EWA’s annual conference for higher education reporters will provide the sources and tools reporters need to research and write about the most pressing issues and stories of 2011.

Spend Feb. 4-5, 2011 in  St. Petersburg, Fla., with your fellow higher ed journalists and meet some of the nation’s most knowledgeable and quotable experts including Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, the authors of Higher Education?; James Kvaal, the Department of Education’s new higher ed policy guru; and Trace Urdan, one of the few securities analysts who digs deeply into for-profit colleges.  

Click here to view the conference agenda.

Designed expressly to give reporters good material for stories, the conference includes fellowships for travel and hotel. The conference is open to working journalists only and is made possible by a generous grant from the Lumina Foundation as well as support from the Southern Regional Education Board and the Chronicle of Higher Education..

Among the topics to be covered:

• Graduation Rates: Learn what the research and data say about efforts to increase graduation rates from experts at the Education Trust and the Southern Regional Education Board. Hear from administrators of Valencia Community College about how they’ve turned their college into the top producer of associate’s degrees in the country.
• Budget Cuts: Budget data expert Mike Griffith of the Education Commission of the States, as well as union activist, professor, and budget-cut skeptic Howard Bunsis, will put your public universities’ budgets into a national context.
• FERPA: Some colleges have been using the privacy law to hide information that should be public. Learn what the law really says, and how reporters can protect the public’s right to know.
• Financial Aid: Two of the world’s most knowledgeable financial aid experts - the College Board’s Sandy Baum and Finaid.org’s Mark Kantrowitz - will explain the latest financial-aid trends and developments.

Rooms are available at the Courtyard by Marriott, 300 4th Street, North, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. The rate is $94 for a single or double. Please call (727) 450-6200 and ask for the EWA rate. The cutoff date is is Jan. 19. Reporters can apply for travel subsidies to cover up to two nights of hotel and $250 to $350 in airfare, depending on their location.  The deadline to apply is Jan. 17.

EWA thanks its conference sponsors for their support.