Raggle-taggle of ‘household names’ provided huge sums in the direction of WikiLeaks founder’s failed bail plea

The already curious circumstance of Julian Assange took one more bizarre twist yesterday when the court learned that a raggle-taggle of “household names” had been ready to stake their status in his situation, offering sureties to the courtroom having a complete value of £180,000.

In spite of claiming not to know Assange, the film-maker Ken Loach as well as the socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan stood before Westminster magistrates and offered big  sums in direction of Assange’s bail, even though bail was  later refused.

Offering £20,000, Loach mentioned he did not know Assange other than by status, but extra: “I feel the perform he has carried out has been a public service. I feel we’re entitled to understand the dealings of individuals that govern us.”

Khan provided a further £20,000, “or far more if want be”.

In a statement later, she explained: “I make no judgment of Julian Assange as an individual as I’ve by no means met him. I’m providing my assist to him as I imagine in the universal correct to freedom of data and our correct to become advised the truth.”

On her Twitter feed very last month, Khan requested if Assange was “the new Jason Bourne”, a reference towards the fictional action hero designed by the thriller writer Robert Ludlum. The publish has since been deleted.

The journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who also supplied £20,000, mentioned he knew Assange as a journalist and private good friend and had a “very higher regard for him”.

The largest donation of £80,000 was provided by an unknown American relation who didn’t want to be named because of anxiety for his safety.

Patricia David, a professor, and also the leading lawyer Geoffrey Sheen each and every supplied up £20,000 surety on grounds that they’d invested their lives combating for human rights.

Exterior courtroom Pilger explained: “This enterprise in Sweden can be a travesty; an harmless man includes a correct to be free.

“Having his freedom taken absent is outrageous. Sweden really should be ashamed. This isn’t justice – this is outrageous.”

He additional: “Behind this he has manufactured lots of enemies, the principal one currently being the warmonger, the usa.”

Howard Riddle, the judge in the court in Horseferry Road, London, commended four of the sureties for their willingness to help “out of concern for human rights” and with out individual expertise of Assange.

NEWARK, N.J. – A man who pleaded guilty in the execution-style killings of three college students in a New Jersey schoolyard in 2007 is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

Prosecutors say Melvin Jovel will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

The 21-year-old pleaded guilty in September to murder, attempted murder and weapons charges days before his trial was set to begin.

Prosecutors say Jovel was the triggerman who, with five other young men, lined up three students against a schoolyard wall in Newark and shot each of them in the back of the head.

A fourth victim survived and testified at the first trial against Rodolfo Godinez, who was sentenced earlier this year to three consecutive life sentences.

Four other defendants are awaiting trial.

Man faces sentencing for NJ schoolyard killings (AP)

Man faces sentencing for NJ schoolyard killings (AP)

Q: What conclusions can we draw about students’ sex lives from these columns?

A: These are wonderful sociological treasures in defining this sexual generation. The quote I love most is, “We’re not Baby Boomers. We’re not part of Generation X. We’re generation sex.” They’re speaking to students in their own language. They cover every extreme possible but primarily grapple with how confusing the current social, sexual landscape is on campus. The general sentiment seems to be that all rules have been thrown out the window. Chivalry is gone, dating is pass?, gender roles reversed. There’s no blueprint for how students are supposed to act with each other. The columnists are asking, “Is this really good for us?”

Q: Extremes, huh? Do you believe everything you read?

A: I would truly say with full confidence that the columns are giving attention to issues students are engaged in. They’re compressing the campus culture into 600 to 800 words a week. They’re trying to be sarcastic to retain readers. There is an element of the exaggerated or sensational embedded in some of the pieces. But it’s coming from students themselves.

Q: Did you find censorship?

A: It’s unfortunately fairly common and still tends to happen behind closed doors. In most cases, students are realizing they can and do fight back. The censorship comes into play 99% of the time when a single outside reader, an alumni or parent or administrator, sees the word “sex” and simply reacts. They don’t take time to really read the pieces. In a lot of cases, they would find they’re on the columnists’ side.

