earned more than $800,000 and 27 earned more than $500,000.

Over all, the study found the median pay for presidents of the 419 private colleges and universities surveyed was $358,746, a 6.5 percent increase from the previous year. The median presidential pay, adjusted for inflation, grew by 14 percent over the last five years, according to the Chronicle.

“It’s a market and it’s increasingly hard to find these people,” said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has published its annual compensation survey since 1993. “That said, almost every year, presidential salaries have gone up faster than inflation, and faster than tuition, which rankles some people on campus.”

The Chronicle’s information is from federal tax documents for the 2007-08 fiscal year, a period before the current economic downturn. More recently, most colleges have calmed salary increases for university presidents, Selingo said.

“Next year, it’s likely that we won’t see many presidents getting big raises,” he said.

In a letter responding to a Visalia Times-Delta editorial piece, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said the university’s strategy to increase funding for the school will not reduce enrollment opportunities for students from the Central Valley.

The editorial accused UC Berkeley of refusing admission to California students who would require financial aid and giving their slots to full-paying students from out of the state or the country.

Birgeneau addressed the Central Valley, assuring families that they should not be concerned that their children might not be able to afford Berkeley.

“If they earn a place at Berkeley, they will not be turned back, and we will ensure that they have the means to earn a UC Berkeley degree,” he wrote.

But Birgeneau also wrote that UC Berkeley will have to increase the amount of out-of-state and international students. The campus is overenrolled by 2,500 students, which means the state will not supply funds for that number. Instead of cutting the seats altogether, Birgeneau says they will be filled with those who can pay the full cost of their education—out-of-state and international students.

“We are frankly shocked that Berkeley would so blatantly betray its own values,” the Visalia Times-Delta wrote in response to the campus decision.

The debate about the initiative is ongoing, both sides arguing to uphold the accessibility and prestige of one of the nation’s most reputable public universities.

California’s budget crisis has recently begun to affect the California State Universities in a big way. CSU campuses have taken such large financial hits that they have decided to cancel midweek classes at all campuses.

According to the Los Angeles Times, this move is designed to allow faculty members a three-day furlough in the hopes that money can be saved through furlough days.

The canceled classes and various other budget cuts that have come this year as a result of the CSU’s $560 million budget deficit led to a protest at California State University, Fresno on Wednesday in which close to 400 students marched through the Fresno campus.

The UC Commission for the Future hosted a forum Thursday at UC Santa Barbara in order to answer questions about the future of the UCs.

The forum discussed questions specifically relating to methods of funding the UC system.

Speakers included UC Santa Barbara professors, campus and system officials and students.

Questions asked by speakers were addressed by the commission and topics ranged from discussions of cuts to libraries within the UC system, the increasing tuition and how it might hurt low income students and whether receiving money from private donors is a viable option.

One UC Santa Barbara professor asserted that private funding will never be enough to curb rising tuition.

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Popular Science named UC Berkeley professor Ting Xu as one of their “Brilliant 10” ranking of young researchers in the world.

Xu, 35, developed a technique of building up polymers from the molecule level on up. Xu’s work would completely alter data storage devices. The information from hundreds of DVDs could eventually be stored on a chip the size of a quarter.

More recently, Xu is using her nano-scale construction technique to make solar cells the thickness of a pieces of paper. These cells would be much more efficient than current devices.

Also on Popular Science’s list is UC Santa Cruz anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy, 33, for his study of the effect of food on human evolution. He showed that potatoes and other starchy vegetables were important for fueling a larger brain. He used evidence from early human teeth and the modern human DNA that controls saliva.

Other scientists who made the list include Virginia Tech engineering professor Dennis Hong made for his study of robotics. Thirty-three-year-old Carlos Guestrin of Carnegie Mellon University created an algorithm which could be widely used to stop waterborne disease or design self-adjusting chairs.

The head of the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science stressed the benefits of the UC system in an open letter as state legislators look to resolve a $1.1 billion shortfall.

Acting Executive Dean Janet Broughton highlighted parts of the California economy that crucially depend on quality higher education. She also tied UC contributions to democracy and the betterment of society.

Broughton claimed that one fourth of all California biotech firms were founded by UC graduates or faculty. UC research websites echo that sentiment with their report that one in four US biotech companies are within 35 miles of a UC campus.

Besides business creation, the UCs offer even more important improvement to society, according to Broughton. UC Berkeley, for instance, offers students a multitude of language programs and a library system among the best in the world. The level of schooling available at California public universities has rarely been available to any but the very wealthy.

Broughton goes on to explain how democracy itself is dependent upon a UC style education. She asserts that “tough-minded” yet “open-minded” citizens are needed to properly engage in public service and that the UC system provides these kinds of individuals.

The new director of the Pentagon’s research arm, Regina E. Dugan, has began visiting university campuses across the country in an effort to rebuild relationships with leading research institutions.

Dugan visited the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UCLA. She had previously visited Virginia Tech and Texas A&M.

Dugan was appointed in July to head the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), replacing Anthony J. Tether, a Bush administration appointee who was asked to leave the agency last February.

Under Tether, the decline of research financing damaged the agency’s relationship with some of the nation’s leading technology universities. Agency officials reported in 2005 that financing for university researches decreased to $123 million from $214 million, while the budget for computer science research increased from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million in 2005.

Yet with Dugan heading the agency, Peter Harsha, the director of governmental affairs for the Computing Research Association, said, in an interview with the New York Times, changes are expected to “empower … program managers more than under the previous regime.”

In conversations with university research faculty, Dugan addressed the need for the agency to rebuild relationships with universities’ research departments.

“University-based research is an important component of Darpa’s future activities,” Dugan said in a statement. “It is our goal to strengthen this partnership, enabling some of the best minds to serve with and in the government in the best interests of the nation and the U.S. Department of Defense.”

During her recent visit to California institutions, Dugan spoke with faculty from different departments in both the sciences and engineering.

Dugan’s visit to UC Berkeley was well received by some faculty members.

“I’m pretty encouraged,” Computer Science Professor David Patterson said in an interview with the New York Times. “She seems to genuinely value academic input into the defense research enterprise and really wants to re-engage the research community in the Darpa mission.”

The UC Davis School of Law is expanding its loan program with its Loan Repayment Assistance Program, which provides annual interest-free loans to UC Davis graduates who take a qualifying job with a nonprofit or government agency.

The move follows UC Berkeley’s own announcement to expand the loan forgiveness program at the Boalt Hall School of Law beginning in January 2010.

Loans for UC Davis law students who are participating in the program can only be used to pay off law school, undergraduate or graduate school debt. UC Davis School of Law then forgives all or a portion of the loans, depending on the loan seeker’s salary. Graduates’ salaries must be less than $60,000 a year for the graduates to be eligible, a $7,000 increase from the former salary cap. Graduates must apply for the program within three years of earning their law degree and can reapply for up to 10 years.

UC Santa Cruz has received a National Leadership Grant of $615,175 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to help digitize the Grateful Dead Archive at the University Library.

UCSC is one of 51 U.S. institutions that received National Leadership Grants this year totaling nearly $18 million. IMLS-funded projects are designed to “advance the ability of museums and libraries to preserve culture, heritage, and knowledge while enhancing learning.”

The grant will enable the UCSC Library to digitize materials from its Grateful Dead Archive and make them available on a web site titled, “The Virtual Terrapin Station.” Scholars and fans will be able to add their input to the website archive as well.

The Grateful Dead donated their extensive band archive, including information about their devoted fan-corpse the Deadheads, to UC Santa Cruz in 2008. The collection documents the band’s creative activity and influence on the landscape of contemporary American music.