One of the hottest new courses on U.S. college campuses is a direct result of cybercrime.Classes in digital forensics ââ?¬â? the collection, examination and presentation of digitally stored evidence in criminal and civil investigations ââ?¬â? are cropping up as fast as the hackers and viruses that spawn them.
DURHAM, N.C., June 5 ââ?¬â? After two months in limbo, the Duke University men’s lacrosse team was given a second chance Monday.
The Duke president, Richard H. Brodhead, who in April canceled the team’s season after a woman accused three players of rape, said the men’s lacrosse team would be reinstated, with strict stipulations.
Deciding once again to weigh in on the explosive debate over affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up the question of whether race can be a factor in assigning students to public schools.
To some admissions officials, January seems like a long time ago. Then, a sharp increase in applications surprised many colleges, and enrollment experts assumed that high-school seniors had caused the inundation by applying to multiple institutions. The conventional wisdom was that a wave of “frivolous applicants” had hit academe.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass (Reuters) – As Harvard University searches for a new leader, questions loom over its last president’s most ambitious project: turning America’s oldest university into the nation’s hub for life sciences.
….At the same time we are concerned about our talented students leaving Wisconsin, our university system is invoking a policy that gives these individuals even more reason to abandon our state.
This type of policy is an insult to the many minorities in our country who have risen to greatness because of their knowledge and hard work, not because of the color of their skin.
The Mann Scholars program has reached a milestone with two of its first recipients earning college degrees.
Wednesday night in the Memorial Union’s Great Hall, the high school scholarship program honored eight young people who hope to follow in the graduates’ footsteps.
The group from a campus religious center in Madison had gone to Israel and Palestine to see ways people in that conflicted region were trying to make peace. In the middle of their trip last week, they wound up just seven blocks away from a fierce gun battle in Ramallah between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians that left four of the Palestinians dead.
The group of 18 University of Wisconsin students was part of a service learning trip to Israel and Palestine known as Quest I-P, which is a project of The Crossing, an ecumenical ministry located at 1127 University Ave. just off the UW-Madison campus.
Critics of higher education may argue that today’s college campuses are being overrun by leftist professors bent on indoctrinating their students. But nobody is quite as in-your-face about it as Horowitz, 67, a ’60s-radical-turned-conservative-activist who has spent the past few years crisscrossing the country to warn students: ââ?¬Å?You can’t get a good education if they’re only telling you half the story.ââ?¬Â Horowitz is having an effect. He has had success in Congress pushing his Academic Bill of Rights, a statement of principles that he says reflects his goal to both remove political agendas from campus life and ensure that no students are discriminated against because of political or ideological leanings.
Hundred of campus health officials gathered in New York City Wednesday for the annual American College Health Association conference, in an effort to figure out where their complex profession is headed.
Nearly a dozen colleges are investigating alleged hazing incidents in their sports programs after a Web site published photographs of college athletes posing in sexually suggestive positionsÃ? ââ?¬â? and showing one woman who appeared to be passed out drunk while a teammate wrote on her face.
Supporters of major colleges and universities are commonly barred from knowing how their donations are invested, according to a survey released today.Only senior administrators and trustees know where endowment dollars go at 66% of the 216 schools that responded to a survey by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.
Not long ago, prattling away on the phone was as much a teenage rite as hanging out at the mall. Now, Sidekicks and iBooks are as prized as Mom’s Princess phone, and conversations, the oral kind, are as uncomfortable as braces. Which makes employers and communications experts anxious: This generation may be technologically savvier than their bosses, but will they be able to have a professional discussion? A 2005 report for Achieve, a non-profit organization that helps states raise academic standards, found that 34% of employers were dissatisfied with the oral communication skills of high school graduates; 45% of college students and 46% of high school graduates who entered the workforce instead of college said they struggled with their public speaking abilities.
The news media have been sounding the alarm about a new gender crisis in education: Boys reportedly make up a declining portion of college students. And so the future is clear. Boys are poised to become the newest victim class. That rustling sound you hear is the migration of university deans and ââ?¬Å?diversityââ?¬Â consultants to the next big employment bonanza: helping boys succeed!
