National Science Foundation funds U. of Montana's rural environmental reporting initiative

University of Montana (Brooke Andrus)

The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Montana’s School of Journalism $250,000 to improve the quality and quantity of environmental science news as it affects Montana's most rural communities. Martin Kidston of The Missoulian reports that this type of reporting is needed at a time when access to local news has decreased and when "the debates surrounding key environmental issues facing the West often take place in a vacuum, where choices are shaped by one’s political orientation and the opinions generated by the local rumor mill."

Alison Perkins, adjunct journalism instructor at UM, told Kidston that "the grant will help develop a model for reporting environmental science news, using student reporters who are studying environmental science and natural resource journalism at the graduate level as writers. 'I think there’s a climate that’s not really open to environmental stories because there’s the fear that they come from an advocacy position,' said Perkins."

The new program, dubbed Science Source, will be modeled after The Associated Press, working with editors in print, radio, online and television to identify and produce stories that fit the media’s specific needs and that reach the largest audience possible. (Read more)

Seminar will train journalists to analyze teacher readiness, registration ends Oct. 11

The National Education Writers Association is hosting an intensive day-long seminar to teach journalists how to analyze career readiness of teachers. The pressures of accountability increases the scrutiny faced by education colleges, and the seminar, "Ready to Teach: Rethinking Routes to the Classroom," will guide journalists through examination of "the growing efforts to revamp how aspiring educators are prepared for the classroom and how teacher-preparation programs are held accountable for results," NEWA says on its website.

The seminar will offer lessons on how to analyze federal education-school and teacher certification data, information about how schools are trying to reform and alternative programs designed to replace them, insights into the debate over new ways to evaluate teacher prep programs, perspectives from teachers about how ready they were for the classroom and tips from reporters who have successfully covered the topic.

The seminar will be Oct. 27 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center, and registration ends Oct.11. A tentative agenda can be found here. To RSVP, click here.

Ex-ABC reporter gets that 'too close for comfort' feeling in writing about journalism in her community

By Al Cross

Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

CHARLESTON, S.C. – A former network correspondent who wrote an admiring book about small-town newspapers, told their main national meeting this weekend that she has faith in the future of community journalism and had experienced its fundamental challenge – in writing about a Colorado community where she has a home.

Judy Muller spoke to the annual convention of the National Newspaper Association because she is the author of Emus Loose in Egnar: Big Stories from Small Towns. She started her career at a weekly paper in New Jersey, but writing the book after leaving ABC News and joining the journalism faculty at the University of Southern California gave her a much greater appreciation of “that too-close-for-comfort feeling” that her audience knows well.

But not as great as the appreciation she gained when she wrote about how local media in and around Norwood, Colo., where she has a home, handled a sensational bullying case at a high school where “the average graduating class is about 12,” and which had “torn the town apart,” she told the editors and publishers, who mainly run weeklies.

"I have been aware the whole time of how concerned I am about how the local editor there will react -- the article is somewhat critical of her coverage -- but she is a friend,” Muller said. "And the piece is not a flattering picture of the local school, and yet I hope more young families will move to the community -- after all, I have a home there, and property values are important."

But in reporting the story, which she has sold to The Atlantic magazine, being local worked to Muller’s advantage.  Parents of two boys charged in the case gave her exclusive interviews because, as they said, “You live up there on Deer Mesa and you gave the commencement address last year.”

And, for first time in her career, Muller sent interviewees their quotes in context, to show them how they would appear in the story. Asked what she would have done if the people decided they didn't want to be quoted at all, Muller simply said she would have talked them into it.         

The trust required in such situations takes time to develop, and that’s why Patch.com, the national network of online local news sites, “won’t get much cooperation,” Muller said.

Some weeklies are reluctant to embrace the digital world, but some noted for their good journalism are using social media to make sure they maintain the local-news franchise that is the secret to their status as the healthiest part of the newspaper business.

Muller said her friend Laurie Ezzell Brown of The Canadian Record in the Texas Panhandle is using all sorts of social media, which appeals to younger people. She quoted Brown: "Those who may have viewed the paper as too staid or serious are finding that it is much more friendly and approachable."

Meanwhile, though, the paper has also expanded its efforts in a more traditional way, cultivating two non-staff columnists whom Laurie says have developed their own followings.

Muller sees a good future for printed community papers, because they provide local news, often of deep personal interest worth clipping, that is unavailable anywhere else. "They have a captive audience,” she said. “As long as there are refrigerator magnets there will be weekly newspapers."

