The chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois resigned on Monday amid increasingly incendiary accusations that he encouraged an academic version of â??pay to playâ? politics to flourish, allowing students to be admitted based largely on personal and political connections.
As federal agencies start to hand out stimulus grants, the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to see millions of dollars in grant money.
So far, 90 grant awards worth more than $26.5 million have been given to UW-Madison faculty members under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Wisconsin projects receiving the grants range from stem cell research and new genetic models for cancer to Antarctic weather stations and bioenergy.
“The stimulus funds are going to provide a much-needed shot in the arm for UW-Madison research across the board,” says UW-Madison Provost Paul M. DeLuca, who, as associate dean for research in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, played a role in securing stimulus funding for several key biomedical initiatives. “These funds will help us expand the margins of knowledge, of course, but they also represent a new source of support for our research infrastructure, which leads to well-paying jobs in our community.”
Few universities have dealt with the sustainability of their sports programs or have long-term plans to do so, says a new report.
Only 10 percent of institutions at the NCAA’s Division I-A level have developed a strategic plan for sustainability in their athletics programs, and fewer than half report that sustainability is a high priority.
Budget cuts at the University of California have generated a lot of attention, especially after a plan of across-the-board salary cuts, combined with mandatory furlough days, was recently announced. How will such drastic financial measures threaten the strengths of that system and other large public universities? Are certain fields of study in the humanities and social sciences especially vulnerable to state cuts because those areas of inquiryâ??even when dealing with topics of broad importanceâ??rarely get large infusions of national, foundation, or corporate monies of the sort that routinely support work done in areas such as engineering and medicine?
CNN) — An international search is under way for a 29-year-old Auburn University veterinary student who vanished under what appears to be unusual circumstances in Thailand. Michael Griffin Harrie, 29, disappeared earlier this month during a vacation in Thailand, Auburn University says.
….In a media release, Alabama’s Auburn University said Harrie, a second-year student at the veterinary school, was attending a summer study abroad program in Morioka, Japan. He informed a professor he was going to take a one-week vacation with friends to Bangkok, Thailand, that would begin on July 7.
…my jaw dropped a bit when I saw this headline in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “U. of Alaska journalism students to embed with combat team in Iraq.”
According to the article, the journalism department at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks will soon have more reporters in Iraq than many major American newspapers, as three undergrads and a professor leave this week for Diyala Province in Iraq — where they will spend almost a month embedded with U.S. troops.
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) chose three UW System campuses to pilot a national initiative to enhance student learning.
UW-Eau Claire, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Oshkosh, and six universities from Oregon and California, were chosen to participate in the pilot program, â??Give Students a Compass: A Tri-State LEAP Partnership for College Learning, General Education and Underserved Student Success.â?
The goal of the project is to increase the participation and success of traditionally underserved students, such as racial and ethnic minorities, low-income and first-generation students. The project will also evaluate the performance of transfer students, who may have missed a universityâ??s orientation for incoming freshmen.
ROANOKE, Va. — Families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims asked Gov. Tim Kaine on Tuesday to reopen a state commission’s investigation of the 2007 mass killings in which 32 people died.
A group of parents of many of those killed and injured in the rampage by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho issued a statement urging Kaine to reopen the review because of inaccuracies in the report.
The families’ statement followed disclosure last week that the former director of the university’s counseling center recently found missing mental health records for Cho at his home.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State University is now the nation’s No. 1 party school.
The school known partly for its football tailgate weekends and fraternity and sorority scene snatched the title away from the University of Florida in the 2009 Princeton Review survey of 122,000 students nationwide. Florida, last year’s winner, finished second in the annual survey released Monday. The University of Wisconsin is ranked 8th, one behind the University of Texas and one ahead of Florida State.
Once upon a time, eating in a college dorm meant soup in a hotpot or getting pizza delivered. The most interesting thing about the campus dining hall was often the salad bar.
