USC

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New Blog: The American Petroleum Institute Loves Pennsylvania, As Its Lobbying Shows

As one of the top fossil fuel producing states, Pennsylvania is a key focus for the oil and gas industry. In fact, with $1.8 million spent in 2022 alone, the American Petroleum Institute reported spending more money on lobbying in Pennsylvania than in any other state last year. Read more from Aly Shaw at the LittleSis Eyes on the Ties blog. 

New Blog: Fossil Fuel Directors’ Ties to University Boards Run Deep

While Harvard professor Jody Freeman’s board seat at ConocoPhillips -- and her lobbying on the company’s behalf -- has been in the headlines, directors from other Big Oil companies and dirty utilities are well-represented on university boards and in other higher ed roles. We mapped out some key ties between the boards of Chevron, Marathon Petroleum, Valero, Southern Company and others to different universities and colleges. Some of the findings may be shocking -- for example, that the chair of the board of trustees of the very liberal Wesleyan University is a Chevron director or that three Chevron directors have prominent roles at USC. These relationships don’t only greenwash oil companies -- they throw into doubt the climate gestures made by universities who give fossil fuel directors governing roles at their institutions. Read our latest blog post here.

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the uber lie: darwin invis hand meritocracy

univ supposed to be great equalizer, but poor get screwed by pred student loans, online trump U scams

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/13/cheating_bribes_lies_doj_charges_dozens

Operation Varsity Blues. That’s the name of a sweeping federal probe into what the Justice Department calls the biggest college admissions scam the agency has ever uncovered. On Tuesday, 50 people, including 13 college coaches, were arrested for taking part in a scheme where wealthy parents paid exorbitant bribes to secure spots for their unqualified children in elite schools, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA, USC and Wake Forest. Prosecutors have charged 33 parents, including Hollywood stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin; Loughlin’s husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli; and Bill McGlashan, a founder of TPG Capital, one of the largest private equity investment firms in the world.We speak with Ivory Toldson, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and president of Quality Education for Minorities. His new book is titled “No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People.”

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GOODMAN: So, that’s the FBI special agent talking about this scandal. No actual schools were charged, though people within the schools, like, you know, the head of soccer at Yale, for example. You had these pictures sent in of athletes with their heads photoshopped to be a student who didn’t even play the particular game, in cases like water polo. What message does this scandal send to black and brown children, to white not wealthy children, who believe that higher education is a meritocracy? What do you say to them?

IVORY TOLDSON: Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope it’s a wake-up call for people who have bought into the system that people become wealthy because they have worked hard. It’s a deception that’s pervasive in our society. Among the wealthy, their objective is passive income. You know, they talk actively about making money without working.That’s what they talk about in their own social networks. But yet, when they’re talking to people who may work for them, they try to make it seem like it’s all about working hard. In reality, it should be about working hard. Everybody should work hard for what they have. But there are people in this country, unfortunately, who wouldrather manipulate the system so that some people work hard to get enough, and other people work not at all and get more.

And I think it also does a disservice to their children, because their children will grow up feeling a false sense of entitlement, believing in unearned privilege, believing in inherited wealth and all of the things that will lead to certain types of predatory behaviors, whether it be predatory lending,manipulating markets, predatory landlords—you know, different aspects of society that we’ve all grown to loathe. All of this is cultivated in these types of environments.

...GOODMAN: We’re going to end with actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli’s kid on video. They are the parents charged with fraud in the college admissions scandal—one set of parents. According to the complaint, they paid bribes totaling half a million dollars in having their daughter, Olivia Jade, and her younger sister designated as recruits to the USC crew team, despite the fact they didn’t participate in crew. The complaint reveals both Olivia Jade and her sister both posed for pictures on an ergometer to fake an action shot. Olivia is a social media influencer with more than 2 million YouTube subscribers and a million followers on Instagram. She has posted ads featuring her status as a college student. In August, Olivia posted a video on YouTube answering questions about starting college.

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OLIVIA JADE GIANNULLI: And then the whole college thing, yep, I’m going. I’m living in a dorm with a roommate, who is so sweet. With work, it’s going to be hard. Like, my first week of school, I’m leaving to go to Fiji for work. And then I’ll be in New York a bunch this year for work, and traveling to a different country, because I’m creating something with this country, and that’s for work. So, I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend, but I’m going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of, like, game days, partying. I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.

