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January 26, 2007
Caltech, UCLA scientists tout circuit
FOX News.com, January 25, 2007
Researchers in California said they have created the world's densest memory circuit, one that's about 100 times denser than today's standard memory circuits, while remaining as small as a human white blood cell. Scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles, reported the development in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Read article.
Colleges regroup after voters ban race preferences
The New York Times, January 26, 2007
With Michigan's new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics. Read article.
$600K for fired professor
Inside Higher Ed, January 26, 2007
Virginia State University has agreed to pay $600,000 to Jean R. Cobbs, whom it fired as a tenured professor in 2005 and whose claims against the university have been backed by several academic groups. Read article.
January 25, 2007
A speech and its aftermath
Inside Higher Ed, January 25, 2007
When President Jimmy Carter shook his last hand Tuesday night and left Waltham, Mass., after a much-anticipated and controversial appearance, Brandeis University administrators most certainly exhaled. It was the culmination of a highly charged month leading up to Carter's speech defending his new book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, that some have criticized as being overly critical of Israel's dealings with the Palestinians. Read article.
January 24, 2007
Advocates for black students worry that foes of affirmative action have found new avenue of attack
The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2007
Many college administrators who gathered here this week for a national conference on educating black students said they saw a new threat to their programs emerging from a libertarian group's recent efforts to demand a strict accounting of expenditures on diversity by the University of Colorado at Boulder. In a report released last week, the Independence Institute, a research organization based in Golden, Colo., alleged that the state's flagship university had little idea how much money it spends promoting diversity and poorly manages such expenditures. Read article (paid subscription required).
January 09, 2007
More jobs, fewer new Ph.D.'s
Inside Higher Ed, January 8, 2007
Arnita A. Jones almost gushed when she told historians about how many new Ph.D.'s she was chatting up at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta who were telling her, "I have four interviews tomorrow," or "I've got three interviews today." Just a few years ago, one didn't hear so many positive reports from job seekers. Read article.
January 04, 2007
Tethering students to their states
Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2007
New state scholarship programs proposed in Indiana and Wisconsin would offer funds to students attending in-state institutions, with strings attached—or, as the man behind the Wisconsin proposal puts it, "tethers." "If we can't lure them here, let's tether them here," said Mark O'Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Counties Association, a lobbying organization, and a member of the Commission on Enhancing the Mission of the Wisconsin Colleges, a group created to advise the network of 13 two-year colleges in the state. The commission, appointed by the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges in August, submitted a report late last month calling for an investment in new scholarships pegged to residency requirements post-graduation. Read article.
In dorms, men and women now room together
Christian Science Monitor, December 28, 2006
Some 20 universities and colleges have decided to allow undergraduates of the opposite sex to share an on-campus room. Most quietly made the move in the past five years, with Clark University in Worcester, Mass., deciding this month. It's the final frontier in the decades-long march away from gender separation in college dorms, hallways and even bathrooms. Read article.
January 03, 2007
An American university for Iraq, but not in Baghdad
New York Times, January 3, 2007
It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science. Yet some of the leading lights of Iraq's political and intellectual classes are doing exactly that, even as the bloodshed widens. Read article.
December 22, 2006
Major move ahead?
Inside Higher Ed, December 22, 2006
California State University's Northridge campus already offers a minor in Central American studies. The next step, many hope, is for Northridge to offer a Central American studies major, which university officials say would be the first in the country. Read article.
'Sustainability' gains status on U.S. campuses
Christian Science Monitor, December 19, 2006
Somewhere in the curriculum, most colleges and universities include Henry David Thoreau. Now, many of them are trying to emulate him. Yes, sweeping the academic world is Walden Pond 101: the art of living in a sustainable manner. One of the best examples of the ivory tower's effort to tread lightly on the land is at Arizona State University, which next month will inaugurate the nation's first School of Sustainability. Read article.
