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the
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
w w w. T h e D a i l y A z t e c . c o m
Vol. 96, Issue 23
San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1913
INDEX:
calendar ... 2
features ... 3
Tw i t t e r : T h e D a i l y A z t e c
sports ... 4
entertainment ... 6
TODAY @ STATE ARC Trio noon to 12:50 p.m. Smith Recital Hall Planning for graduate school noon to 1 p.m. Career Services
classifieds ... 7
backpage ... 8
US pushes college affordability with act SARAH KOVASH A S S I S TA N T N E W S E D I T O R
& HUTTON MARSHALL S TA F F W R I T E R
The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, addressed college affordability in a conference call Monday. The conference was hosted by MTV and mediated by its Vice President of Public Affairs, Jason Rzepka. Last year, MTV’s parent company, Viacom, joined the Gates Foundation to start an education campaign called “Get Schooled.” The campaign is geared toward improving high school graduation rates, college readiness and college completion rates, according to Rzepka. Also part of the campaign is increasing college affordability. Recently, MTV launched the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge. Students are invited to submit their ideas about how to make financial aid more accessible by means of new, innovative digital tools. MTV promised $10,000 to the most valuable idea. In addition to Duncan, the president of the College Board, Gaston Caperton, was also present to speak about education and answer questions. Duncan spoke about the College Affordability Act and
President Barack Obama’s goal to increase college graduation rates in the next 10 years, noting the importance of obtaining a college degree to find a job. “As all of you know, the need for college education is absolutely more important than ever,” Duncan said. “There are very few good jobs out there, very few if you just have a high school diploma.” However, Duncan addressed that paying for college is the biggest barrier to obtaining a degree. Even after graduation, many graduates enter the job market with an overwhelming amount of loans to pay off. The College Affordability Act seeks to cap monthly loan payments at 15 percent of their discretionary income, which was also mentioned by Obama last week in his teleconference about the future of education. The act will also ensure college graduates entering a public service career and still have outstanding student debt after 10 years will have their excess debt forgiven. The same is true for graduates whose careers are not public service-based, after 25 years. Another facet of the College Affordability Act would be freezing the price of college tuition to 200809 prices for five years. Although the College Affordability Act helps to take financial pressure off of college students, it may increase financial burdens for universities, especially in states
such as California, where funding for education is already sparse. Duncan mentioned the resistance that is sometimes met with education funding. “It’s interesting to me that so often taxpayers don’t question increasing the number of jails or what we spent for prisons,” Duncan said. “But every little dollar put in education somehow gets challenged.” When asked about increases in university fees, Duncan addressed the difficult financial state of California and the steep cuts in education that have been made. “The honest answer is there isn’t an easy answer on this,” Duncan said. “We’re seeing horrendous cuts in many places around the country. I don’t know that there’s a state that’s been harder hit than California.” However, the speakers remained optimistic about increasing graduation rates through increasing the affordability of college and ease of access to student loans. They also noted the fact that federal attention to education issues can not always supersede state budgets and laws, shifting focus to voting for candidates who will better represent the needs of students. “All of this … Republican, Democrat, doesn’t matter,” Duncan said. “We have an election coming up and young people need to get out and vote.”
MCT Campus
U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, spoke about the college affordability act.
New vaccine protects against three flus CRISTAL MEJIA S TA F F W R I T E R
A new vaccine protecting against H1N1 and two other strains of influenza is now available to San Diego State students, faculty and staff through Student Health Services. As a result of last year’s H1N1 pandemic, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices now recommends anyone ages six months and older be vaccinated instead of only concentrating on those who are at high risk for flu complications. The main difference in the vaccine this year is its protection against three strains of influenza as opposed to last year’s vaccine, which came through a national program and
Courtney Jackson / Staff Photographer
This year, flu vaccinations will be distributed earlier and to more people on campus.
addressed H1N1. Everyone is encouraged to get vaccinated, whereas last year more attention was given to those in high-risk groups. With the first case of influenza confirmed on campus last week, SHS is prepared to handle this year’s flu season by offering vaccinations earlier as a result of the vaccine arriving further in advance than initially expected from vaccine distributors. “This year is better than the last many years because we were actually able to get vaccines very early,” Medical Director of Student Health Services, Gregg Lichtenstein said. “We usually target to have a public vaccination area each year before Halloween and sometimes we wonder if the vaccines are going to arrive, but we got it last week, so we are ahead of the game this year.” In response to the first flu case reported last week, Lichtenstein said it is not a big cause for concern. “It’s kind of early for us to see a flu case, but it’s not a particular trend because it’s only one person,” Lichtenstein said. “If we see a dozen in the next few days, then that would be significant, but it could be just a fluke.”
Lichtenstein also addressed uncertainties revolving around the flu season and not being able to pinpoint how many people on campus will be affected. “There is no predicting what this particular vaccine season is going to be,” Lichtenstein said. “There will usually be a few cases of flu through the year, but it starts increasing in frequency in late autumn and then into winter. Particularly December, January and February are kind of the peak months.” The high-risk groups are composed of those individuals who are between six months and 18 years of age, those who are older than 50 years of age, those who have long-term health problems and those who will be pregnant during the flu season. The CDC recommends immunization as soon as the vaccine becomes available because immunity takes about two weeks to fully develop according to SHS website. The process of getting vaccinated has been simplified this year by the ACIP because in the past, frequent changes led to confusion about which groups were considered high risk.
“It was very confusing, particularly last year at the beginning of the swine flu epidemic when we didn’t have much vaccine and we were having to prioritize the vaccine distribution based on risk groups that were getting defined differently every week,” Lichtenstein said. However, distributing the vaccine this time around should not be as problematic as last year according to Lichtenstein. “There should be plenty of vaccines this year,” he claimed. “We didn’t order enough vaccines for the entire campus because we know from our previous experience that we don’t have nearly anywhere near that number of takers on the vaccine, even when we had free vaccines for H1N1, we didn’t distribute that much vaccine.” The cost for the vaccine is $15 and students must bring their Red IDs as proof of eligibility according to the SHS website. A vaccination clinic is arranged to be held on Centennial Walkway during the last week of this month. “We are trying to get out there and be visible to students,” Lichtenstein said.