CUNY student jobs

The CUNY employment opportunities initiative aims to help students obtain part-time and full-time work, and internships to help meet the costs of attending college. Explore these and other resources.

http://urdox1.cuny.edu/jobs/student-jobs.html

Tuition hikes and budget cuts

New York state is in a budget meltdown with the governor calling for massive budget cuts. Why? He says that tax revenue is down. But I got this letter from my union's president:

There is an alternative to the false choice between a contract reopener and layoffs: increasing revenue. New York State would have $16 billion in additional revenue this year alone if it had restored the 1994 tax cut for the highest earners. What New York is really facing is a revenue crisis. The richest one percent of New York families (those earning $1.6 million or more a year) pay only 6.5 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the poorest New Yorkers (with incomes under $15,000) pay 11.6 percent. Restructuring the unfair tax system would eliminate the need for budget cuts—and generate the funds for desperately needed new investment, starting with CUNY.

In the short term, the state could close this year’s budget gap by drawing on the more than $1 billion in the “rainy day fund” (Tax Stabilization Reserve Fund) and gaining support from a federal economic stimulus. The federal government is considering a stimulus package that would increase aid to state and local governments; announcement of devastating budget cuts before the decision on a stimulus bill is premature.

The PSC has joined economists, unions and community groups across the state in calling on the governor and the legislature to adopt a revenue proposal rather than resorting to cuts and layoffs that will deepen the effect of a recession. Brooklyn College, Queens College and Lehman College were all founded during the Depression. These times demand a similar, visionary investment. Public higher education is the key to reinvigorating the economy.

If you want to help out my students (especially if you are one of my students), this link will allow you to send a letter to the Governor against tuition hikes. Quote from my post if you like or just use the standard letter.


Here's the link to a further explanation of the tax policy.

Symbolic Racism in the 08 election

Sacramento GOP Web site encouraged people to 'waterboard Obama'

Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to "Waterboard Barack Obama" — material that even offended state GOP leaders.

By Ed Fletcher

Sacramento Bee

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to "Waterboard Barack Obama" — material that even offended state GOP leaders.

Link

Political elections usually bring out the worst in people, but I've never seen such extreme statements made by such high status organizations. Is this a sign of symbolic racism?

Extreme McCain-Palin supports - Examples of RWA?

Racism and mental contamination in the election

Mental contamination is when one concept becomes associated with another concept via association. It's just strengthening the linkages between nodes in a semantic network.

Here is a very subtle attempt at that during the election.














I've been told that's it's a Republican ad (tho I haven't been able to confirm that).

It's not just that Obama lacks experience. That's related to him being black.

Study Finds Blacks Reap Smaller Financial Gains From Certain Majors

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

November 7, 2008

Study Finds Blacks Reap Smaller Financial Gains From Certain Majors

Jacksonville, Fla. — Black students who major in high-paying fields appear to reap smaller financial gains when they enter the job market than do comparable Asian- and Hispanic-American students, according to a new study of minority scholarship applicants.

The study, scheduled to be discussed here tomorrow at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, tracked about 350 students who had applied for the Gates Millennium Scholars Program for low-income minority students and had gone through its selection process. The students, who graduated from high school in the spring of 2000 and entered college the following academic year, were surveyed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago at various intervals until six years after their graduation from high school.

Because the Gates program looks well beyond the SAT scores of scholarship applicants, and examines a host of psychological traits related to college persistence and early earnings, focusing on that population helped the researchers ensure comparability among the students being studied.

Even when comparable students majored in the same fields, the economic benefits they reaped from college upon entering the job market varied substantially by race and ethnicity, according to a paper on the study’s findings by Tatiana Melguizo, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, and Gregory C. Wolniak, a research scientist at the National Opinion Research Center.

The salary premium that Asian- and Hispanic-American students received from majoring in science, technology, mathematics, or engineering was 50 percent higher than what black students who had majored in those fields were earning soon after college, the study found. Asian- and Hispanic-American students also reaped a higher salary premium than did black students for majoring in professional fields such as business or law.

The researchers say they did not look into whether discrimination explained the gaps they found because they did not have sufficient data matching students with their employers. They found some evidence that variations in occupational choices may play a role, but said more research was needed there as well.

Their paper concludes that, “in a scholarship program or campus-based policies aimed at promoting economic outcomes, attention needs to be placed on how and why students choose their field of study, as well as the manner in which their education influences their occupational attainment.” —Peter Schmidt

http://chronicle.com/news/article/5456/study-finds-blacks-reap-smaller-financial-gains-from-certain-majors