December 21, 2006
Public universities chase excellence, at a price
New York Times, December 20, 2006
More leading public universities are striving for national status and drawing increasingly impressive and increasingly affluent students, sometimes using financial aid to lure them. In the process, critics say, many are losing force as engines of social mobility, shortchanging low-income and minority students, who are seriously underrepresented on their campuses. Read article.
December 20, 2006
Short-term reprieve for affirmative action
Inside Higher Ed, December 20, 2006
Three Michigan universities on Tuesday won the right to keep their current admissions and financial aid policies -- the affirmative action portions of which could have been illegal in the state by the end of the week -- until July 1. But long term, the ability of colleges to challenge the ban on affirmative action remained uncertain, with some advocates saying that the day's developments strengthened efforts to do so, and others saying just the opposite. Read article.
December 19, 2006
Women in science: The battle moves to the trenches
New York Times, December 19, 2006
Since the 1970s, women have surged into science and engineering classes in larger and larger numbers, even at top-tier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nation's medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics. Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest.
December 18, 2006
Casting a wide net
Inside Higher Ed, December 18, 2006
The Bush administration has not always been friendly to affirmative action in higher education--coming out against the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions plans, for example, when they were reviewed by the Supreme Court in 2003. But with one of the leading groups opposing affirmative action in higher education attacking the way colleges try to diversify their applicant pools for faculty and administrative positions, one of the administration's key civil rights agencies is backing colleges and angering their conservative critics. Read article.
December 11, 2006
The job security rankings
Inside Higher Ed, December 11, 2006
More than 62 percent of all faculty members are off the tenure track, including nearly 30 percent of those with full-time positions, according to an analysis released today by the American Association of University Professors. The study—based on federal data—comes with institution-specific numbers on 2,600 colleges, revealing the exact breakdowns on full- and part-time professors, on and off the tenure track. Read article.
December 08, 2006
Rethinking tenure—and much more
Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2006
A year ago, a special committee of the Modern Language Association outlined the makings of a revolution in the way English and foreign language professors might be hired, evaluated and promoted. On Thursday, the panel released its final report—and it isn't backing away from its call for dramatic change. Read article.
December 07, 2006
Promoting ethics in science
Inside Higher Ed, December 7, 2006
Increasingly, journals are appearing in front page scandals that expose undisclosed industry support of research and scientists who have faked results. Blackwell Publishing, trying to prevent such problems, recently released a comprehensive guide on publication ethics to the editors of its 805 academic journals. These principles provide practical advice to inform policies on a broad range of topics such as conflicts of interest. Read article.
December 06, 2006
Rethinking racial classifications
Inside Higher Ed, December 6, 2006
An Education Department plan to change the way colleges collect and report data on their students' racial and ethnic backgrounds is attracting growing criticism. Opposition is coming from a group that represents some of the most elite private colleges in the country--as well as from officials of large, diverse public universities. Read article.
December 05, 2006
Supreme Court Weighs Use of Race in K-12
Inside Higher Ed, December 5, 2006
When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in June to hear two cases about the use of race as a factor in elementary and secondary public school assignments, many in higher education were understandably intrigued. After all, this would be the first chance to listen to the newly configured--and more conservative--court consider the role of affirmative action in education. Read article.
December 04, 2006
Tough questions for transfer students
Inside Higher Ed, December 4, 2006
Say you're a student, trying to save some money, and you're trying to figure out which local institution to attend. Do you go for the least expensive or the best quality? According to new research, your best investment is to spend the money, which many times would lead someone to a four-year institution. Read article.
November 30, 2006
New push for full-time faculty jobs
Inside Higher Ed, November 30, 2006
The steady growth of professorial jobs off the tenure track has posed a dilemma for faculty unions. Adjuncts have in some ways been ideal candidates for organizing drives because they generally feel that their pay, benefits and job security are all lacking. Read article.
