Category: Higher Education/System

Whether itâ??s avoiding bars frequented by students or politely declining the occasional social invitation, professors often make an extra effort to establish boundaries with their students. But social networking sites, which are often more public than they may appear, are lifting the veil on the private lives of professors in ways they may not have expected.

David Wilson was named by Barack Obama to the Presidentâ??s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) late last week.

Wilson is the current chancellor of UW-Extension and UW Colleges, but will be leaving Wisconsin June 30 to become president of the historically black Morgan State University in Baltimore.

In the emerging world of e-books, many consumers assume it is only logical that publishers are saving vast amounts by not having to print or distribute paper books, leaving room to pass along those savings to their customers.

David Adewumiâ??s plans for spring break donâ??t look like those of most other college juniors. He wonâ??t be heading to a resort town for a week of beaches and bars, or home for a week of naps and TV-watching.

Instead, he and 10 other students from Pennsylvania State University will fly south to Haiti, on an earthquake relief trip. They expect to spend a week helping with minor medical care, food distribution and shelter building. â??We know weâ??re a tiny Band-Aid on a huge wound,â? he said. â??But weâ??re still doing what we can to help.â?

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. — A professor at a northeastern Pennsylvania university says sheâ??s been suspended indefinitely for what she thought was a humorous posting on Facebook about hiring a hit man.

East Stroudsburg University sociology professor Gloria Gadsden says she was suspended Wednesday because administrators thought she was making threats.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posed the following question to its readers: “Is tenure a matter of life or death?”

Although the answer seems obvious, this is a hot topic on campuses across the country following the shooting which left three faculty members dead and three others wounded earlier this month at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

There isnt much talk about tuition insurance. That might be because its perceived as a sunk cost; because colleges often refund some percentage of tuition until the midpoint of the semester; or because its so rare for people in their late teens or early 20s to contract debilitating illnesses. Or maybe because policies usually dont refund tuition for students who drop out to “find” themselves or who get kicked out for drinking or bad grades. But the idea of paying a bit extra to ensure that a student and his family get the bulk of what theyve paid for a semester has never quite caught on.

Kathryn Russell said it happened in her on-campus apartment. For Megan Wright, the venue was a residence hall. According to a report funded by the Department of Justice, roughly one in five women who attend college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates. But official data from the schools themselves donâ??t begin to reflect the scope of the problem. And student victims face a depressing litany of barriers that often either assure their silence or leave them feeling victimized a second time, according to a 12-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

Even before Apple announced the iPad, higher-education technologists predicted that e-book readers were on the brink of becoming a common accessory among college students; last fall, two-thirds of campus CIOs said they believed e-readers would become an â??important platform for instructional resourcesâ? within five years, according to the Campus Computing Project.

Where do the high school seniors of suburban Washington apply to college? Jim Lipton, a parent affiliated with Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md., tracks where Walter Johnson students apply. Lipton’s spreadsheet lists “all colleges and universities (U.S. and outside) to which at least two Walter Johnson High Schools students applied between 2006-2009.” There are 430 schools on the list; UW-Madison is 26th.

Community college transfer students are no longer being courted only by the usual suspects. More private institutions, of every ilk, are aggressively recruiting students from two-year colleges, hoping to bolster and diversify their enrollments and capitalize on the belt-tightening of regional public universities.

The shooting deaths of three biology professors at the University of Alabama at Huntsville this month, allegedly by a colleague who had recently lost an appeal of her tenure denial, seemed to many observers to confirm the worst about faculty workplaces. In conversations on The Chronicleâ??s Web site and elsewhere, people have seized on the killings as evidence that academic life today is a petri dish for madness: The high stress of the tenure process, the pressures to be brilliant at research and teaching, the cloistered environment, the extent to which internal politics affect peopleâ??s careersâ??itâ??s a combination that could damage even psychologically healthy people.

Even as Americans increasingly view a college education as essential for success, they are growing more skeptical of how higher-education institutions are being run, a report says. Sixty percent of Americans, for example, believe colleges care more about their bottom line than they do educating students. And 60% agree that colleges could enroll a lot more students without lowering quality or raising prices.

Most Americans believe that colleges today operate like businesses, concerned more with their bottom line than with the educational experience of students, according to a new study. And the proportion of people who hold that view has increased to 60 percent, from 52 percent in 2007.

For nearly an hour, it was a normal faculty meeting. The professors discussed what professors always discuss: who was going to teach what and how they were going to handle an increase in undergraduate enrollment. There was no mention of tenure. No angry words were exchanged. It was, as one professor in the room put it, boring. Then, he said, Amy Bishop opened fire.

Tod W. Burke likes to use examples from current events to illustrate points in his courses. On Thursday, the criminal justice professor at Radford University discussed with students the arrest of a Tennessee teacher who has been charged with the attempted murder, in school, of his principal and assistant principal.

For some Hispanic students, navigating the college application process can be a double-whammy: Balancing high school coursework with essays and interviews, and then translating the whole system for their parents, who donâ??t speak English. Some venerable East Coast universities are trying to ease that burden â?? and tap the booming pool of Hispanic students.

As colleges nationwide review freshman applications over the next several weeks, many will face lopsided numbers of male and female candidates. Some colleges maintain a gender balance, but national data in recent years show a 57%-43% split favoring women, both in enrollments and graduation rates. Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail and a former USA TODAY editorial writer, talks to reporter Mary Beth Marklein.

The leader of the countrys largest university thinks its time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia. Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professors output over quality.

UW-Madison is ranked among the top 10 universities nationally in terms of fundraising dollars earned, according to a recent survey.

While private donations to universities are lower than they have been in more than 50 years, University of Wisconsin officials remain positive as UW remains at the top of the list for fundraising.

The UW System Board of Regents stressed the importance of higher educationâ??s role in economic recovery on the state level at their meeting Thursday.

As commentators eagerly awaited a filing today by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on the Google Book Search Settlement, two weeks before a scheduled fairness hearing, the settlement now faces its biggest challenges ever.

Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders.

If you had asked Nancy Grasmick five years ago how things were going with her big, splashy Advanced Placement campaign, she would have said: Itâ??s not pretty. Maryland was expanding the elite program at a steady clip, pushing more and more high-schoolers into AP classes, with an aggressive marketing campaign that targeted rural and suburban kids as well as those in big, urban districts.

The number of students taking Advanced Placement tests hit a record high last year, but the portion who fail the exams â?? particularly in the South â?? is rising as well, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Students last year took a record 2.9 million exams through the AP program, which challenges high school students with college-level courses. Passing the exams (a score of 3 or higher on the point scale of 1 to 5) may earn students early college credits, depending on a collegeâ??s criteria.

Fewer alumni contributed to their undergraduate alma maters last year, and those who gave, gave less, a survey says. Just 10% of alumni gave to their schools last year, down from 11% the previous year and the lowest level since 1969.