Q: What would you say to parents who are surprised or concerned by what they read?

A: I’ve told parents there are three things all students tend to have in common: They complain about parking. They figure out how to coordinate sleep and school. And they have to make choices related to sex. Students, whether we want to admit it or not, are wrestling with these issues. We all have sex in common, even those who remain chaste. And the columns deal as much with the abstinence side of things. I’d much rather put my kid on a campus in which discussion about it is allowed openly among peers.

Q: What has changed since the first campus sex advice columns appeared a decade ago?

A: Sex columns are truly no longer thought of as novelty items. They’re in all 50 states, all across Canada and in parts of Asia. They continue to cause controversy. As for the columnists, a growing camp seems to be using pseudonyms. In my interviews with columnists, the first wave never expressed regret over the writing but at times had moments of regret that their names are so easily searchable — by graduate schools, by potential employers, even first dates. It’s not something they can escape.

Sex columns ‘revolutionize’ college media?

Sex columns ‘revolutionize’ college media?

College endowments returned an average of 12.6 percent in fiscal 2010 — and, unusually, the smallest endowments performed better than the largest ones, according to preliminary data from 80 colleges and universities gathered for the comprehensive Nacubo-Commonfund Study of Endowments to be released in January. According to the data, institutions with assets under $25 million had an average return of 14.1 percent, compared with 12.3 percent for those with assets over $1 billion. Smaller endowments tend to be invested more than larger ones in traditional assets such as domestic equities, which performed well in the rebound from the previous year’s sell-off, and fixed income, which benefited from declining interest rates. The institutions spent an average of 4.3 percent of their endowment in fiscal 2010, and on average, annual giving paid for 6.2 percent of their operating budgets.

National Briefing | Education: Smallest College Endowments Perform Best, Study Finds

LONDON — Until recently, if you wanted to take Professor Rebecca Henderson’s course in advanced strategy to understand the long-term roots of why some companies are unusually successful, you needed to be a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Ms. Henderson taught at the Sloan School of Management. Admission to the Sloan School is extremely selective, and tuition fees are over $50,000 a year.

For Exposure, Universities Put Courses on the Web

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A group of Kansas public school districts filed a lawsuit on Tuesday claiming the state has again unconstitutionally short-changed students.

The lawsuit alleges that the state failed to provide sufficient money to comply with a funding plan that resulted from a previous lawsuit that was settled in 2006, according to a statement from the districts’ lawyers.

“While the court-approved plan called for $755 million in new funding, the legislature and governor have thus far cut over $303 million from the schools,” the statement said.

The lawsuit, filed in Shawnee County District Court, claims that action violated the Kansas Constitution in terms of the way schools are funded. A new law requires school funding lawsuits to be sent to the state appeals court chief judge, who will assign a three-judge panel to hear the case, the statement said.

Governor Mark Parkinson, who is not running in Tuesday’s election, hopes the next administration and legislature will work together “to uphold the state’s commitment to public schools,” his spokeswoman Amy Jordan Wooden said.

“As Governor Parkinson has said many times before, our state has faced some extremely challenging times during this economic recession, but we cannot sue our way out of them,” she said.

(Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by James Dalgleish and Andrew Hay)

Kansas sued again over school funding (Reuters)

Kansas sued again over school funding (Reuters)

Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

The London School of Economics has denied reports that the university is considering “going private” in response to the coalition government’s announced plans to cut its contribution to university teaching budgets by as much as 40 percent.

Briefly: L.S.E. Denies It Is Privatizing After U.K. Budget Cuts

When it opened in 1998, the Shuang Wen Academy was heralded as a new kind of boutique public school, rooted in a mission of cross-cultural understanding. Small and open to children of any background, it was billed as the nation’s first dual-language English-Mandarin public school, teaching fluency in both languages.

At English-Mandarin Public School, High Test Scores, but Also Strife