The N.J. high court said public notice of a 2008 policy session was inadequate.

By David Porter, Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. – Rutgers University’s board of governors violated some state open-meeting laws at a special session in 2008 to discuss athletic department policies and conduct, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a case brought by a Rutgers graduate.

In a 5-0 decision with one justice not participating, the court agreed with some claims and disagreed with others made by Francis McGovern Jr., a lawyer who graduated from Rutgers in 1987 and who has been a regular attendee at the meetings.

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By Jeff Gelles, Inquirer Staff Writer.

Students who attend for-profit colleges – nearly one-tenth of all those enrolled in higher education in 2009, according to a new U.S. Senate committee report – are more likely to wind up mired in debt than their counterparts who attend public or nonprofit institutions, says a study by the National Consumer Law Center. But wherever they were schooled, it says, students who fail to capitalize on their training are often stuck with no way out of debt.

The consumer group’s study was made public Monday, the same day Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) released findings from a two-year examination of the for-profit higher-education industry by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Both reports suggest that students attending for-profit schools face an extra measure of financial risk.

The Senate report, citing Education Department data, said that 96 percent of students enrolled at for-profit institutions borrowed for school in 2009 – compared with 13 percent at community colleges, 48 percent at public four-year colleges, and 57 percent at private colleges.

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By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger

NEW BRUNSWICK — Once the bills for consultants, meals, meetings and other expenses were added up, the price tag for Rutgers University’s latest presidential search came in at $226,532, campus officials said.

The state university spent more than six months looking for a new leader before selecting former Thomas Jefferson University president Robert Barchi this spring.
Campus officials said the cost of the search was a relative bargain compared with Rutgers’ last presidential search a decade ago, which cost nearly $50,000 more.

But the university still spent lavishly to wine and dine prospective candidates, according to a Star-Ledger review of nearly 300 pages of receipts obtained through the Open Public Records Act. The bills include limo rides, hotel stays and pricey dinners, including a $1,200 meal for one finalist and members of the board of governors at the Peacock Inn in Princeton that included $216 worth of wine and liquor.

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By MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger

TRENTON — Rutgers University’s board of governors did not violate the state’s public meeting notification requirements when it discussed issues about the school’s new football stadium in 2008, but it didn’t provide a detailed enough notice about the meeting and it strayed off topic during closed discussions, the Supreme Court ruled today.
The unanimous ruling handed a partial victory to Rutgers alumnus Francis McGovern Jr., a lawyer who challenged how the meetings were held, but it handed the school a bigger win by declaring the school was mostly in compliance with open public meeting laws.

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By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger

MIDDLETOWN — For nearly two decades, Peter Burnham was one of the most respected higher education officials in the state. The Brookdale Community College president served as head of the New Jersey College Presidents’ Council, sat on a hospital board and garnered numerous national awards for helping to turn his school into one of the most highly regarded two-year colleges in the state.

But along the way, Burnham began using his college-issued business credit cards for more than school expenses, prosecutors said. They said the president, with a $216,000-a-year salary, charged personal hotel stays, clothing, electronics, alcohol, groceries and more to his school account, sometimes altering receipts or lying about the reason for the charges on Brookdale’s expense reports.
In one case, he charged a $60 pair of shoes to his college credit card, then told officials on the Lincroft campus it was a briefcase so he would be reimbursed, prosecutors said.
Today, Burnham stood in a Monmouth County courtroom and pleaded guilty to two counts of official misconduct and one count of theft by deception. Under a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to recommend he be sentenced to five years in prison and be eligible for parole in two years.

A Student Debt Strike Force Takes OffCan young people reimagine it as something productive, rather than a tool for profiteering?

“ONE, we are the zombies! TWO; we are indebted! THREE; this occupation is… om-nom nom-nom…”

Playfully infusing a familiar Occupy Wall Street chant with the mindless noshing of zombies, last month around 100 costumed protesters undertook a small but significant “Night of the Living Debt” march around the New York University campus and Washington Square Park. The event was organized by All in the Red, an initiative of student activists which grows out of the nocturnal marches that began last month in solidarity with the massive popular mobilization in Quebec against austerity-related tuition hikes. Equipped with an arsenal of felt red squares, red banners, red balloons, red confetti, and pots and pans, the young organizers—recent graduates of the OWS Summer Disobedience School training program—undertook the first coordinated march in New York to translate student-specific struggles surrounding tuition and education debt into a broader discourse concerning the perpetual condition of indebtedness in which the 99 percent currently finds itself. With its necromantic pop-cultural reference, the march suggested that zombie-like servitude to Wall Street creditors is a basic condition of life for the majority of the population—a point driven home with a cathartic “debtors’ die-in” at the conclusion of the event.

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