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
With their black gowns, square-top caps and wide smiles, the 800 seniors who graduated this month from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts appeared to be a perfect slice of America. Not quite: A lot more of the graduates were women than men.This gender imbalance is present at most college graduations. More women than men apply to college in the first place. And once there, more women than men make it through.
A female student who drinks four Appletinis during a night of club hopping is a binge drinker, according to most experts who study campus health behaviors. But so is a male student who ends up in a campus health center after an intense night of keg stands and beer pong.
Why American College Students Hate Science
By BRENT STAPLES
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, opened for business in a former cow pasture not far from downtown just 40 years ago. Still in its infancy as universities go, U.M.B.C. is less well known than Maryland’s venerable flagship campus at College Park or the blue-blooded giant Johns Hopkins. But the upstart campus in the pasture is rocking the house when it comes to the increasingly critical mission of turning American college students into scientists.
New University of Wisconsin System campus admissions policies will put more emphasis on applicants’ personal essays as a way to give more weight to nonacademic factors such as race and life experience, admissions directors said Wednesday.
Digital plagiarizing calls for digital policing. Such is the philosophy behind a wave of anti-plagiarism digital software that colleges are using to deal with the widespread use of essay-writing websites and online databases of pre-written papers, and to uncover writing copied from other students’ work.
The envelope arrived at Allegheny College the first week of May. Inside was a form signed by a high school senior accepting admission. Inside, too, was a $500 check ââ?¬â? made out to St. Lawrence University.
It turned out, said Scott Friedhoff, who oversees admissions at Allegheny, that the student had accepted admission offers from both colleges, and made deposits to each.
David Veverka had been on track to receive a bachelor�s degree in wildlife ecology this month at the University of Maine.
While the most recent statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Education indicate that on-campus robberies nationwide
slightly decreased from 2001 through 2003, many campus safety officials and others have reason to believe that the numbers may currently be on the rise, especially those involving weapons.
The indiscretions of college students ââ?¬â? whether it is binge drinking, cheating or hazing ââ?¬â? may be old school, but universities now face the new reality that their students’ misbehavior will eventually be exposed on the Internet.
Somewhere out there, graduates of UNLV and Miami and Colorado must be having a good laugh. But even in their moments of delight over the troubles of the ââ?¬Å?good guys,ââ?¬Â they have to realize this really isn’t funny. In fact, it’s one of the great wake-up calls in college athletics. When things go bad at Duke and Northwestern at the same time, you can be sure they are going bad on almost every college campus in the nation.
Commentary By Christine Brennan
It�s been nearly five years since President Bush�s executive order limiting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, and some politicians are calling louder than ever for a bill that would render the order obsolete.
College graduates are landing fat salaries and signing bonuses again as a stronger economy leads to the best college hiring market in years.Employers expect their college hiring for 2005-06 to surpass that of the year before by nearly 14%, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
Following are excerpts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Sunday commencement remarks of Adam Schlicht, senior class vice president.
Happy Mother’s Day to you! Today, your sons and daughters are giving you one of the greatest presents a parent can receive: the end of tuition payments.
…Fellow graduates: Expect only the greatest from yourself. For example, I believe that my life’s purpose will be complete after delivering this speech today .
…Life is a journey and the journey is not going to be easy. So don’t be afraid to sometimes stop yourself. Think. Analyze. Reflect. And ask yourself one simple question:
What would Audrey Seiler do?
Essentially, she was a high school dropout and an unwed mother, Odessa Piper, the high priestess of Madison’s culinary community, told UW-Madison’s class of 2006 in her commencement address Sunday.
Piper, who sold her famous restaurant, L’Etoile, last year after nearly three decades, revealed how she learned to make her dreams come true.
“I can sum it up in five words,” she said, “To get there, be here.”
COLUMBIA, Mo. ââ?¬â? These are tough times for journalism.
The newspaper industry cut more than 2,000 jobs last year as it continued to lose readers and advertisers to the Internet. Network newscasts are being propped up by older viewers and continue to lose market share to cable. Regular reports of ethical breaches are undermining public trust in all news organizations, bloggers accuse the mainstream media of being arrogant and clueless, and Wall Street expresses little confidence in its financial future.But there is one corner of the profession still enjoying a boom: journalism schools.
