Education

Some states are making it harder for illegal immigrants to attend college by denying in-state tuition benefits or banning undocumented students. In the past two years, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma have refused in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the USA illegally with their parents but grew up and went to school in the state. That represents a reversal from earlier this decade, when 10 states passed laws allowing in-state rates for such students. This summer, South Carolina became the first state to bar undocumented students from all public colleges and universities. Josh Bernstein of the National Immigration Law Center, an illegal-immigrants advocate, says sweeping anti-immigration bills are "a very serious threat" to the overall illegal population.

With their lives still in a state of disarray, another reality has hit the children of Myanmar after a cyclone devastated their villages and towns. June 2 marked the beginning of the school year, but in Aima, a village in the southern Irrawaddy delta region, "all the schools have been destroyed," said Archbishop Charles Bo of Yangon in e-mails in late May and early June.

It is the season of commencement speeches. High schools and colleges near and far are celebrating their graduates by hosting celebrity speechmakers. We listen for sound bites from the Bills – Clinton, Cosby, and Gates – along with CEOs and novelists, college presidents, and politicians. Most of their talks inspire, but many have also adopted an underlying message that links education, graduation, and material success. It's a message that unwittingly reduces the worth of an education to the expected wages it can bring. It sees tuition not as a ticket to a liberated mind but as a down payment on future income. In our excitement for the graduates, we've put the emphasis in the wrong place.

The United Way of America, alarmed at the nation's fraying safety net, will announce today that it will direct its giving toward ambitious 10-year goals that would cut in half the high school dropout rate and the number of working families struggling financially. The nonprofit organization also wants to increase by one-third the number of youths and adults considered healthy. The announcement comes as it releases a report detailing a precipitous decline in key education, personal finance and health indicators.

After repeatedly getting criticized by conservative Catholics, and after years of pressure from the Vatican and some American bishops, Catholic colleges and universities are now shying away from politicians - especially those who, like Kennedy, Kerry, and Pelosi, support abortion rights - as commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients. Instead, the schools are scrutinizing the public records of potential honorees for evidence of open dissent from key church teachings, especially on abortion, and they are choosing noncontroversial church insiders or nonpolitical figures for their most prominent honors.

Setting up their last major battle over war policy with President Bush, House Democrats yesterday unveiled a plan to link their favored domestic spending projects and a troop withdrawal timeline to additional funds for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan requested by the White House. The $195 billion spending measure would pay for the wars well into next year while tacking on $11 billion to extend unemployment benefits and nearly $1 billion to offer expanded higher education benefits for war veterans. Democrats said they are hopeful the spending provisions, particularly the education measure, would prove politically difficult for Bush to veto in an election year.

Defying President Bush, House Democrats are preparing to forge ahead with a war spending measure that would include extended unemployment assistance and new educational benefits for returning veterans. After a meeting Monday evening of House Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped to bring a $178 billion measure to the floor this week. What could be a contentious debate on the matter is likely to be held on Thursday, aides said.

At the top of the list of no-brainers in Washington should be Senator Jim Webb’s proposed expansion of education benefits for the men and women who have served in the armed forces since Sept. 11, 2001. It’s awfully hard to make the case that these young people who have sacrificed so much don’t deserve a shot at a better future once their wartime service has ended. Senator Webb, a Virginia Democrat, has been the guiding force behind this legislation, which has been dubbed the new G.I. bill. The measure is decidedly bipartisan. Mr. Webb’s principal co-sponsors include Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia, and Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.

Pope Benedict XVI told leaders of America's Roman Catholic colleges and universities Thursday that academic freedom has "great value" for the schools, but it does not justify promoting positions that violate the Catholic faith. Benedict, a former academic, said that church teaching should shape all aspects of campus life and that Catholic educators have a "profound responsibility to lead the young to truth." "I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom," Benedict told hundreds of educators gathered at Catholic University of America. "Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission," he said.
Benedict's talk contained no explicit directive to the school presidents, but emphasized a core theme of his pontificate: that faith is compatible with reason.