Jobs for college grads plentiful
USA Today, November 26, 2006
College graduates are experiencing the best job market in four years as a stronger economy leads more employers to ramp up hiring. Employers expect to hire 17.4 percent more new college graduates in 2006 and 2007 than in 2005 and 2006, according to a new survey by the Bethlehem, Pa.-based National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Read article.
November 28, 2006
Dartmouth apologizes for Indian incidents
Inside Higher Ed, November 27, 2006
Dartmouth College's president and athletics director issued pre-Thanksgiving apologies for a series of incidents that have angered American Indian students and professors. Following a meeting with Native American leaders, Dartmouth President James Wright sent a letter to the campus expressing concern about "racist and insensitive" behavior that Indian students have experienced.Read article.
Retreat on affirmative action?
Inside Higher Ed, November 28, 2006
The morning after Michigan voters approved a measure to bar affirmative action in public colleges and universities, University of Michigan officials refused to talk about how the university might carry out the ban. Instead, at a speech that afternoon on the Ann Arbor campus, President Mary Sue Coleman said that the university was seriously considering going to court to block Proposition 2, as the measure is known. Read article.
November 27, 2006
The full-time advantage
Inside Higher Ed, November 27, 2006
A new report on community college student engagement suggests that the academic experience of full-time students is substantially more interactive than that of their part-time peers and also documents a disparity between the proportion of students who value academic advising and those who obtain it. Read article.
November 22, 2006
Taser case continues to reverberate
Inside Higher Ed, November 22, 2006
An incident last week in which a police officer used a Taser on a student in the University of California at Los Angeles library is still reverberating across the campus and abroad. University leaders said they planned an independent review of the affair, and a newspaper reported that the officer involved in it had been also played a role in several other controversial incidents in the past. Read article.
November 21, 2006
College heads see climb in compensation
USA Today, November 21, 2006
More college presidents are earning annual compensation of $500,000 or more, fueled in part by stiff competition by schools for the best candidates and a move toward more "corporate-style" management, according to a study.
Read article.November 20, 2006
Science Ph.D.'s continue to grow
Inside Higher Ed, November 20, 2006
It is unlikely to quiet the burgeoning cries of alarm about a perceived crisis in American scientific competitiveness. But a new report from the National Science Foundation offers some evidence both of progress and of continued problems. The report finds that the number of science and engineering Ph.D.'s awarded by American universities in 2005 reached an all-time high of 27,974, surpassing the previous record of 27,273 from 1998. Read article.
November 17, 2006
Coaches vs. faculty and staff
Inside Higher Ed, November 17, 2006
In a letter delivered earlier this week to Congress defending the tax-exempt status of big-time college sports, Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, writes that "coaches' compensation packages, especially those with seven-figure packages, include institutional salaries commensurate with other highly paid and highly recruited faculty and staff. Read article.
November 16, 2006
Racism rears its head
Inside Higher Ed, November 16, 2006
Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large, with a number of high-profile incidents each year serving as a ready reminder lest anyone forget. In fact, experts say, some of the incidents stem from a type of cultural forgetfulness—and a sense among certain students, sometimes willful, sometimes not, that they live in a world wherein it is no longer relevant to remember. Read article.
November 15, 2006
First on the docket: Accreditation
Inside Higher Ed, November 15, 2006
It's quiet. Too quiet. Those who have been following the work of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education—be it with excitement or, more commonly in higher education, trepidation—might be forgiven for feeling either forlorn or relieved at how little has been said and done about the panel's agenda since the commission formally completed its work in August. After nearly a year of meetings, reports and occasional high drama, the aftermath of the panel's report has unfolded largely in a vacuum. Read article.
November 14, 2006
New challenge to affirmative action
Inside Higher Ed, November 14, 2006
Nine out of every 10 students who apply to Princeton University are rejected, and many of them are students with the kinds of records that just about assure they will end up getting a great education somewhere. Jian Li, who despite his top grades and perfect SAT scores was one of this year's rejects, ended up at Yale University. But he has set off a federal investigation of whether Princeton's affirmative action policies discriminate against Asian American applicants. Read article.