UNH, Great Bay team up in dual admissions program

Students able to seamlessly move from GBCC to university

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University of New Hampshire President Mark Huddleston, left, and Great Bay Community College President Wildolfo Arvelo, right, pose with the first student in their dual admission program, Gates MacPherson, at Great Bay Community College on Tuesday.Robert Michaelson photo

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By Robert Michaelson

rmichaelson@seacoastonline.com

August 06, 2014 2:00 AM

PORTSMOUTH — Great Bay Community College and the University of New Hampshire have joined forces to give more students the chance to earn a bachelor's degree.

UNH President Mark Huddleston and GBCC President Wildolfo Arvelo officially implemented a new dual admission program this week that will allow students to more easily transfer into UNH after earning an associate's degree at GBCC. The deal was signed at GBCC on Tuesday afternoon.

Students in the program can earn credits that apply to both their associate's and bachelor's degree. Qualifying students with a 2.5 grade point average or higher will be guaranteed seamless entry into UNH's College of Liberal Arts.

"We really do share a common mission to try and make education more affordable and accessible," Huddleston said. "It doesn't matter to me where a student starts or where he or she finishes. It is just the opportunity to get higher education in New Hampshire."

GBCC students enrolled in the dual admission program will only have to pay one application fee, have access to specialized academic advising, invitations to all events at UNH throughout the year, eligibility for merit-based scholarships and guaranteed university housing.

The first student in the program is Exeter High School graduate Gates MacPherson, who will start at GBCC this fall. She said the dual admission program will prepare her for the next steps in her education without the higher cost.

"I am able to really decide what I want to do without spending so much money," she said.

She isn't sure what she will study for her bachelor's degree, but plans to focus her efforts in the communication field.

Her father, Robert MacPherson, said he fully supports his daughter's decision to take a different path in her higher education. It will also allow her to get a taste for UNH before she decides to go there, and by then she will have her required general education credits completed.

This program is intended to serve as a pilot that will include all University System of New Hampshire and Community College System of New Hampshire institutions. GBCC and UNH currently have agreements that guarantee transfer into the university's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, and the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics.

Arvelo said he hopes this new partnership with UNH will encourage others in higher education to forge similar agreements that will give accomplished students such as MacPherson opportunities to grow.

"This is another piece of the puzzle for the relationship of Great Bay Community College and the University of New Hampshire, but also the community college system and the university system," Arvelo said. "These are students who have the potential and should have the opportunity to move onto the university system."

For more information on the dual admission program, visit www.greatbay.edu/dualadmission or contact Natalie Girouard at 427-7607.

MIT considers modules rather than courses

My Turn: Lessons learned from an economic education

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen smiles as testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 16, 2014, before the House Financial Services Committee hearing entitled: "Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

By BIRNEY K. BROWN

For the Monitor

Saturday, August 2, 2014
(Published in print: Saturday, August 2, 2014)

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I graduated in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in economics from a highly regarded liberal arts college. In reflecting upon this, I am astounded by the manner in which economic principles were taught. For example, students were instructed on the various aspects of macroeconomics vs. microeconomics, supply and demand, and monetary policy vs. fiscal policy.

This piece addresses only the monetary policy and fiscal policy of economic thought as it was presented to students. For ease, look at monetary policy as the setting of interest rates and the overall money supply.

The Great Recession was brought on by many things: technology advances and the decimal-based trading it brought through the advent of computers, the end of private partnership ownership of investment houses by “going public” through IPOs, ill-advised deregulation such as repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and leaving derivative products free from regulation, and the establishment of Wall Street’s culture rewarding short-term performance without regard to the long-term aspect of fractional trading (leverage).

This was exacerbated by such idiotic things as rating agencies being paid by the companies offering the precise products to be rated, seats in Congress being financed by lobbyists in order for one to be elected in the first place and politicians being beholden to special interests for re-election. (Thanks, Supreme Court, for your series of decisions which serve only to promote this.)

But back to monetary policy vs. fiscal policy.

In college, it was never made clear to me that monetary policy is not driven by a democratically elected government but rather by the privately owned Federal Reserve. A so-called Central Bank.

It was never made clear to me that the Fed was established in 1913 by financiers and banks in order to overcome the distrust Americans had developed toward the banking system due to the recession of the very early 1900s, that these individuals created the Fed to maintain their ability to keep their hands on the money.

And it did take some number of years for the legislation to overcome the fears of many detractors before it became law. (Just consider the sleight of hand in terming it the Federal Reserve, as though it is a true government agency.)

It must be understood by all Americans that this privately owned Federal Reserve, through its chairman (now Janet Yellen, following Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke), is solely responsible for our country’s monetary policy. The Fed does not answer to Congress or the president outside of the fact that the chairman is nominated by the president for congressional approval. Americans must realize that the Fed oversees one-half of our nation’s economic tools (the other half being fiscal policy).

Myself and many others believe that the “recovery” has almost been entirely left to monetary policy. Through the “zero interest rate” environment and various forms of what has been termed “quantitative easing.” Both of these concepts are unnatural and deviously destructive. Both have caused “free markets” to become distorted and dysfunctional.

Interest rates should be determined by “the free market” and not by central planning. When the “free market” is suppressed in this fashion, it cannot operate as intended in a democratic society, as has been indisputably the case. I’m sure everyone has read all the stories about the destruction of the middle class, the widening of the gap between the rich and poor to historically high levels, the impoverishment of so many, the loss of jobs, the disappearance of wage increases for the vanishing middle class and low-income population, the loss of homes to foreclosure, the huge increase in indebtedness for college education, the “tapping out” of financial resources for so many, etc.

This has been the result of America’s refusal to address economic recovery through fiscal policy and instead abandoning its responsibility in favor of monetary policy as enacted by the Fed. Not long ago, the profoundly disappointing President Obama announced a $600 million proposal addressing jobs creation. But compare this to the one-time(!) audit of the Fed revealing $16 trillion in unrevealed financial assistance – or bailouts – to the worldwide financial system. Or the $4.6 trillion added to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet through quantitative easing (specifically the 50 percent or so resulting from the Fed’s purchase of derivative mortgage products at inflated prices to keep monies flowing the banks’ way on top of the “almost free money” already available to them).

Providing operating funds to the very financial industry which almost brought our whole economy down is not a means to dig out from our economic malaise. Quite the opposite. What we have needed is the missing, responsible type of fiscal policy which should have been implemented by our elected president and Congress.

Enough of our president’s blaming the Tea Party and recalcitrant Republicans for the failure to enact fiscal legislation. This is his second term as he continually fails to realize that 75 percent of the population would back aggressive fiscal economic action with no regard whatsoever as to how the 1 percent or untrustworthy bankers fare. As they would back the Department of Justice and regulators pursuing those behind the still-smoldering banking crisis.

Enough of Congress (with some notable exceptions) envisioning their jobs as serving the special interests who finance their campaigns. Their employers should be seen as their constituents – those about whom these politicians repeatedly reveal an utter cluelessness and complete inability to relate. No wonder the term “Demopublicans” is gaining in popularity. Our country’s “record” of fiscal policy since the Great Recession and anemic recover just reinforces the notion of there being not true difference between the parties.

Only empty sound bites.

(Birney K. Brown lives in Contoocook.)

St. George's Medical School on Grenada