The recession has been particularly unkind to the legal profession, where a combination of lost public sector jobs and consolidated private firm services has created a job vacuum.

This hasn't been good news for the hundreds of new lawyers streaming out of North Carolina law schools over the last few years.

As I report today, the job market for new lawyers is still lagging, as is the market for summer jobs for current law school students.

It's bad enough that one local law school dean recently sent an email plea to his alumni asking them for help finding jobs. Even those that don't pay anything.

I'm guessing this story will prompt a great deal of tut-tut-tutting about how there are too many lawyers. This is actually quite hard to gauge. The industry itself doesn't have a distinct way to measure market saturation, and law schools say they don't restrict enrollment when times get tough because of the lag time between when a student starts law school and when he or she graduates.

It's a three-year journey, and a lot can happen to an economy, good or bad, in that time.

Charlie Nelms has little patience for the 15 percent cut to Pell Grant funding proposed by House Republicans.

The proposed spending bill would cut millions in federal research and financial aid funding and would reduce the maximum Pell Grant - the primary source of federal need-based aid for college - from $5,500 to $4,705.

The $845 in lost potential funding per student could have a significant impact, Nelms said Wednesday.

"It would just decimate the whole notion of access and opportunity," he said. "We cannot afford to go backward."

At NCCU, 65 percent of students - more than 3,000 in all - receive Pell funding. The reduction would surely keep some from college, he warned.

"It is the base of our financial aid package," he said. "The people who are impacted are the people who can least afford to be impacted."

The House proposal is part of a budget-cutting plan that would trim $100 billion from President Obama's spending request for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, is the first scheduled speaker in N.C. Central University's Leadership Initiative Program Series.

Malveaux will speak from the topic, “What Language is OK in Leadership,” on Feb. 11 at 3:30 p.m. in the Whiting Criminal Justice Building. The event is free and open to the public.
 
A labor economist, noted author and commentator, Malveaux's writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Charlotte Observer, the New Orleans Tribune, the Detroit Free Press and the San Francisco Examiner.

Malveaux has hosted television and radio programs and appeared widely as a commentator on networks including CNN, BET, PBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN and others.

In today's paper, the full story on new UNC President Tom Ross's desire to seek out duplication within the UNC system.

This should be an interesting process. On individual campuses, faculties aren'g generally programmed to think first about working collaboratively with their counterparts at other public institutions. It happens, but it isn't as high a priority as it's going to become.

Ross's first big venture will seek out what he calls "unnecessary duplication" among academic programs, an endeavor sure to result in some hurt feelings and turf wars.

Here's the story.

The N.C. Central University marching band's triumphant trip to the Tournament of Roses parade ended up costing a bit less than expected.

Still, the university wasn't able to raise the total sum through private donations. Thus, it used about $130,000 from a student fee account to cover the difference.

(photo courtesy nccueagles.smugmug.com)
The total cost was $430,950, far less than the $500,000 university officials had estimated after learning in late 2009 that it had earned the coveted invitation to the Jan. 1. parade in Pasadena, Calif.

NCCU then went on a huge, frantic fundraising drive, since sending hundreds of band members across the company with their uniforms, trumpets, flutes and tubas isn't cheap.

The university raised about $300,000 towards that effort. The difference, $129,345, was paid through student activity fees. That's a fee each student pays that funds a variety of student organizations and efforts like the band, student groups and intramural sports.

The $129,345 is a lot to shell out from that fund for one event, but Chancellor Charlie Nelms said its a perfectly suitable use of the money.

"There's a range of things it supports," he said of the student fee fund. "It's like your household budget. You might spend a little less on something and a little more on something, depending on your needs."

At N.C. Central University, a Martin Luther King march and rally scheduled for Tuesday has been pushed back a week due to the winter weather.

The rally will be held Tuesday, Jan. 18. Participants are asked to meet at 10:40 a.m. that day in front of the student union.

Evening classes tonight (Monday) have been canceled and classes resume Tuesday at 11 a.m.
 

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA) will speak at N.C. Central University next week as part of the university's Martin Luther King Convocation.

Lewis, a giant of the civil rights movement, will speak Thursday, Jan. 13 at 9:45 a.m. in the McDougald-McLendon Gymnasium.

The event is part of a weeklong observance of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
While a student at Fisk University, Lewis organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn. In 1961, he participated in the Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at southern bus terminals.

In 1963, he became head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which helped shape student activism during the civil rights movement.

Later in life he got into politics, first with the Atlanta City Council and later in the U.S. House of Representatives, to which he was first elected in 1986.

Erskine Bowles was a couple years into his tenure as UNC's president when a real head-scratcher landed on his desk.

N.C. Central University, the historically black institution in Durham, had been improperly operating a satellite campus for for years at a church near Atlanta.

The plot thickened: The church was operated by Eddie Long, then a NCCU trustee.

Hmm...

The university's discovery of this satellite campus created a mess for Bowles and Charlie Nelms, then still new in his post as NCCU's chancellor.

Nelms had recently taken over for James Ammons, who had left Durham for the presidency at Florida A & M University.

The unauthorized satellite campus at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. had been created while Ammons was chancellor.

So in interviewing Bowles recently just weeks prior to his retirement as UNC president, I asked him if he had ever gotten to the bottom of that mess.
 

James Guseh is dreaming big.

The N.C. Central University figures he's spent too long watching from afar as his home country of Liberia struggles with poverty, corruption and illiteracy.

He wants to do something about it. Now.

So he's running for president of his native land.

Guseh, who teaches public administration at NCCU, is taking a one-year leave of absence to pursue this dream.

It won't be easy. He faces a crowded field, a popular sitting president and, maybe, a name recognition problem.

Here's his story.

If you've tried to call anyone at N.C. Central University and the line is busy, there's a reason. The power's out.

Phones, website, everything's down, a campus spokeswoman confirmed today - on her cell phone.

No word on the cause or when power will be restored, but the spokeswoman, Cindy Fobert, said it won't be by the end of business today.