But Muller concluded with exhortations about the most important reason for community newspapers: covering local officials and holding them accountable. "Try to remember why you got into it in the first place,” she said. “It's more important now than ever."

Lesser-educated white people, especially women, are living shorter lives, study finds

The life expectancy of white people without a high school diploma fell from 1990 to 2008, with women losing the most, an average of five years, according to a new University of Illinois at Chicago study. These demographics (older and less educated) are disproportionately rural.

The average life expectancy for white women without a high-school diploma was 73.5 years, compared to 83.9 for those with a four-year college degree or more. White men who did not fionish high school are living an average of 67.5 years, compared to 80.4 for those with a four-year degree or more.

"The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription-drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less-educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least-educated Americans who lack health insurance," reports Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times.

"Some cautioned that the results could be overstated because Americans without a high school diploma — about 12 percent of the population, down from about 22 percent in 1990, according to the Census Bureau — were a shrinking group that was now more likely to be disadvantaged in ways besides education, compared with past generations," Tavernise reports.

The study was published last month in the journal Health Affairs, and the National Academy of Sciences is investigating the decline to better determine its cause. (Read more)

Shortage of livestock veterinarians is growing

Rural America is short on large-animal veterinarians, and the deficit is growing. Just 17 percent of veterinarians nationwide work in food-animal medicine, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, and that percentage is expected to fall to 12 or 13 percent by 2016, reports Walker Moskop of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. (Strib photo by Richard Sennott: Food-animal vet student Joe Armstrong)

AVMA President Rene Carlson told  the shortage is partly the result of too many students entering the pet-care field. She also said "simple economics" is a factor. Some rural areas don't have enough large animals to make a clinic pay, especially when considering student loan debt for vet school. Food-animal vet work can be demanding, Moskop reports. Many are on call nights and weekends, and have to cover a lot of territory. The shortage has gotten so bad in some areas that rural vets that have reached retirement age have to keep working so their community will have a veterinarian.

University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine professor John Fetrow told Moskop the demanding hours, low pay and less-than-ideal working conditions often forces those who start their careers as food animal vets to switch to pet care. The university is offering an accelerated program that allows students to earn their bachelor's and doctoral degrees in seven years, a year early, to entice more students to take the food animal path. Graduates are also offered up to $25,000 a year if they work in a rural area. But, budget cuts this year could threaten incentives for students. North Dakota is offering a similar loan repayment program to veterinary graduates, and Alaska will allow out-of-state vets to practice free of charge in rural areas of the state without veterinarians. (Read more)

Kansas program forgives student loans for those who move to struggling rural communities

UPDATE, Sept. 4: Julianne Couch wrote a nice feature story for the Daily Yonder about the program.

Click on map to view larger version

Rural areas across the country could learn from Kansas about how to repopulate and revive economically struggling communities. The state started its Rural Opportunity Zones program last year in 50 rural counties: mostly poor, agricultural communities that had lost about 10 percent of their population since 2000. If college graduates move to some of those areas (with stars on map) for at least five years, $15,000 of their student loans are forgiven.

Hillsboro Development Corp. Executive Director Clint Seibel told Benjamin Reeves of International Business Times that rural Kansas needs more young people. "We've done a great job educating our young people in rural America and then we buy them a suitcase and send them to a major university and never see them again," Seibel said. The program draws about one new applicant per day. Almost 75 percent of applicants, aged 25 to 35, meet program requirements, and most are from Kansas, with a large portion coming from Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado. But others have come from California, New York and Florida.

Some in the region are opposed to the program, including the Jefferson City, Mo., News Tribune's editorial board, who said the program offers no direct financial incentives and worries it will use tax dollars to supplement loan repayments. It called the program "inequitable and elitist." Reeves reports many local residents in Kansas' Rural Opportunity Zones "resent the encroachment of those they perceive as overeducated outsiders." The opposition has led the state's lawmakers to cut the program's budget by $250,000. (Read more)

College students gravitate to agriculture, realizing it's 'more than cows and plows'

In the midst of the soul-killing drought, the mind-numbing Farm Bill fight and the constant debate about the use of pesticides, here's some news that just might make the day in farm country: Enrollment in agricultural colleges is downright booming. Why? Because, university officials tell Jens Manuel Krogstad of USA Today, "ag-related college majors appeal to both the heart and mind of a student." Better maybe still, students feel that with the degree they can help address such global issues as hunger and obesity.

