On Friday morning, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith sent an email to the Harvard community to offer what he called “a few final, general words” on the academic integrity investigation that has rocked Harvard’s campus for the past five months.

Smith’s email concerned the Administrative Board’s investigation of about 125 students in last spring’s Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress” who were accused of cheating on the class’s take-home final. He was writing, he said, “to shine a bright light on the important issue of academic integrity and what we are doing on this issue.”

In his announcement, Smith reported that more than half of the implicated students—a figure that translates to approximately 70 undergraduates—were forced to temporarily withdraw from the College following the Ad Board’s investigation. Smith wrote that of the remaining investigated students, half received probation, while the other half received no punishment.

Even so the email did not name the class and provided no precise numbers about how many students were disciplined.

One investigated student, whose case resulted in probation, said he was disappointed by the contents of Smith’s message.

“I think that it was a bunch of fluff, had absolutely no significant content, and trivialized how unfairly every student involved was treated,” said the student, who was granted anonymity by The Crimson because he was worried about retaliation from administrators.

Smith provided the details about the distribution of punishments nearly 800 words into his email, following a lengthy explanation of the general purpose and procedures of the Ad Board. Some students said they did not immediately realize Smith’s email concerned the cheating scandal.

“I didn’t even read all the way through the email because I thought it was just another administrative announcement,” said Emily J. Reese ’14, who took Government 1310 last spring and was not investigated by the Ad Board. “I deleted it right away.”

Several accused students said the email also failed to address lingering questions about the scandal, the way it was handled, and what criteria were used to reach their decisions.

The father of a varsity athlete implicated in the scandal said he was frustrated that the email did not acknowledge the mistakes that he believes Harvard made over the course of the investigation.

“I find the whole letter insulting and offensive,” said the man, whose son lost NCAA eligibility after he was forced to withdraw late in the fall term. “There’s been no acknowledgment of [Harvard’s] responsibility.”

In his email, Smith wrote that due to the “unprecedented number and complexity of cases,” some students did not receive their verdicts until December, more than three months after the investigation was announced.

Delays in the investigation also caused concern among implicated students about tuition payments. According to the student handbook, students who withdrew from the College for any reason this past fall were required to pay tuition in increasing increments up to $18,788 after the Sept. 11 study card day. But to “create greater financial equity” for students who received their decisions later than others, Smith announced in his email Friday that anyone who was asked to withdraw after Sept. 30 would be issued refunds for all tuition paid past that date.

The father of the accused varsity athlete, as well as another implicated student, said that while they appreciated Harvard’s gesture, they questioned its timing, saying that the move seemed like a last-minute public relations effort.

The latter student, who was notified in late August that his case would go before the Ad Board, said Smith’s email came too late for him. Last fall, he decided to withdraw even before his case was heard so that he would not be a financial burden on his family.

“I had to make a hard decision with my family and withdraw, which included implicitly admitting to something I did not do, because I couldn’t be sure when my case was going to be heard,” he said. “My biggest consideration in terms of withdrawing was the tuition increase.”

That student said he was dismayed when he learned of Smith’s email, which was sent to the Harvard community around 11 a.m. Friday morning. He had been notified of Harvard’s decision to reimburse his tuition earlier that morning, just hours before Smith sent his message to the Harvard community, according to a copy of the student’s letter obtained by The Crimson.

In an emailed statement, Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Jeff Neal declined to comment on when Harvard made its decision to partially refund tuition for students who were required to withdraw.

“Communications about tuition, fees and financial aid are between the College and students and their families,” he wrote.

It would be hard to state our favorite movie of the 1980s. A leading contender on any list, however, surely is “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” That classic of American comedy lays out the adventures of the eponymous hero, Ferris, and two of his friends as they skip one of their last days of high school. Now, as college students, we can all fondly look back on such days of our own.

