Higher education

New Britain, CT - President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney met on October 3rd for the first of their three debates. The CPBN Media Lab Interns went out to Central Connecticut State University the next day to speak with students about the debate.

It’s high drama this past week at the state Board of Regents for Higher Education. President Robert Kennedy is being pressured to step down after he mistakenly authorized twenty-one executive pay raises without board approval, and he also took a leave this summer for “professional development” -- that he spent at his home in Minnesota. We’ll get to the bottom of it all with Connecticut Mirror reporter Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and state Senator Beth Bye. 

** UPDATE: Robert Kennedy resigned Friday morning.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was in Connecticut Friday, bringing a two-fold message to the state’s community colleges. She promoted the $12 million the administration has invested in new programs here, but as a prominent Latina, she also spoke about the importance of training the Latino workforce. 

President Obama has made it part of his regular education speech that the best path to the middle-class is through a college education.

And the numbers bear it out. Getting a college degree brings higher earnings over a lifetime. Today, those with a bachelor’s degree earned 84% more money over a lifetime than those with a high school diploma.

Congressman Joe Courtney has sponsored a bill that could help veterans who are in school or planning to enroll using the Post 9-11 GI bill. The legislation would change how education funding is classified from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

The dance ensemble, the Brian Brooks Moving Company returns to Wesleyan University for a pair of performances tonight and tomorrow night at Wesleyan's Center for the Arts Theater in Middletown. On the program is the New England premier of his new work Big City. The dance company has performed all of the world. Joining us by phone this morning is dancer and choreographer Brian Brooks. 

Title IX is 40 years old this week...and slowly over that time, it’s meant a big boost in Women’s athletics.

Just to give you some idea - there are nearly 10 times as many high school girls playing organized sports today as there were the year the law went into effect. At the college level, nearly half of the athletic scholarships go to female athletes.

Today's announcement by the Obama Administration that it will allow certain illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. and have the ability to work without penalty is being embraced by undocumented students in Connecticut.

Fairfield University is participating in the nationwide initiative, Joining Forces, to to help veterans. WNPR's Lucy Nalpathanchil spoke with the Dean of the School Of Nursing, Dr Suzanne Campbell.

We tend to see familiar patterns in the life around us. When a Trinity student was badly beaten on a street bordering the college, we saw violence coming from the neighborhood. When the Hartford police released a description of the suspects as white women and men in their twenties, many of us didn't let that alter our understanding of what had happened.

But in the four weeks since the assault, other versions of the story have trickled out across the campus and through the city.

Our friends at Sitar in New Haven were kind enough to keep their amazing buffet open a little later than usual on a recent Sunday afternoon, and the result was a rollicking editorial meeting for the RLSG!

We talked about April Fool's Day (of course!), college admissions - and meatballs - with guest editors Joanne Kahan, Kim Garley-Erb, Erika Horne and David Bailin.

Joanne Kahan describes herself as a “sometimes bored suburban housewife, volunteer, and retired mother”. (Which, translated, means she's an empty nester exploring new paths!)

Almost a month after a Trinity College student was brutally attacked in the middle of the night just outside campus, it’s still not clear who his assailants were. College administrators have demanded better security in the surrounding neighborhood, frustrating nearby residents who say they’ve been unfairly blamed time and again. WNPR’s Neena Satija reports on their reactions.

Thousands of troops are home from Iraq - and soon from Afghanistan - to a country that, in many ways, barely noticed they were gone. These wars have been fought at such a distance from a public that was told to “go shopping” to support a war effort, that we don’t have the impact of similar returns from Vietnam or World War 2.

The Yale Muslim Students Association was shocked to learn over the weekend that the New York Police Department spied on their organization in 2006 and 2007.

We gathered to record Episode 30 at Cafe Romeo, the hip, delicious East Rock coffee shop. We were joined by Anne Witkavitch, Kristin Huffman, and Mark Branch, and hosted by Chris Mordececai.

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether a Liberal Arts college degree is worth it. Some leading liberal arts schools are trying to make their case.

Think college music program in Connecticut and the Hartt School of Music springs to mind. There’s the Yale School of Music and Wesleyan’s ethnomusicology program. Now, a report on the quiet transformation of Southern Connecticut State University’s Music Department – thanks to the generosity of a state resident.

SCSU student Andrew Pinto sings a song he composed. Pinto, a music theory major, says he’s benefited from free private singing lessons at Southern.  

A University of Connecticut professor has been studying two treatment therapies for post traumatic stress disorder. The study focuses on the military community which sees a disproportionate number of PTSD cases.

Mark Demers is a Fairfield University Professor who just got a grant to study “chaos theory.” Could the gentle flap of a butterfly wing in China set off a tornado in Texas? He’ll study the evolution of systems that change over time and attempt to understand their stability and predictability.

It's been several months since a new law went into effect allowing illegal immigrants to pay the in state tuition rate at public colleges and universities in Connecticut.

As WNPR's Lucy Nalpathanchil reports, more than one hundred undocumented students have signed affadavits to qualify for the rate this semester.

Newsflash -- on this show Garrison Keillor threw cold water on his much-publicized earlier statements that he would retire from PHC in 2013.

You can hear him say, on the audio here: :"I’m starting to doubt that myself. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking: what else would I do? And I can’t come up with anything….If I didn’t do it I would wind up in a tiny walk-up apartment with a couple of cats."