No more. These days, college students have gourmet palates and a growing interest in preparing their own food. Mini-refrigerators and microwaves in dorm rooms are as essential as laptops. Chefs drop by dorm kitchens to give lessons, and dining halls provide takeout containers and ingredients for kids who want to cook their own meals.
What makes for college success? How do you survive freshman year? And beyond? For the freshly minted freshmen heading to campus in the next month, weâ??d like to hear your suggestions. To get you started, hereâ??s what a few readers have already volunteered.
Have a â??fellow student contact personâ? in each course, so you can read each otherâ??s notes if you need to miss class. Lucy Kelly, University of Wisconsin, Madison, class of 2006
It has been two months since Diana Parsons graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a liberal arts degree that cost about $100,000, and she has still not found a full-time job. She has returned to Milwaukee, where she is living with her parents and occasionally waiting tables at a restaurant owned by a friend of her mother.
NATICK, Mass. — A white police sergeant who arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home says he followed procedure and is disappointed by the national debate triggered by the incident, which has drawn criticism from the president on down to local sports radio hosts.
Think these are economically challenging times in Wisconsin? They are, of course. But have you been paying attention to what’s happening on the Left Coast?
The California State University system raised student fees by 20 percent as part of a budget plan that would also shrink enrollment and furlough nearly all employees for two days each month, the Associated Press is reporting.
A report released in May and co-authored by UW-Madison professors Sara Goldrick-Rab and Douglas Harris argued that community colleges are in need of significant government investment if the United States is to help more of its people get a formal education and better compete with others from around the globe for the best jobs.
“Over the last two centuries, the United States created an advantage over other countries by helping our citizens attain formal education, generating an able workforce and technological advancement,” states the report, which was also co-written by Christopher Mazzeo of the Consortium on Chicago School Research and Gregory Kienzl of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
Quoted: Assistant professor of education policy studies and sociology Sara Goldrick-Rab and Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education
At a recent conference of college administrators, several of us had an impromptu discussion over lunch about the meaning of “shared governance.” The consensus? That term is often invoked but much misunderstood by both faculty members and many administrators.
While educators debate the wisdom of three-year college degrees, some ambitious students are going ahead and finishing their coursework in three years anyhow as a way to save thousands of dollars in tuition. It takes discipline, they say, a clear study plan and, often, an armful of advanced placement credits from high school.
Google will greatly expand its Google Library Project through a deal it has made to digitize 10 million books in the libraries of 12 universities.
The 12 universities are members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the 11 universities in the Big Ten Conference and the University of Chicago. The deal expands the number of agreements Google has made with universities from 15 to 25. Two Big Ten members, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, had already made independent deals with Google, which this arrangement does not supersede.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google have expanded their agreement to make more of the university’s huge collection of books available to the public, researchers and libraries and other universities.
The expanded project came about when Google reached a settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers in 2008 to put their works online.
In the new agreement, portions of UW-Madison’s in-copyright and out-of-print books will be able to be previewed for free, as well as the full texts to be accessible online for a price.
The predictions are dire, the language grim: Looming shortfalls. Gathering storm. Disturbing mosaic.
No, it’s not the economy, global warming or the sitcom industry. It’s the coming shortage of U.S. scientists and engineers, foretold for decades by corporate, government and education advocates. While there have been warnings for more than 50 years, a renewed push over the past four years has earned the attention of both the Bush and Obama administrations. Speaking to the National Academy of Sciences in April, Obama announced “a renewed commitment to education in mathematics and science,” fulfilling a campaign promise to train 100,000 scientists and engineers during his presidency. Only problem: We may not have jobs for them all.
Compiling final grades for students in Sharon Thoma’s Zoology 101 course is fairly simple.
A new type of admissions index introduced Tuesday can help the USA’s graduate schools determine whether an applicant has personal attributes like resilience and creativity, which can’t be measured by standardized admission tests. And it’s just a matter of time before undergraduate admissions offices have a similar means at their disposal, says the testing company that designed the tool.
