Tuesday, March 19, 2024   
 
Small Businesses Look to College Students to Help Guard Against Hackers
It isn't easy to be a David against Goliath hackers. Small organizations -- nonprofits, local public services, mom-and-pop businesses -- don't have the cybersecurity resources to put up much of a defense. But thanks to a new initiative, help for such groups is increasingly available -- from college students. Similar to clinics in which law and medical students perform pro bono services, university-based clinics around the country staffed by students now give cybersecurity assessments, training and other help to groups with little in the way of such resources. "Without that technical background, you don't know what you don't know," says Lauren Bristol, a computer-science student at Louisiana State University who works at the clinic there. Many small businesses in Louisiana have yet to safeguard their most valuable data, like payment information and personal customer details, Bristol says. The LSU clinic helps shore up their defenses by offering free counseling and training sessions. The LSU clinic was created after a $1.5 million grant last year from the NSA and focuses on small businesses. Like most such clinics, its services are free. "A lot of small-business owners are scared, but they don't know what they can do to feel secure," says Tate Broussard, a computer-science student at the clinic. Broussard says his team helps advise clients on red flags to look for, such as signs of phishing scams and password safekeeping. LSU students, including graduate students in business, agree to work at the clinic as a course for a semester and can choose among three specializations: threat and vulnerability assessment, cyber-risk assessment or cyber defense. Starting in the fall semester, 14 students have been spread roughly evenly across those three areas. Students in each area help three clients a semester, says Aisha Ali-Gombe, director of the clinic.
 
Kentucky's higher ed funding scheme is unconstitutional, state attorney general says
Kentucky's performance-based funding regulations are unconstitutional because of their reliance on race, Russell Coleman, the state's attorney general, said in an opinion issued Thursday. Coleman, a Republican, said the state is using "race-exclusive terms" to set performance goals for public colleges that he believes run afoul of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious admissions policies. His opinion does not constitute an immediate order to end the formula, but college leaders in the state say they are reviewing it to see if it will affect their operations. Kentucky ties 35% of state higher education funding to how public institutions perform on a variety of outcomes, such as how many "underrepresented minority students" earn bachelor's degrees and credentials. The state's Council on Postsecondary Education defines those students using exclusively racial and ethnic categories, and negotiates targets with institutions for certain groups, so public colleges are effectively using race in their admissions processes, said Coleman. "The U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions makes clear that the CPE defining 'underrepresented minority' exclusively in terms of race, and accordingly requiring that Kentucky's state-funded postsecondary institutions set targets for how many students of a particular race they will enroll, retain, and graduate, violates the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act," Coleman wrote in his opinion. If the state wishes to promote diversity at public colleges, it can do so by looking at factors other than race, Coleman said.
 
After the pandemic, young Chinese again want to study abroad, just not so much in the US
In the Chinese city of Shanghai, two young women seeking an education abroad have both decided against going to the United States, a destination of choice for decades that may be losing its shine. For Helen Dong, a 22-year-old senior studying advertising, it was the cost. "It doesn't work for me when you have to spend 2 million (yuan) ($278,000) but find no job upon returning," she said. Dong is headed to Hong Kong this fall instead. Costs were not a concern for Yvonne Wong, 24, now studying comparative literature and cultures in a master's program at the University of Bristol in Britain. For her, the issue was safety. "Families in Shanghai usually don't want to send their daughters to a place where guns are not banned -- that was the primary reason," Wong said. "Between the U.S. and the U.K., the U.K. is safer, and that's the biggest consideration for my parents." With an interest in studying abroad rebounding after the pandemic, there are signs that the decades-long run that has sent an estimated 3 million Chinese students to the U.S., including many of the country's brightest, could be trending down, as geopolitical shifts redefine U.S.-China relations. Cutting people-to-people exchanges could have a lasting impact on relations between the two countries. "International education is a bridge," said Fanta Aw, executive director of the NAFSA Association of International Educators, based in Washington. "A long-term bridge, because the students who come today are the engineers of the future. They are the politicians of the future, they are the business entrepreneurs of the future." "Not seeing that pipeline as strong means that we in the U.S. have to pay attention, because China-U.S. relations are very important."
 
Department of Energy's science chief announces her unexpected departure
After 22 months on the job, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science, is stepping down. Yesterday Berhe sent a letter to the office's 815 employees saying her last day would be 28 March. With a budget of $8.2 billion, the office is the United States's single largest funder of the physical sciences. Berhe, who was born in Eritrea and is the first person of color to direct the office, says in her letter that the job has been "the honor of my lifetime" and that she's leaving with "pride in what we have accomplished, and a heavy heart filled with profound sadness and gratitude." Berhe might be leaving out of frustration with the department's senior leaders, say multiple former DOE employees who requested anonymity to protect professional ties. Berhe's leadership of the Office of Science was greeted with enthusiasm and dismay by different research communities. When President Joe Biden nominated her in April 2021, she was a soil scientist at the University of California, Merced who had no experience leading big scientific collaborations or projects, which are the Office of Science's bread and butter. Many of her colleagues in biogeochemistry and associated fields hailed her appointment as a signal that DOE science might turn away from legacy fields such as particle physics and nuclear physics and toward fields directly related to the looming climate crisis. But some physicists argued she was not qualified for the post. The Senate confirmed her in the position a year later -- by a vote of 54 to 45, with only four Republicans voting for her.
 
Title IX rules are still behind. When will they be finalized?
The U.S. Department of Education continues to lag on finalizing two key Title IX proposals anxiously awaited by district leaders for over three years -- and now policy experts say it's likely the department will finalize both this spring, after the department's latest self-imposed deadline of March. The broader Title IX proposal released in June 2022 would protect LGBTQ+ students under the federal anti-discrimination law for the first time. It would also change Title IX implementation in a way that public education experts say make it more practical for schools, including shortening investigation and resolution timelines. The second proposal, released nearly a year later in April 2023, would create a framework for transgender students' participation on sports teams aligning with their gender identities. Both controversial proposals were initially expected to be finalized last May. But a high volume of public feedback on each, which the department is required to review, pushed that deadline twice -- first to October, and then again to this month. However, it's likely the Education Department will miss its latest deadline as well, since the agency has still not cleared a key regulatory hurdle for either rule: getting the White House's green light for release. The athletics rule remains held up at the department, which has yet to pass it to the Office of Management and Budget, the White House office that reviews regulations prior to their release. The broader Title IX rule, which the department sent to the White House in February, is still sitting with OMB a month later.


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