"There's a better understanding that when we use the term agriculture, it's not all plows and cows," said Ian Maw, vice president for food, agriculture and natural resources at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in Washington, D.C.

Also, students see a clear path to a job after graduation. "At traditional agriculture powerhouses such as Penn State, where enrollment is up more than 40 percent since 2004, career preparation can include cutting-edge research in areas such as plant breeding or genomics," writes Krogstad. "Schools in more urban regions draw students interested in local foods and healthy eating. Farmland prices have tripled in the U.S. in the past decade, and corn prices have doubled since mid-2010, and the high-paying jobs that follow are catching students' attention in a down economy, Maw said. 

Iowa State University, where the agriculture college this fall expects to surpass an enrollment record set 35 years ago, is straining to meet industry demand for its graduates, said Dean Wendy Wintersteen. Iowa State reports a 95 percent job-placement rate for graduates from its colleges of engineering and agriculture, and wages can start between $50,000 and $60,000, President Steven Leath said. (Read more)

Rural incomes are lower because jobs in rural areas require fewer skills, researchers confirm

Rural residents have lower incomes than those employed in the cities. The Daily Yonder's Bill Bishop reports that three economists, working through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, have figured out why, at least in part. As you might expect, they have concluded that the occupations found in rural areas require fewer skills than those found in the cities. (Detail of Diego Rivera mural, Detroit Institute of Art)

“We find that the occupation clusters most prevalent in urban areas — scientists, engineers, and executives — are characterized by high levels of social and resource-management skills, as well as the ability to generate ideas and solve complex problems,” write Jaison Abel, Todd Gabe and Kevin Stolarick. “By contrast, the occupation clusters that are most prevalent in rural areas — machinists, makers, and laborers — are among the lowest in terms of required skills. These differences in the skill content of work shed light on the pattern of earnings observed across the urban-rural hierarchy."

Their findings further explain why young people with college degrees are reluctant to move back to rural communities. Jobs in those communities simply do not pay what can be earned in central cities. Still, compensation favors these city occupations, the economists find. Executives earn the most in the cities, far more than engineers or scientists. Executives living in rural areas don't earn the same premium. In fact, notes Bruce Ross of The Record Searchlight after looking at the data, "for each high skill occupation, wages fell as the community became more rural. Every occupational group had lower wages in rural areas than in cities, but the rural penalty was higher among the most skilled jobs."

The economists finally add that there is something about urban areas that facilitate high-skilled employment and higher wages: “The dimensions of social and complex problem-solving skills are apt to benefit from the flows of ideas and knowledge that are facilitated by dense urban environments.” The economists' report is here.

Women outnumber men in ag-related programs

Women enrolled in agriculture-related programs at the 67 U.S. land-grant universities outnumber the men, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Agricultural Education Information System.

Men outnumbered women in 2008-09, but the number of women enrolled in agriculture programs has increased almost 20 percent since then. Male enrollment is still higher in ag economics, ag engineering and plant sciences, but women outnumber men in animal sciences, food science and technology and agricultural public services.

Farm Progress reports the increasing number of women in agricultural programs "draws comparisons to the number of female farm operators, which has risen 19 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture," the most recent available. It found that 14 percent of farm operators are women. For the full report, go here.

Extension agents were first hired to 'see both sides of the question, give wise counsel and leadership'

County extension agents have been helping rural communities across the U.S. with a everything from farming to food preservation to finances to 4-H, for a century or more, and as land-grant institutions mark the 150th anniversary of the law that led to their creation, some are marking the 100th anniversary of extension programs in their states.

Charles Mahan, right, was hired as the University of Kentucky's first full-time county agent in 1912, two years before Congress established the Cooperative Extension Service, Katie Pratt of UK Ag News reports. By the spring of 1913, UK had hired six more agents, and the first home demonstration agents, now known as family and consumer sciences agents, were hired the following year. County 4-H agents have existed since at least 1917, though under a different title and on a part-time basis until the 1960s.