Borrowing a page from FDRs New Deal, some colleges are putting more students to work this summer than usual. The goal: to make sure they can afford to come back in the fall. St. Johns University in Collegeville, Minn., created 80 full-time student jobs, most of them involving physical labor such as clearing trails or painting dorm rooms. The College of Wooster in Ohio has hired more than 200 students â?? almost triple the number it usually employs in summer â?? to do chores such as planting vegetables and washing windows.
Federal regulators on Monday set new rules for government financing of stem-cell research. The rules will allow such work if a review panel determines that couples gave the necessary â??informed consentâ? for the use of their embryos. Scientists will get the chance to demonstrate to the review panel that older cell lines, created during the past decade and crucial to continuing research, meet this ethical standard.
Animal-research facilities, including those operated by universities, will now be required to publicly disclose more information about experiments involving animals’ pain or distress.
The requirement comes out of a court settlement signed Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees such facilities, and the Humane Society of the United States, which had sued the department. The agreement, however, has raised concerns that the information could lead to more violence against scientists by animal-rights extremists.
For the first time in years, there is good news for college students who borrow to pay for their education.
Starting Wednesday, the federal Education Department will begin offering a repayment plan that lets graduates reduce their loan payments, based on their income.
Admissions directors at public universities around the country are reporting bumps in transfer applications, said Barmak Nassirian, a spokesman for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Indiana University has seen a 23% increase in transfer applications for next fall; the University of North Carolina had a 15.3% increase; and the University of California system saw an 11% increase in transfers of in-state students.
Will the stock market close on a high note tomorrow, the last day of the fiscal year for most colleges? Will that last big gift come in before the books close?
As always, the answers could help determine whether some colleges will face demands to pay off their debt faster than planned or be subjected to extra monitoring by the U.S. Department of Education. Others might encounter more scrutiny from their accreditors, or pay higher rates of interest when they borrow cash to cover day-to-day expenses.
Students looking for college scholarships are going to have a harder time this year as providers, hammered by falling investment returns and declining philanthropic support, cut back.
The Fulfillment Fund, a nonprofit that works with Los Angeles public high school students, has reduced the number of college scholarships offered over the last three years by nearly half and has tightened requirements students must meet, said Maria T. Espinosa, director of program operations.
President Obama’s push to increase the number of college graduates may result in a more simplified financial aid form. And at least one Wisconsin education official welcomes the proposed changes.
The first step in getting scholarships, grants and loans is filling out a lengthy form known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It asks as many as 150 questions, ranging from easy ones like demographic data, to more mind-boggling ones. For instance, instead of asking if an applicant is homeless, the question reads: â??Did the school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?â? (Second item.)
The Obama administration is moving to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, a notoriously complicated form that asks students seeking financial aid for college as many as 153 questions.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is expected to announce a plan today to make it easier for students and their families to apply for federal financial aid.
Simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, the form the government uses to assess student need, is a goal President Obama repeatedly pitched as a candidate on the campaign trail.
As consensus has built around the need to simplify the federal financial aid form (and the recognition that that is just part of the answer to really simplifying the financial aid process), proposals for doing so have ranged widely, from shrinking the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid significantly to eliminating it outright.
If buying the naming rights to a football stadium or bowl game is a little out of your price range, take heart — you can now have a class course named after you at City College of San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Chancellor Don Griffin is hoping to save some of the 800 classes up for cancellation next year because of the state’s budget crisis. On the chopping block are such courses as human biology, elementary French and financial accounting, the newspaper reports. Griffin tells The Chronicle that the price tag for supporting one class is $6,000.  “And if you designate it for that class, we’ll make sure the class is reinstated, and we’ll put your name on it,” he says.
The newspaper says each class serves about 30 students who attend three times a week for a little more than four months per semester.
Time was you could hurl a Frisbee clear across a college green in summer and be assured that you would not bop anyone on the head. If not exactly a ghost town, the typical campus was strangely still from June to August, offering administrators an opportunity to regroup and recharge.