AMY GOODMAN: Olivia Jade and her sister both got into USC. Her parents paid half a million dollars. This is Democracy Now! Ivory Toldson, thanks so much for being with us, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University, president of Quality Education for Minorities.

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ProPublica analysis based on new data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that students from low-income families graduate from NYU saddled with huge federal loans. The school’s Pell Grant recipients – students from families that make less than $30,000 a year – owe an average of $23,250 in federal loans after graduation.

That’s more federal loan debt than low-income students take on at for-profit giant University of Phoenix, though NYU graduates have higher earnings and default less on their debt.

NYU is not the only university with a billion-dollar endowment to leave its poorest students with heavy debt loads. More than a quarter of the nation’s 60 wealthiest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.

At the University of Southern California, which has a $4.6 billion endowment, low-income students graduate with slightly more debt than NYU’s graduates: $23,375. At Boston University ($1.5 billion endowment), it’s $27,000, and at Wake Forest University ($1.1 billion endowment) low-income students graduate with $29,150 in debt.

This new data on student debt is drawn from numbers that the Obama administration assembled as part of a planned effort to create grades for every college. In the face offierce lobbying from universities, the administration backed away, but has made much of the data public on a new website called College Scorecard. ProPublica has used that material to create Debt By Degrees, an interactive database that allows you to search information for almost 7,000 schools. The data provides an unprecedented level of detail on the financial burden that the poorest college students face, showing for the first time how much federal debt poor students take on compared to their wealthier peers, and how well these students are able to repay their loans. The database also shows how much graduates earn on average after leaving school.

The implications of these numbers can be far-reaching. Studies have shown that even small debts can increase a student’s chances of dropping out, particularly for minorities and low-income students. Also, federal loans, which are typically capped at $27,000 over four years, often don’t cover the full expense of college. Many students also take on private bank loans or work jobs outside school.

“Student debt is not the same to every borrower,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior analyst at Demos, a public policy nonprofit. “It can look a lot different to a first generation student from a very modest economic background than to someone going to graduate school getting a law degree.”

Indeed, undergraduates take a fraction of the loans of graduate students but default at much higher rates. Debt can put low-income young adults at a disadvantage for years to come, limiting a graduate’s ability to save, get a mortgage, or get the job they aspire to.

“At the end of the day, you’re talking about households that don’t have nearly as much wealth to fall back on,” said Huelsman.

Rebecca Arthur wanted nothing more than to study photography at Tisch, NYU’s arts school. Her mother, however, made less than $25,000 a year working at a nursing home, so Arthur knew the school’s four-year price tag of over $250,000 would be a stretch. When Arthur was accepted, she was shocked – not only because she had gotten into her dream school, but also because the school only offered modest financial aid.

“The first bill was $32,000 and it was more than my mom made in a year,” she said. “Why would they accept me if they knew I couldn’t afford it?”

Arthur tried to crowdfund the remaining amount of her tuition, but it was only when her mother died a month before school started that NYU agreed to take a second look at her financial aid package. Although they increased her aid, she works four jobs and expects to graduate with over $24,000 in loans.

“The one downside to NYU is that money is always a big problem,” said Arthur, who is now a sophomore at the university. “People that really want [to go to NYU] and deserve it shouldn’t have to fight for it.”

DHS ctr of excell:

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Etablished in 2004, CREATE is an interdisciplinary national research center based at the University of Southern California in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the Viterbi School of Engineering and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Center is focused on risk and economic analysis of the U.S. and comprises a team of experts from across the country, including partnerships with numerous universities and research institutions.

Many threats and vulnerabilities pose daily risks to our national security. CREATE develops predictive models that gauge how and where terrorist events might occur, estimate the economic consequences of such attacks and identify where the country's vulnerabilities reside.

The Center serves national interests by providing tools and guidance to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as local, regional and state decision-makers, for the prioritization of countermeasures to terrorism, identifying areas where investments are likely to be most effective, computing relative risks among potential terrorist events, and estimating the societal consequences of terrorism.

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