Winter 2002 Home   Newsletters

Convention Edition 2003

Fall 2003

President's Message (Maile Bay)
First Saunders Award to Jean Aoki (Mary Anne Raywid)
Ray of Hope for School Governance Change (Mary Anne Raywid)
Initiative and Referendum Forms
Action Needed Now to Support Clean Air (Kay Maxwell)
Busy Year Ahead for Judiciary Study Committee (Jean Aoki)
Thanks for Evaluation Efforts! (Jean Aoki)
Two New Studies Approved at Convention
League of Women Voters of Hawaii Board of Directors 2003-2005
Administration Blows to Education
Hawaii Pro-Choice License Plates
Big Vote of Thanks (Suzanne Meisenzahl & Mary Anne Raywid)

Administration Blows to Education

In recent weeks, the Administration has dealt two blows to higher education. One to the research community came with the Secretary of Education's announcement that the 10 ERIC clearinghouses located across the nation were to be closed, and the research papers they made available on numerous topics would no longer be made available to scholars. In lieu of the broad range of perspectives on numerous issues that they disseminated, a much narrower range of views would be selected for dissemination. There was time and opportunity to protest this decision and we gather that a number of Congressmen, as well as the citizens they represent, have done so.

The second, more recent blow affected students rather than scholars. According to the New York Times, a change in the student aid formula shifts more costs to students: "Millions of college students will have to shoulder more of the cost of their education under federal rules imposed late last month through a bureaucratic adjustment requiring neither Congressional approval nor public comment of ay kind. The changes are expected to diminish the government's contribution to higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars, starting in fall 2004. But they also will have a ripple effect across almost every level of financial id, shrinking the pool of students who qualify for federal awards, tightening access to billions of dollars in state and institutional grants and, in turn, heightening the reliance on loans to pay for college."

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