Mahan wrote that one of his top jobs was to "develop sane, safe, local leaders who can be trusted to think things through, see both sides of the question, give wise counsel and leadership." He "helped determine that extension agents' function should be primarily education, offering unbiased, research-based information to their clients," Pratt reports. That continues to be the philosophy of Cooperative Extension, she writes. Though extension's role has evolved since 1912, Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service Director Jimmy Henning told Pratt that the agency is still "seeking to find and serve people where they are and in ways they want to receive information." (Read more)

For-profit colleges targeted for pitches to veterans; press call set for 3:30 Mon. on cost transparency

UPDATE: Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray will hold an embargoed press call with reporters at 3:30 p.m. ET today to make an announcement on college cost transparency. The call and all related materials will be embargoed for publication online until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and in print Tuesday morning. To receive the dial-in information, send an email to press@ed.gov agreeing to the embargo terms.

For-profit colleges have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars in GI Bill benefits, and veterans' groups, the White House and some in Congress say it's beginning to look suspicious. "They say the schools prey on veterans with misleading ads while selling expensive and woefully inadequate educations," David Zucchino and Carla Rivera of the Los Angeles Times report. This is a rural story because military members come disproportionately from rural areas, and there are indications that abuse by for-profit colleges may also be disproportionately rural.

Eight of the 10 colleges that have collected the most GI Bill benefits since 2009 were for-profit institutions, and they got 86 percent of their revenue from the program, Zucchino and Rivera report. It generally costs twice as much to attend a for-profit school as a public one, and congressional investigators say dropout rates, interest rates and default rates at for-profit schools are higher than at public institutions. Also, credits veterans earn at for-profits don't always transfer.

In April, President Obama issued an executive order requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to trademark "GI Bill" so it couldn't be used by for-profits to deceive veterans. The order also required the 6,000 colleges that receive GI Bill funds to offer "Know Before You Owe" information packets to veterans. (Read more)

Extension services create drought-help websites

The U.S. drought has become the most severe since the Dust Bowl, in some respects, and experts are now predicting it could get worse, with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack saying earlier this week that food prices will soar because of higher corn and soybean prices. Farmers are struggling, but at least two Midwest universities are attempting to help them deal with the oppressive dryness.

Iowa State University's and Kansas State University's extension services have created drought websites with resource lists to help farmers in those states. On Iowa State's website, farmers and ranchers will find several areas of information to help them deal with drought: crops, livestock, dealing with stress, home and yard, financial concerns and tips for businesses. Visitors to the site will also find disaster preparedness fact sheets about drought from the Extension Disaster Education Network. Visitors will not only find information about dealing with crops and livestock during a drought on Kansas State's website, but they can also access details of both the 2008 and 2012 Farm Bills and a weekly drought update for the state.

The Rural Blog makes the list of top blogs for students of journalism

The Rural Blog is published mainly for rural journalists, but we have long known that it is also read by many people interested in rural policy. And now we know that others see a value in it for students of journalism. We're No. 27 among "The 40 Best Blogs for Journalism Students," selected by Online Education Database.

OEDb says the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, through The Rural Blog, "turns a keen eye toward the news and views impacting such towns and villages." And, we would add, the places between towns and villages, with an occasional look at rural news media, which can provide good examples for student journalists.

The Institute does have a journalism-student blog, the Midway Messenger, but it's primarily by students, not for them. We do it for the community of Midway, Ky., halfway between our base at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and the state capital of Frankfort. There's also a website, www.MidwayMessenger.org.

Penn State not covered by state open-records law

If Pennsylvania's open-records law applied to Penn State, the Jerry Sandusky scandal might have been uncovered much earlier, saving some children from abuse, Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute writes after hearing from Sara Ganim, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter who broke the story and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ganim (CNN image) "told a group of reporters and editors at Poynter that the open record exemption made it much more difficult to investigate the sex abuse story," Tompkins reports, and explains why the law doesn't apply to The Pennsylvania State University and three other "state-related institutions." He says they must file less information than publicly traded companies have to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That is less than politicians have to file when running for state or federal office." Penn State lobbied to keep the exemption when the law was strengthened in 2008.

Tompkins says forner FBI director Louis Freeh, who investigated the university's handling of teh Sandusky matter, should have included making Penn State subject to the open-records law in his recommendations: "The abuse at Penn State is a lesson to us all about what happens when powerful people and public institutions are allowed to operate in the shadows created by what Freeh called a 'closed culture.' It is a culture that protected abusers, failed to protect victims and survived by closing its records to journalists who might have exposed it." (Read more

Scientists confirm human role in climate change, and become more forceful in challenging skeptics