The movie even engages in a kind of juxtaposition, setting the hand-holding of high school, with an activist principal who will break into our homes to make sure we’re actually on our death beds and not faking, alongside the promises of an adult life filled with liberation and responsibility together. One thing we looked forward to leaving in high school, as surely as Ferris and his pals did, was the low resonation of “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…?” as our teachers take attendance.

And yet, instances of attendance counting for 5 or 10 percent of a class grade are not unheard of. We would have thought that since the vast, overwhelming majority of college students are adults, such parent-style monitoring of our activities would pass into the sunset of adolescence. If college should be a time of discovery before we head out into the “real world,” we should also have to discover responsibility in addition to new cultures, world views, ideas, languages, and all the other horizon-broadening aspects of university life that get sold to high school juniors and seniors in the postcards and prospectuses sent out by admissions and recruitment offices.

When attendance-based grading occurs, the distinction between high school and college — a distinction that ought to be as visible as it is large —vanishes. Since there ought to be a clear difference between high school and college, that is unfortunate. Both institutions have the goal of preparing their students for adulthood, with one difference that has far-reaching implications.

College students are at least 18 years old, or will be for most of the time it takes to earn their degrees. In the eyes of the law, they are adults. Without their parents’ permission (although of course, we cannot say anything about their parents’ approval) they can vote, get married, rent apartments, buy cars, have abortions, file for bankruptcy, enlist in the armed forces and do pretty much anything. At the very least, they can take out thousands of dollars in loans — for which they are responsible — to pay tuition, since they are consumers of the product that America’s universities sell.

Occasionally, an attendance grade gets rolled in with participation, or in-class quizzes, or a select number of test questions that the professor will draw from material that only appeared in lecture. Given that grading must account for attendance somehow, those options — as opposed to grading based outright on whether your derriere is in your seat — are preferable.

Indeed, attendance should affect students’ grades. But it should only do so indirectly. If students are to be penalized or rewarded for showing up at class, that penalty or reward should be apparent in the quality of work the student turns in.

Perhaps our final thought should take the shape of a question: Is an attendance component of a grade an opportunity for students to gain points through focused, deliberate work, or is it an opportunity to lose them through carelessness that in the end has no bearing on the quality of the essays, quizzes and tests we turn in?

I am doing all those things I previously presumed impossible now because I found the motivation to learn English, spent long  hours working through grammar rules and vocabulary and worked as hard as I could when other people asked for a bit more than what I thought was capable of.

In America, being fluent in two or three languages is extraordinary. In Germany, it’s average. So what is it that American students lack? Do they lack motivation? Are they unwilling to do the hard work it takes to become fluent in a foreign language? Or is there just no one who pushes them?

Motivation to learn a foreign language is indeed higher in Germany — and in Europe in general — because large populations speaking different languages reside so much closer. Within a 12-hour drive from Germany you can easily pass through five or six countries and read road signs in seven or eight different languages — an experience difficult to replicate in North America.

But that’s not the only reason why Germans and Europeans learn more languages than their American counterparts. In German universities, unlike at UT, where even majors in popular languages like French start with a beginner course, students enter college-level language courses more or less fluent. They acquired their language skills in primary and secondary schools. Studying French at the college level in Germany means studying French linguistics or literature; it means gaining an understanding of the language and the culture that goes far beyond a fluent coffee shop conversation.

At university in Germany, the languages that are not taught in the earlier grades start with very tough introductory courses. Language courses are two hours a week, which is just enough to cover grammar topics. Learning vocabulary, practicing speech and writing are things you either do at home voluntarily or you don’t. Failing to do so, however, means that you won’t make it to the second year.

So the biggest difference between learning a foreign language in Germany and in the United States is not the level of motivation but the quality and style of teaching in grade school and at universities.

