A merger in Massachusetts?
The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and the Southern New England School of Law (SNESL) have considered merging before, most recently in 2005, but it didn’t happen. Now officials with the university are considering what they have called an “extraordinarily generous” offer from the law school.
SNESL has offered the state university $22.6 million in cash and real estate, including its campus, which houses 235 students, officials announced Wednesday. If the merger goes forward, it will create the first public law school in Massachusetts.
The university system will launch a comprehensive review process after UMass. Dartmouth reviews academic, financial and legal issues and makes a proposal.
America’s math scores
The math scores from the “Nation’s Report Card” were released last week, but the reading scores won’t be released until spring.
The math results of fourth- and eighth-graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are a mixed bag.
Several states saw significant gains among fourth-graders — Colorado, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Hampshire, Nevada, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Scores either remained statistically unchanged in other states or declined.
At the eighth-grade level, the District and 14 states — Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Washington — made significant gains. The rest of the states saw no significant changes.
Missing flash drive has personal data
The personal information of more than 100,000 former adult-education students may have been compromised because an unencrypted flash drive containing that information was lost.
The Virginia Department of Education said the flash drive was lost Sept. 21 after it was given to a representative of Virginia Tech’s Center for Assessment, Evaluation and Educational Programming for research purposes.
Former Bush aide to step down
Jim Towey, the president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., announced last week that he would resign at the end of the academic year. Mr. Towey served as director of President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative (2002-06).
Brandeis artwork
Brandeis University has agreed not to sell artworks donated by members of its museum’s board of overseers and to give the state attorney general 30 days’ notice if it decides to sell other donated works. The agreement stems from a lawsuit trying to stop Brandeis from closing its Rose Art Museum, whose 7,500-piece art collection is worth an estimated $350 million. A June trial date has been set.
Post-Katrina enrollments up
For the first time since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans colleges and universities report enrollments that are higher than pre-Katrina numbers.
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