The Medical College of Wisconsin is at a crossroads.
In the last decade, southeastern Wisconsin’s biggest academic research center has had one of the fastest-growing research efforts among all U.S. medical schools, bulking up its research spending to about $130 million.
Now, in the process of creating a new strategic plan for the next five years, the Medical College faces this challenge: building on its strong past growth as federal spending on medical research is stagnating and as new federal initiatives encourage more cooperation among disciplines that have potential to help patients sooner than later.
Jackie Busse has lived within the valley of the shadow of death, and she believes her experience will make her a better doctor.
Busse, 27, is one of 17 Madison high school graduates who earned their medical degrees from the University of Wisconsin on Friday.
In 2001, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia just a week before she was scheduled to begin medical school.Today, with her cancer in remission and the rigor of four years of medical school behind her, she is planning to begin a residency in pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago next month.
Mom, daughter get diplomas together
Norma Iribarren donned her cap and gown Friday like thousands of other UW-Madison graduates.
But final exams are a distant memory for the Chilean native. When Iribarren graduated from the UW in 1986,with a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction, she skipped the pomp and circumstance.
The University of Illinois has begun a campaign to sell its strategic plan, which calls for decreasing the size of the freshman class and admitting more out-of-state students, among other goals.
University of Illinois’ goal to raise its academic reputation also has raised the anxiety level in high schools, where some students say they fear they might have a tougher time getting into the state’s flagship campus.
To address those worries, U. of I. at Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Richard Herman on Tuesday met with Chicago-area high school counselors to explain why he wants to attract more out-of-state, minority and international students–and how that could help their students.
The number of mumps cases in Iowa has topped 1,600, but the spread of the virus has slowed and health officials say they are cautiously optimistic that the worst of the biggest mumps outbreak to hit the state in two decades is behind them.
College admissions officials seeing large drops in average scores for the critical reading and math sections of the new SAT college entrance exam say they are concerned about the drops and want to know why they’re happening.
Some colleges are reporting double-digit drops in the average SAT scores of applicants this year, even as other credentials, such as class rank and college-prep coursework, remained similar to or grew stronger than last year’s.
In 1940, James Bryant Conant, then president of Harvard University, laid out his vision of an egalitarian society, a classless culture based on educational opportunity, not chance of birth.
The nation had the duty “to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life,” Mr. Conant said in the speech at the University of California.
Everybody who works hard and behaves well ought to have a fair chance to attend college, Gov. Jim Doyle told the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.
On Friday, Doyle formally requested the regents include funding for the Wisconsin Covenant program, designed to get more Wisconsin residents enrolled in college, in their 2007-09 budget.
….From diploma frames to class rings to travel expenses, graduation can be another financial burden for students, and their families.
“I just don’t think the costs are worth it,” said Avi Galali, a UW-Madison senior who is graduating with a business degree. For Galali and her family, graduation is a time for family and not excessive celebrations.
However, the costs required to bring her family together from Minnesota will be significant, what with the price of gas, plus meals and hotels. Also, two of Galali’s grandparents are flying in from Israel, which will cost them over $2,400.
In the last month, two leading public institutions ââ?¬â? the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Virginia ââ?¬â? have announced new initiatives that will guarantee admission to substantial more community college students who meet certain guidelines.
Itââ?¬â?¢s finals week at Duke University, and hereââ?¬â?¢s one question that wonââ?¬â?¢t appear on any test: What can ââ?¬â? or should ââ?¬â? be done to address the universityââ?¬â?¢s so-called culture of student drinking?
To help prevent a repeat of a test-scanning mishap in October that led to thousands of college-bound students learning that their SAT scores were incorrect, a New York state senator said Tuesday that he wants to force test companies to make public more information about tests and to respond more quickly when errors occur.
Purdue University’s yearbook has problems. One of them is that its name conjures up images of trash.
The publication was named Debris back in the 19th century, when, according to the yearbook’s lore, its founders took the word to mean “a collection of works.”
A public forum addressing the role of postsecondary education in Wisconsin�s economy brought noted experts in the field, business leaders and University of Wisconsin System chancellors to the Pyle Center Thursday.