In Austin, I have taught German to pupils at a middle school and I have experienced language instruction at the University as a student. Both groups seemed motivated to learn a foreign language. At the elementary school where I taught, the nine- or ten- year-olds were at the perfect age to acquire a language. But the advantages of their age and their motivation were wasted because the teaching lasted only a week. Those students probably won’t hear or read any more German until college, if ever. And longer-term attempts to teach language in grade schools in the United States appear ineffective too. I’ve met many Americans here who studied French or Spanish for years in school but can now barely remember how to order a coffee. They readily admit that the language programs at their primary and secondary schools were ineffective.

Things seem a bit better at the university level. I’ve met quite a number of people who study a foreign language in college and, within two or three years, have gained a decent knowledge of that language. Unfortunately, I ended up in a less effective department.

I wanted to continue my study of Portuguese — a language that I had started to study in Germany — and the intermediate Portuguese class I am taking offered promise. It’s a small class with a motivated professor. When the semester began, most students were equipped with a sound knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, and I was quite optimistic that this course would help me improve. I was wrong.

Rather than moving on, the course repeated introductory grammar topics. We’re not improving; we’re just chewing on bits of knowledge most of us had already digested last year.

Learning a foreign language is hard work, and there are moments when I hated every language I’ve learned so far because I was afraid that I would never get it, or because I thought my head was too full to learn a single word more. But in these moments of self-doubt, I had teachers who said, “Yes, you’re good, but you can be better.” The Portuguese class doesn’t challenge like that. This is not the teacher’s fault, she just follows through with the curriculum the department has decided upon. It’s not the students’ fault either. It’s the fault of the department’s curriculum, which does not adequately challenge the students. UT’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese has good equipment and good teachers, but rather than asking that their students go the extra mile, which is necessary in order that they really make progress, they demand far too little.

Schools and universities that don’t make use of their students’ motivation waste their talent, time and so much potential. They miss out on equipping young people with the tools they need to successfully go out into the world, communicate, understand and come back with a broadened horizon. I entered the world of the English language a long time ago, and at some point I discovered the beauty of it. I am still walking around in it today and so far it has never ceased to amaze me.

Rhee first entered the national conversation as the hard-charging Chancellor for D.C. public schools. She was an unconventional choice for the job: 37 years old, Korean-American, and without significant school management experience. However, after being appointed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, she quickly established herself as a juggernaut in the national education reform movement.

She took on politically difficult fights, firing hundreds of school officials, closing under-enrolled schools, and pushing for a new contract incorporating a controversial merit pay provision. Meanwhile, she forged a national media presence, appearing on covers for Time and Newsweek and giving countless TV interviews. Rhee’s slew of transformative reforms ended when Fenty lost his reelection bid. She resigned the next day, but mere weeks later Rhee announced that she was founding StudentsFirst, an education reform organization. With unprecedented resources and unique media savvy, Rhee is reshaping the landscape of education reform.

Students First

The expectations surrounding StudentsFirst’s creation were high. Rhee announced intentions to raise a billion dollars and create a political counterweight to entrenched interests, fundamentally reshaping the landscape of education politics. Asked by the HPR to evaluate its success, Rhee expressed cautious optimism, saying, “We’ve made tremendous progress… we met our original goal of having one million members by our first year… We’ve raised a lot of money, changed a lot of laws, engaged in a lot of races. So, have we made a lot of progress? Yes, 100 percent.” “Have we changed the game for kids?”, Rhee asks rhetorically, answering, “on that front we’ve started to build an organization that is on track to do that.”

Many education reformers acknowledge StudentsFirst’s tremendous resources, given Rhee’s unparalleled fundraising capacity. Rhee biographer Richard Whitmire told the HPR, “She can do this because moguls will give her lots of money and it takes lots of money. Who else can do that? I can’t think of anyone.” These resources have the potential to reshape the politics of education reform.

StudentsFirst has spent those resources aggressively on advertising, lobbying, and support for endorsed state-legislators. John DeBerry, a Tennessee legislator who was endorsed by StudentsFirst, told the HPR, “They have the resources to support candidates and send people into communities to talk to people.” StudentsFirst has aggressively pushed back against DeBerry’s critics, sending paid canvassers into the district and trying to boost his pro-reform record.

