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Misplaced priorities drove higher education to crisis at Penn State

As Penn State cuts staffing at its 20 Commonwealth campuses and at least two private colleges in our region sink into financial distress, the people who run those institutions point to shrinking enrollment as the culprit. But the dwindling number of students — undergraduate enrollment declined six percent nationwide between 2019 and 2023 — is merely a symptom of misplaced priorities and a lack of leadership in higher education. Even as enrollment declined for a decade, colleges and universities expanded programs and services secondary to their educational mission, bloated the ...

Temporary clerk to be appointed after sudden departures from Pa. county court

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A temporary official will be appointed to run one Pennsylvania county court system after the court clerk and two deputies departed on the eve of criminal contempt proceedings about performance at the office. The “unprecedented leadership void” as of Friday in the Dauphin County clerk of courts office prompted the state Supreme Court to declare a “judicial emergency” and order the county’s president judge to appoint a temporary acting clerk. That person will serve until Gov. Josh Shapiro appoints an acting clerk, which is normally an elected ...

Anglers get free fishing dates at Whipple Dam

PETERSBURG — Want to get in some fishing at a favorite watering hole at Whipple Dam State Park. Two dates are coming up where no experience or fishing license is required. Family fishing at the Huntingdon County state park, located at 3746 Laurel Run Road, Petersburg, will be held from 10 ...

Time to offer a more complete picture of pro baseball history

In a distant corner of Pittsburgh’s sprawling Allegheny Cemetery, you have to march up a steep hillside to find the grave of Josh Gibson. It’s a flat stone, set in the ground, and has Gibson’s game engraved on it, his dates of birth and death and the words “Legendary Baseball Player.” It’s decidedly low-key when you consider that, indeed, Josh Gibson is among the most legendary of baseball players, his feats on the field spoken of in awe. He was among the greatest hitters the game has ever seen, not merely hammering hundreds of homers, but swatting them way out of the ...

Biden, allied Republicans trying to rally GOP women in swing states

DOYLESTOWN (AP) — Thirty miles north of Philadelphia, upscale subdivisions such as Colonial Commons interrupt dairy farms, centuries-old roadside stone houses and the winding Neshaminy Creek that flows between Doylestown and Newtown. Both cities were once rural outposts that have morphed ...

Living with war and indifference

Which is more destructive to personal liberty, a government that engages in secret wars or a public and news media that are indifferent to it? In the current American toxic stew of anti-Russian hatred and beating of war drums – in President Joe Biden’s America – we have both. Here is the backstory. The current hostilities in Ukraine are now in their 28th month. It has become a slow, inexorable movement westward for Russian military forces and painful migration of 5 million Ukrainians out of their country, to say nothing of the losses of more than 500,000 Ukraine ...