Some of the weather extremes recently witnessed around the world have become far more likely because of human-induced global warming, researchers reported Tuesday.  Justin Gillis reports in The New York Times that a new study found "that global warming made the severe heat wave that afflicted Texas last year 20 times as likely as it would have been in the 1960s. The extremely warm temperatures in Britain last November were 62 times as likely because of global warming," the report found. The findings, writes Gillis, "especially the specific numbers attached to some extreme events, represent an increased effort by scientists to respond to a public clamor for information about what is happening to the earth’s climate. Studies seeking to discern any human influence on weather extremes have usually taken years, but in this case, researchers around the world managed to study six events from 2011 and publish the results in six months." The study was released along with a broader report on the state of the world’s climate. Both are to be published soon in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Gillis, The Times' environmental reporter, meanwhile, is among the targets of The American Tradition Institute (ATI), a conservative group that is using public records requests to publicize emails between reporters and climate scientists to suggest "collusion" between the media and environmental establishments, reports Greenwire (behind a pay wall, but a free trial can obtained by clicking here).

Scientists are beginning to argue more forcefully to the public that climate-change skeptics are ignoring well-established scientific facts. A dozen scientists at the University of Kentucky Wednesday what is known about the human role in climate change for readers of The Lexington Herald-Leader. The professors list what is recognized among scientists today: Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have increased steadily in the atmosphere since the mid-19th century; that increase is "well-correlated" with fossil-fuel consumption and changes in land use, and the gases trap increasingly more heat, so the surface, oceans and lower atmosphere are warming. (Herald-Leader photo by Charles Bertram)

"Multiple surveys of credentialed climate scientists show at least 96 to 98 percent agreement with these fundamentals," the scientists write, They note that the National Academy of Sciences has published a position statement affirming the fundamentals of human-induced climate change, as have over 100 other scientific societies, including the academies of all major democracies and the American Meteorological Society. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and many other federal departments and agencies have been studying climate change for years. An international, interdisciplinary collection of thousands of expert scientists has summarized the evidence for the central role of human activities in causing climate change, in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"As professors and publishing scientists, we are trained skeptics, and we look for credible evidence that refutes the fundamentals on climate change. However, it simply isn't there," the scientists write. "What about all the skeptical 'science' on the Internet? If those authors have the evidence to support what they say, they should submit a manuscript to a credible scientific journal, or present their ideas at a major scientific conference." (Read more)

Howard Dorgan, researcher of Central Appalachian religion and its radio shows, dies at 80

UPDATE, July 27: A memorial service with tributes and Appalachian music will be held Saturday, Aug. 25 from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Calloway Peak room in the student union at Appalachian State.

Howard Dorgan, whose studies of religion in Appalachia brought him many honors, died on July 5, his 80th birthday, at his home in Boone, N.C. Born in Ruston, La., he earned a Ph.D. in speech communication from Louisiana State University and in 1971 joined the Appalachian State University Department of Communication, where he remained until he retired in 2000. His work on Central Appalachian Baptist communities resulted in numerous books and awards, including the 1993 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award for Airwaves of Zion, his book about religious radio programming in the region. He edited the religious section of the Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Dorgan is survived by his wife, Kathleen, and two children. A memorial service will be held later at Appalachian State, where his papers are housed.

Agriculture professor says land-grant schools have lost sight of "people's university" mission

The 150th anniversary of the creation of the Public Land-Grant University System through the Morrill Act is this Tuesday, July 2. Public land-grant universities have made innumerable contributions to the people in states where they exist, establishing a rich heritage that will be celebrated next week in Washington, D.C. with a convocation. The problem, says Auburn University agriculture professor C. Robert Taylor, is that "common people," which land-grant universities were created to help, are "glaringly absent from the invitation list."

"Land Grant universities were intended to be the 'People's Universities,'" Taylor writes for the Daily Yonder, "with a three part mission of teaching, research and service for common people, ordinary people, the working class, the middle class in American society. People like me." He said he thinks land-grant universities are drifting away from their mission of helping and educating "common people," and the celebration in Washington highlights "symptoms of a serious disease organism," one that he hopes isn't "incurable."

Taylor says the U.S. population has shifted from mostly agrarian to mostly urban over 150 years, and he questions whether the needs of people today are the same as then, but ultimately concludes that what matters most for next week's celebration is that none of the "new people" will be represented. It's troubling for him, he writes, because the convocation will feature discussions to help set the agenda for land-grant schools for the next 150 years.