Colleges and universities are a gold mine of data ââ?¬â? personal information about students and employees, the fruits of research efforts, information about the reading habits of library patrons, even patient data for institutions with medical schools.
Some colleges are making plans for how they will deal with a national call for immigrants and their supporters to walk off their jobs and boycott businesses on Monday, in protest of legislation in Congress that would deport or criminalize illegal immigrants.
In College Entrance Frenzy, a Lesson Out of Left Field
CONSIDER this situation. An ambitious and talented person, having worked extremely hard for a decade or more, sees a competitor suddenly performing at an inexplicably higher level. That first person comes to believe the second must be obtaining secret, unacknowledged help. So, rather than risk being left behind, he pays for the same stealthy assistance.
SWARTHMORE, Pa., April 21 ââ?¬â? Let others offer simple campus tours or paid transportation.
Skip to next paragraph
At Swarthmore College here, high school seniors deciding whether to accept the college’s offer of admission can play indoor soccer with the dean. Or a round of stairball, a sport invented on campus. They can go to a French film festival, a feminist dance party (“all genders welcome”) or an “Earthlust Sleepout” all night under the stars. Or else try henna tattooing. And, yes, there are also sessions on financial aid and meetings with faculty members.
In a year marked by uncertainty and upheaval, officials at New Orleans universities that draw applicants nationwide are not following the usual rules of thumb when it comes to college admissions. The only sure bet, they say, is that this fall’s entering classes ââ?¬â? the first since Katrina ââ?¬â? will be smaller than usual.
Law schools eager to raise their national rankings are demanding higher scores on the Law School Admission Test, but they’re paying a price in terms of racial diversity as fewer black applicants make the cutoff.That’s the controversial argument of John Nussbaumer, an associate dean at Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School and author of a widely debated paper in this month’s edition of St. John’s University Law Review. His thesis says schools increasingly ignore their mandate not to overemphasize the LSAT. It is striking chords far beyond academic circles as the legal profession ponders how to reverse a steady 10-year decline.
Ahmed Ayad spent the first 25 years of his life in his native Egypt, but he still finds it difficult to say “Tutankhamen” – the full name of the famous pharaoh known as King Tut.
“I’m not going to pronounce it – it’s too hard,” Ayad, 31, told a group of eighth-graders last week at Waunakee Middle School, where they are studying the Middle East.
Ayad, who is working on his doctorate degree in computer science at UW-Madison, is one of about 60 students from countries around the world who volunteer to share their experiences and perspectives with audiences on and off campus as part of the university’s International Reach program.
High school student Emily Harris remembers coming home one day to find 27 college letters and brochures waiting for her near her family’s front door in Hyde Park, Ill. She recalls that day, she says, because her two younger sisters took pride in counting her college recruitment letters every day.
A mumps outbreak that started in Iowa and has been most evident at colleges is spreading outside the state to colleges throughout the Midwest and as far away as Pennsylvania.
Think your college boards were hard? What about those college financial aid offers? They can make your SATs look like Scrabble Junior.
More Madison Area Technical College students could become four-year degree holders, thanks to an agreement announced Wednesday between UW-Madison and the two-year college.
Rumor du jour: Former UW-Madison chancellor Donna Shalala is being mentioned as a possible replacement for outgoing Harvard president Larry Summers. The possibility was discussed recently on the irreverent political Web site wonkette.com, which mentioned that Condoleezza Rice is also in the mix. …
Top officials from the University of Wisconsin and Madison Area Technical College officially signed an agreement Wednesday providing guaranteed transfer-student admission.
Students who complete a two-year liberal arts degree at Madison Area Technical College could get guaranteed admission to UW-Madison under a new transfer program announced Wednesday by leaders of both institutions.
“This is a guaranteed on- ramp to UW-Madison,” MATC President Bettsey Barhorst said. “Students now will know exactly what process to follow, what classes to take, how many credits to earn and what grade- point average they need to maintain to be accepted.”
On July 1, the rate on outstanding federal Stafford loans will rise and could go as high as 7%. By consolidating before the rate change, you can lock in a rate as low as 4.75% for the life of the loan. Lots of things in life are complicated, but this isn’t: If you consolidate by June 30, you’ll save money.
