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JASON GETz, ATl AN TA JOURNAl-CONSTI TU TION, l ANDOV
It’s commencement season, and among those honored were graduates of the U. of Georgia who received their degrees this
month in a ceremony at Sanford Stadium. High-fiving each other at the event were Bill Dunning (left) and Elvin Samuel.
ACCOUNTABILITY
‘Unit Record’ Bill Revives Fight
for Tracking of Student Data
A bipartisan group of lawmakers reopened
the fight over a federal “unit record” system
this month, introducing legislation in both
chambers of Congress that would link individ-
ual student records to wage data in an effort to
“empower” prospective college students.
Supporters say the bill, S 915, which would
require the secretary of education to report
college graduates’ earnings by program of
study and state of employment, would help
families make smarter decisions about college.
The bill would also require the secretary to
provide consumers with information about cu-
mulative debt, transfer rates, and graduation
rates for part-time students. Outcomes for vet-
erans and student-aid recipients would be re-
ported separately.
But the measure faces a major hurdle: a
five-year-old prohibition on the creation of a
federal unit-record database. The ban, which
blocked the Bush administration from creat-
ing such a system, grew out of privacy con-
cerns raised by private colleges and conser-
vatives. They worried that information in the
database could be used for noneducation pur-
poses, and that leaks in the system could ex-
pose confidential information.
Since then the federal government has spent
millions of dollars helping states develop their
own databases, and opposition to a federal
system has softened, including among some
Republicans.
out-of-state institution and pay a hefty fee in
order to rent a single billboard near Nashville.
The billboard features a flattering view of
the Berry campus, the slogan “26,000 acres of
opportunity,” and the college’s name and Web
address. The billboard doesn’t mention that
the small private college is in Rome, Ga., about
200 miles down the interstate from Nashville.
Berry’s lawsuit argues that the commission
is infringing on the college’s First Amendment
rights and violating the Constitution’s com-
merce clause. Tennessee argues that the pres-
ence of the billboard is equivalent to operating
a physical campus in the state.
A news release from Berry suggests that the
college could be forced to pay up to $20,000
a year to register or to pay fines of $500 a day
while the billboard remains up. Representa-
tives of the Tennessee commission did not im-
mediately respond to requests for comment.
ture Publishing Group and Elsevier, two of the
most dominant scientific publishers, and the
Association of American Universities, which
represents top-ranked research institutions.
The editor in chief of Nature, Philip Camp-
bell, said he and other editors of the company’s
journals had regularly published editorials
critical of excesses in the use of journal impact
factors, especially in rating researchers.
“But the draft statement contained many
specific elements, some of which were too
sweeping for me or my colleagues to sign up
to,” said Mr. Campbell. Among the 18 recom-
mendations in the letter, journals were asked
to “greatly reduce emphasis on the journal im-
pact factor as a promotional tool.”
MARKETING
College in Georgia Sues for Right
to Post Billboard in Tennessee
Berry College sued the Tennessee Higher
Education Commission last week over its de-
mand that the Georgia college register as an
RESEARCH
New Push Against Impact Factor Is
Begun by Scientists and Groups
More than 150 researchers and 75 scientific
groups issued a declaration last week against
the widespread use of journal “impact factors,”
blaming the practice for dangerous distortions
in financing and hiring in science.
The impact factor “has a number of well-
documented deficiencies as a tool for research
assessment,” the scientists said in the letter.
Those deficiencies include the ability of pub-
lishers to manipulate the calculations, and
the way the metrics encourage university hir-
ing and promotion decisions, as well as grant
agencies’ award distributions, that can lack an
in-depth understanding of scientific work.
For all those who signed the letter, however,
the effect may be overshadowed by those who
did not, including some of the world’s lead-
ing publishers and representatives of leading
research universities. They include the Na-
LEADERSHIP
Florida Atlantic U. Chief Cites
Media Scrutiny in Resignation
Mary Jane Saunders, who announced her
resignation last week as Florida Atlantic Uni-
versity’s president, said she was not ready for
the intense media scrutiny that came with the
job, and that she feared that other public-uni-
versity presidents were similarly unprepared.
Ms. Saunders was named president of the
institution in 2010 and spent much of the past
several months in damage-control mode.
Florida Atlantic has received national media
attention over a series of controversies involv-
ing both faculty members and administrators.
“The extent of being a quote-unquote public
figure was something that I really, truly wasn’t
prepared for,” said Ms. Saunders, who was pre-
viously provost of Cleveland State University.
Ms. Saunders said she had been caught off
guard when news articles, often fueled by at-
tacks in social media, directed criticism “to-
ward me personally rather than the institu-
tion.” She said she felt powerless to correct
what she described as inaccuracies that piled
up across the blogosphere.
Corrections
n A profile of the next presi-
dent of Eastern Kentucky
University (The Chronicle,
May 10) gave an incorrect
figure for the university’s
endowment. It is approach-
ing $50-million, not $500-
million.
n An article about disci-
plinary action taken by
Rutgers University against
the anthropologist Rob-
ert Trivers (The Chronicle,
May 10) misstated the se-
quence of one series of
events. Mr. Trivers visited
a colleague in his office in
March 2012 after reading
a draft of a university re-
port, not the final report,
about a study in Nature.
The article also misstated
when Mr. Trivers began to
write influential papers in
his field. He started them
within a year of entering
graduate school, Mr. Triv-
ers says, not “within a few
years.” Mr. Trivers also did
not tell The Boston Globe
that he was speaking “en-
tirely metaphorically” when
he wrote to Alan Dershow-
itz that the Harvard Law
School professor could
“look forward to a visit
from” Mr. Trivers if Mr. Der-
showitz defended “Israeli
butchery toward Lebanon.”
Mr. Trivers told the Globe
he had in mind a nonvio-
lent confrontation.
