Yesterday saw protests against Governor Scott Walker’s budget plan — which would slash faculty pay and roll back unionization rights for state employees — across the state of Wisconsin. A hundred high school students walked out in Stoughton, for instance, while in Madison, at least a thousand students, faculty, and supporters marched on the state capitol.

Today hundreds of people packed a state senate finance committee meeting to offer comments on the plan, while at least ten thousand more rallied at the statehouse.

DefendWisconsin has more on Twitter.

Does the for-profit college industry have any friends left? Seriously, it’s getting really ugly out there.

With new government regulations looming and a seemingly constant stream of bad press, for-profit higher education is on the ropes. They charge exorbitant prices, they provide sub-standard education, they target vulnerable students, they have an abysmal job placement record, and they do it all on the government dime.

Now even the National Review, the nation’s most prominent conservative journal, is getting in on the act. In a new post yesterday on the magazine’s Phi Beta Cons education site, blogger Carol Iannone quotes fellow conservative Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars as declaring that such institutions prey on “individuals who have a combination of poor academic preparation, little sign of academic aptitude, poor credit risk, and time on their hands,” leaving “a large majority … floundering — and deeper in debt.”

“For-profits’ students,” Iannone adds, “have four times the default rate as the non-profits’ students,” and the industry is set to “drain the Treasury of half a trillion dollars in the next ten years.”

Ouch.

President Obama’s new budget proposes some $10 billion a year in Pell Grant cuts, but looks to achieve that goal without reducing the maximum grant or dropping any students from the program. They’re doing that by seeking Pell savings in two areas — summer grants and graduate loan interest.

Summer Pell Grants are a recent addition to the Pell program, under which students can apply for a second grant for summer school if their total courseload adds up to more than a full academic year’s worth. The summer Pells are new, as I said, and they’ve been popular — so popular that they’re costing quite a bit more than anticipated. Obama is proposing eliminating them.

The second cut is to graduate loan interest subsidies. Right now, while you’re in grad school, your federal student loans don’t accrue interest — they just sit there, at the amount you borrowed them, waiting for you to be done. Under Obama’s budget plan, that would end, and though you still wouldn’t be paying back the loans while you’re in school, the amount you borrowed would be growing due to interest accrued during your studies.

The administration says that by making these two changes, they can keep eligibility for the larger Pell program steady while maintaining the recent hike to the maximum grant while cutting as much as $100 billion from the program’s cost over the next ten years.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin released a new budget bill on Friday, and student and faculty activists are … well, they’re not happy. Not even a little.

The “budget repair” bill would impose a new mandatory 5.8% payment into pension plans on state workers, and double the employee contribution to health insurance from 4-6% of pay to more than 12%. Taken together, these two changes would amount to an effective pay cut of well over ten percent.

Even more shocking, the bill would severely limit collective bargaining rights for state workers — and eliminate faculty and campus staff unions entirely. (Wisconsin profs and academic staff only won the right to unionize two years ago.)

The effect of these changes on students wouldn’t just be indirect, either — grad students working as teaching assistants and adjuncts will feel the pain if they’re implemented.

Governor Walker is hoping to pass the bill in the state’s Republican-controlled state legislature this week, and student activists are scrambling to mobilize opposition. United Council, the University of Wisconsin’s system-wide student association, held an emergency board meeting yesterday to plan actions for the week, and the system’s student governments — notably Associated Students of Madison, the student government at UW’s flagship campus in the state capital — are gearing up as well. (Some student bloggers: The Campus First, An Inexperienced Leader, A Silent Majority.)

Walker has threatened to call out the National Guard if protests get too intense, by the way. Should be an interesting week in Wisconsin — we’ll keep you posted, and you can follow the #handsoffourteachers hashtag on Twitter for updates from in-state.

Way back in the spring of 2009 I wrote about the case of Julea Ward, a counseling graduate student who was expelled from Eastern Michigan University for refusing to counsel gay clients according to the ethical mandates of her profession. It’s an interesting case, and one that’s become something of a cause celebre on the right — you can read all the background here, and read a bit more about my take on the ethical issues involved here.

A federal judge ruled in EMU’s favor in July 2010, and the case is slowly wending its way through the appellate process. On Friday, the ACLU filed an amicus brief on EMU’s behalf — it’s a good introduction to the case, and a solid analysis of the issues at stake.