Dozens of public and private colleges have taken steps to ensure their students are exposed to a range of intellectual views on campus, and to ensure that students can freely express their views, says a report being released Thursday.
The University of Illinois official who oversees undergraduate admissions told a state commission Tuesday that decisions about well-connected applicants were out of his hands.
Keith Marshall, the university’s associate provost for enrollment management, described a process in which admissions officers were at times overruled by university Chancellor Richard Herman and other top administrators when it came to politically connected students.
Amidst the hubbub surrounding colleges’ attempts to curb excessive drinking on college campuses, one surprising finding has come to light: drinking-related deaths have actually increased. The number of alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths among college-age students between 18 and 24 rose from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005, according to a study released Monday.
Perhaps I’d be working as an engineer these days instead of a reporter if I could have had access to WolframAlpha during my college years.
Or not.
Anyway, as The Chronicle of Higher Education pointed out in an article posted Friday: “The long-running debate over whether students should be allowed to wield calculators during mathematics examinations may soon seem quaint.”
The article continues: “The latest dilemma facing professors is whether to let students turn to a Web site called WolframAlpha, which not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. In other words, it can instantly do most of the homework and test questions found in many calculus textbooks.”
The wretched economy has taught many of the nation’s college-bound seniors a hard lesson: You can’t always get what you want. In a survey to be released Tuesday, 71% of high schools reported that more of their students are forgoing their “dream schools” this year than in previous years. And there is little doubt money is a big reason.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is reporting that the unemployment rate for young college graduates — workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who are under 27 years old — is at 5.9 percent.
Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois appointed a panel on Wednesday to investigate accusations that the University of Illinois admitted hundreds of applicants based largely on their political connections.
A number of academic, engineering, and scientific organizations are urging the federal government to take more-aggressive steps to speed up the delay-plagued visa-application process for foreign students and scholars, including the creation of a high-level panel to review the more-restrictive policies and procedures put in place after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Whether the money is flowing or being cut, one constant of public higher education discussions is the question of who is getting more money from the state — and why. Presidents, trustees and alumni debate the equity of funding formulas, and plot strategies so that their institutions might also be favored by those who control the purse-strings.
Two new studies suggest that strategy may go only so far and that, in some respects, public universities are like real estate: They benefit from location, location, location. The best locations may be in states led by Democrats (and with other political conditions) and in cities in or near statehouses. The studies don’t contest the way research universities receive more per student than do other kinds of institutions, although they suggest that in states with a flagship and multiple research universities, flagship status may be less important than believed, and that research universities tend to be favored.
The wretched economy has taught many of the nation’s college-bound seniors a hard lesson: You can’t always get what you want.
In a survey to be released Tuesday, 71 percent of high schools reported that more of their students are forgoing their “dream schools” this year than in previous years. And there is little doubt money is a big reason.
“With the exception of one or two students, it was THE determining factor in their decision,” one high school official wrote. Said another: “Parents were willing to pay for prestige in the past. This year they wanted prestigious schools IF the financial aid packages would work for them.”
Sometimes, leaders of higher education do things that are not, um, very smart. The latest example of this appears to be playing out at North Carolina State University.
The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., is reporting that N.C. State Chancellor James L. Oblinger resigned and former first lady Mary Easley was fired Monday in what the newspaper called “a stunning new round of fallout over her job at the university.”
The National Institutes of Health has received about 21,000 applications for its main category of grants through the federal economic-stimulus measure, both thrilling and overwhelming agency reviewers responsible for evaluating the proposals and distributing the money.
As college students begin leaving for summer vacation, the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, is cropping up on a surprising number of campuses across the nation. Some national experts say this trend could be an ominous sign for students and health centers in the fall, when flu season traditionally intensifies.
The Chronicle of Higher Education took an in-depth look at the downfall of Robert Felner — a well-paid dean at the University of Louisville who was set to become the new chancellor at UW-Parkside before legal issues derailed his career about one year ago.
It’s a well-written article that makes one wonder how such a person could have ever come this close to taking over as chancellor of a UW System school.
