DEMOCRAT PROFESSORS OUTNUMBER REPUBLICAN professors at American colleges, according to a pair of studies released this month by the National Association of Scholars. One study found that in the American Anthropological Association, for example, there were 30 people who voted mostly Democratic for every one who voted Republican. In other groups, like the American Economic Association, the disparity was less stark, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans three to one. The other study examined the party registrations of professors at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. According to the findings, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 7.6 to 1 at Stanford and 9.9 to 1 at UC Berkeley.

...MORE THAN ONE MILLION students and 90,000 low-income college students may lose their grants in the 2005-06 school year under new financial aid rules. Congress passed a bill on Nov. 20 that will increase Pell Grant funding by approximately $458 million to $12.4 billion, which may not meet the growing demand for the program. According to a Nov. 23 press release from the California Student Public Interest Research Group, the spending bill will force the Department of Education to change the formula used to calculate student eligibility for Pell Grants.

...HIGH HOUSING COSTS in Davis was one of the reasons that a Davis microprocessor firm recently opened up a design lab in Ann Arbor, Mich., according to the Ann Arbor Business Review. "We suffer from high taxes, extremely high housing prices and a lot of anti-business legislation and regulations," said Z-World founder and CEO Norm Rogers. The article noted that the average sales price of a home in Davis in 2004 was $597,600; in Ann Arbor, it was $340,000.

...THE UC SYSTEM filed a lawsuit Nov. 1 against a number of major natural gas providers for manipulating retail natural gas prices during California's energy crisis in 2000-2001. In the lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court, the university claims that the energy companies -- primarily producers, marketers, traders, transporters, distributors and sellers of retail natural gas -- engaged in "unfair and deceptive conduct (that) caused California gas retail prices to escalate to about six times the national average."

...FILM PRODUCER Roger Corman has agreed to provide production funding of $100,000 to one or more UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television students to produce a feature-length motion picture. After Corman chooses one or more student proposals, funding for $100,000 per project will be given, and the applicants will produce a feature-length motion picture. Corman has pledged one-third of the profits from the resulting films to the department of film, television and digital media.

...UC SANTA BARBARA reports that for the eighth consecutive year, research support from external sources reached a record high. Last year a total of $161.4 million was received from federal and state agencies, corporations, and foundations -- 12 percent over the previous year's record of $143.9 million.

...THE UCLA LIBRARY has acquired the papers of Harry Crane (1914-99), creator of "The Honeymooners" and a prolific writer of radio, television and film comedy. The collection encompasses scripts, correspondence, photographs, topical humor publications and awards spanning his career from the 1940s through the 1990s.

...PROFESSORS WALKED OFF THEIR JOBS at Northeastern Illinois University in November. Contract talks between administrators and members of Local 4100 of University Professionals of Illinois broke off on Nov. 19, with the sides still far apart on pay and workload issues. Faculty members are frustrated because they say the administration has not compromised much since negotiations began in May. The previous contract expired in August.

...INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND SCHOLARS who hold master's degrees or doctorates from American universities will have an edge over other foreign citizens seeking H-1B visas to work in the United States, thanks to a provision tucked into the vast spending bill that Congress approved in November, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The provision would allocate 20,000 new H-1B visas solely to foreigners who have graduate degrees from American universities. President Bush is expected to sign the legislation, which encompasses nine different spending bills.

...HARVARD LAW SCHOOL recently re-imposed a ban against military recruiting on its campus, on the grounds that the armed forces discriminate against gay men and lesbians. The decision came a day after a federal appeals court overturned a law penalizing colleges that do not provide access to recruiters.

-- By Clifton B. Parker