"Truth is," Taylor writes, "that elites in government and business have been increasingly influencing and often subtly setting the agenda -- especially the research agenda -- in land-grant universities for some time." He says cuts in extension funding over the years have caused a decrease in public support for land-grant schools, which was exacerbated by faculty turning inward and only conducting research and writing papers for peers instead of connecting with the public. (Read more)

Midwest law schools counseling students to 'go rural' in search of jobs, where they're needed most

Kay Oskvig, second-year University of Iowa student in
 Garner, where she clerks. (WSJ photo by Jenn Ackerman)

In parts of the rural Midwest, small towns are itching for lawyers, writes Ashby Jones of The Wall Street Journal. "The job market is good for lawyers in the western and more rural parts of Nebraska, in towns like Ogallala and Scottsbluff," said Susan Poser, dean of the law school at the University of Nebraska. "We're trying to make students more aware of those opportunities," she said. Last year, the University of Nebraska's law school created a special program of study for its students focused on practicing solo or in small firms after they graduate. The University of Kansas law school a few months ago launched a "rural and solo practice program," which teaches students the basics of each.

The rural areas' biggest selling point is jobs. As of February, the employment rate for students who graduated in 2011 was about 86 percent, the lowest for a class since 1994, according to the National Association for Law Placement. In many ways these law schools are following the lead of the medical profession, reports Jones, which has long encouraged students to practice in rural settings with doctor shortages, and often subsidized them to do so: "The surfeit of lawyers in the rural Midwest largely boils down to demographics: Educated young people raised in the region are fleeing for the cultural and financial opportunities of larger cities, both in their own states and farther afield."

"Twenty years ago, Chadron had 10 lawyers; Alliance had a dozen," said Scottsbluff lawyer Howard Olsen, a former president of the Nebraska Bar Association. "Now, they each just have two or three." Olsen said that clients in rural Nebraska who used to find a lawyer across the street may now drive "50, 60, sometimes 100 miles" to find one. In small towns, lawyers' annual pay tends to start in the low-to-mid-five figures, but advantages can twinkle in the eye of the beholder. "The cost of living, the pace of living and the variety of practice, to name a few," said Marianne B. Culhane, dean of the law school at Creighton University in Omaha. "Plus, no long commutes." (Read more)

Rural states do poorly on higher education report card

Public higher education is failing when it comes to preparing students for the workforce, a new study by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce has found. It graded each state on how well its public colleges and universities prepare students. Sonali Kohli of The Ithaca Journal reports that the states with the worst grades trend rural: Alaska, Nevada, Idaho and Louisiana.

The report used data from different sources from 2008 to 2012 and graded four-year and two-year schools separately. Among the findings: Washington state, California and Florida scored the highest grades; 12 states scored D's for student success at four-year schools: seven in the Great Plains, five in Appalachia and the South; the Dakotas' two-year schools out-performed all other states; and, completion rates at four-year schools were close to 50 percent in 47 states.

ICW President Margaret Spellings said colleges and universities are more worried about maintaining reputations than actually examining how they are performing. The report says states should "focus less on attracting new students and work harder at making sure students who are already enrolled get their degrees," Kohli reports. Spellings, a former secretary of education, said making it easier to transfer credits from community colleges to four-year schools and expanding online classes would help. Both are options that would be of particular importance in rural areas, where many attend community colleges and utilize online classes. (Read more)

Economic woes of rural Pa. may have figured in Sandusky's alleged crimes, and may in his defense

Sandusky arrives for trial today.
(Inquirer photo by David Swanson)

As testimony begins today in the sex-abuse trial of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, "The economic disparities that made his purported victims vulnerable . . . are also likely to prove central to Sandusky's defense," write Jeremy Roebuck and Jeff Gammage of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

They cite a comment made last year by Sandusky attorney Joseph Amendola: "I can think of nine million reasons boys like these would claim to be a sex-abuse victim," he said. "What better motivation than money - the financial gain that could come from saying, 'I'm a victim'?"

Centre County (Wikipedia map)

"State College is a cultural island," Matt McClenehen, a Centre County defense attorney, told the newspaper. "You have some of the most intelligent, educated people in the world around Penn State. But once you leave the confines of State College, you're practically in Appalachia." Officially speaking, the county is in Appalachia, as defined by Congress and the Appalachian Regional Commission.

"In Clinton County, where Victim 1 lives, 15.5 percent of the population falls below the poverty line, compared with 12.4 percent statewide," the reporters note. "The percentage of single-parent households is nearly twice that of neighboring Centre County," just to the south. (Read more)