Many universities â?? public and private alike â?? give special treatment to some degree to the sons and daughters of big donors, politicians, trustees and others with control over the school’s purse strings or other clout, admissions experts say.
No one knows how many study abroad-related lawsuits are settled before landing in court. But you can probably count on two hands the number of cases where courts have ruled, several legal experts say. None of those rulings creates “a binding precedent nationwide,” says William Hoye, executive vice president and chief operating officer of IES Abroad, a Chicago-based non-profit that offers more than 80 study-abroad programs in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
A report released Tuesday by the National Research Council shows that although females still are underrepresented in the applicant pool for faculty positions in math, science and engineering at major research universities, those who do apply are interviewed and hired at rates higher than those for men.
The report also notes that while women are underrepresented among those considered for tenure, those who are considered receive tenure at the same or higher rates than men.
Even as colleges nationwide celebrate commencement season, hundreds of schools are failing to graduate a majority of their students in six years, a report says today. Nationally, four-year colleges graduated an average of just 53% of entering students within six years, and “rates below 50%, 40% and even 30% are distressingly easy to find,” says the report by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Its based on data reported to the Education Department by nearly 1,400 schools about full-time first-time students who entered in fall 2001.
Want to have a job once you graduate college? You might want to consider majoring in engineering, nursing or teaching.
….Technicians, machinist/machine operators and sales representatives have appeared all four years on the Manpower list, while engineers, drivers and laborers have appeared three out of four years.
In other words, there appear to be some good job options out there for those who don’t have an undergraduate degree from a four-year college.
When the University of Illinois rejected her son, Erin Reum called admissions officers in hopes of getting his application a second look.
She thought maybe the Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School senior could appeal the decision. She was wrong.
“They said there’s no such process,” Reum said.
Appeals aren’t unusual at competitive colleges and universities, particularly state schools. But unlike the University of Illinois, most said they publicize the option.
Only one university contacted by the Tribune said it had an unadvertised process similar to the U. of I.’s.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison doesn’t publicize appeals either but says it is not swayed by clout.
“Some people think getting a letter of recommendation from a name will make a difference, and it really doesn’t,” said Joanne Berg, vice provost for enrollment management.
To understand why someone applying to the University of Illinois would seek help from a trustee or legislator — as detailed in a Tribune series that began last week — consider how the battle for admission has changed over the last 25 years.
In 1984, nearly 14,000 students applied for roughly 6,000 freshman spots on the Urbana-Champaign campus, few students from outside Illinois enrolled and high school graduates with decent grades had a good shot of getting in.
Today, 26,000 students are bidding for 7,100 spots, non-residents make up a growing percentage of the freshman class and applicants across the board have more impressive academic credentials than ever before, said Stacey Kostell, director of admissions.
With costs threatening to detour millions of students off the college route altogether, itâ??s time to open the educational express lane.
Some American universities are planning to give more students a chance to graduate in three years rather than four. Graduates would still be saddled with a sizable student-loan boulder, but it would be quite a bit lighter.
At a time when it’s more competitive than ever to get into the University of Illinois, some students with subpar academic records are being admitted after interference from state lawmakers and university trustees, a Tribune investigation has revealed.
Hundreds of applicants received special consideration in the last five years, according to documents obtained by the Tribune under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The records chronicle a shadow admissions system in which some students won spots at the state’s most prestigious public university over the protests of admissions officers, while others had their rejections reversed during an unadvertised appeal process.
Boy power! The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a group of students at the University of Chicago thinks the campus could focus a little more attention on men. So Steve Saltarelli, a junior from Lake Bluff, Ill., formed the student organization “Men in Power.”
The group’s Facebook page now has over 350 members — a nearly three-fold increase since the Tribune’s article on the group was posted late Wednesday. The Facebook page states: “Men in Power (MiP) is a gender advocacy organization founded in the University of Chicago that seeks to address issues and challenges that contemporary men face in the society, while also providing a pre-professional platform for its members.”