The organization’s rapid expansion has not come without growing pains though. One local activist felt the organization’s style hurt long-term reform efforts, and most agree that Rhee’s claim that StudentsFirst is a grassroots organization is overstated.

The Lightning Rod

Samuels entered education activism because she wanted to improve her child’s school. She decided that a ‘parent trigger’, which would give parents a mechanism to demand turnaround of an underperforming school, should be introduced in the Connecticut state legislature. Samuels received pushback from teachers unions, but was unfazed until she started working with StudentsFirst. She says, “If I thought the union fight was hard, this was like me going in the ring with Mike Tyson.” The governor backed out of a rally he had previously committed to when Rhee announced she would attend. When the dust settled however, aggressive reform was passed.

The case highlights the effect that Rhee often has on a situation. Simply by showing up, she politicizes, nationalizes, and polarizes a situation. Those within the movement, however, insist that this can be beneficial. “She’s the lightning rod, the right flank” said the President of Students for Education Reform; “She changes the polarization.” Whitmire adds that many education reformers feel they have political cover to be more aggressive because “everyone has agreed to hate on Michelle,” and when they do, everyone else has more space to create consensus.

Rhee insists this isn’t a role that she intentionally fills. “ If some education reformers say [I’m] good to have around because then all their vitriol can be directed towards [me], and they have more cover to do their work, that’s fine. But that’s not really what I do.” Her role, she says, is just to advocate what’s best for kids. Ultimately, though, even those who have seen the costs of Rhee’s polarization at work acknowledge its effectiveness. “We needed our voices to be heard,” Samuels reflects, and Michelle Rhee brought along a loudspeaker.

“Michelle Rhee is a wimp”

Although legislative activism has largely been confined at the state level, StudentsFirst is also setting its sights on reshaping the national politics of education reform. Rhee herself insists that she is a liberal Democrat, but traditionally her style of education reform has been more popular with Republicans.

Rhee is confident that this is changing, stating, “When I started in education reform 20 years ago the Democratic Party was in general very reticent to get involved in these education reform issues…. The dynamics have shifted.” There has been tangible success: “The U.S. conference of mayors, through the leadership of my husband (the Mayor of Sacramento) passed some very controversial resolutions and they did it with a unanimous vote.”

Despite her interest in national policy making, Rhee insists that she will never run for public office. When pressed about whether or not she would accept the position of Secretary of Education, Rhee deferred, insisting, “I think Arne Duncan is doing an excellent job.” She believes she is more effective operating outside the system, commenting, “I think the most important thing I could be doing right now is exactly what I am doing at StudentsFirst.”

In the long-term, she sees the movement being driven by a new generation. “Someone should come along who is even more radical than I am… I’m waiting for the next person to come from behind and say ‘Michelle Rhee is a wimp’… the new kind of reformers should be pushing the wall forward’” For now, however, Rhee seems content to be running head-on into anything in her way, and although she’s been called many things, it seems unlikely anyone will be calling Michelle Rhee a wimp anytime soon.

George Washington U. has demonstrated time and again a commitment to racial diversity on campus since University President Steven Knapp took the helm. In 2010, Knapp created the President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion to focus on increasing diversity in the student body, faculty and curriculum. Each year, the Office of Admissions holds a multicultural open house for underrepresented students and minorities. In February 2011, the University hired a Vice Provost of Diversity and Inclusion who has plans to offer grants to help fund diversity efforts on campus.

Provost Steven Lerman reaffirmed the University’s commitment to race in the admissions process in his opening remarks at a panel discussion on the Fisher v. UT case, hosted by the GW Law School Sept. 24.

Like any college or university, race is merely one factor among many within GW’s admissions process. Students are not accepted or denied based exclusively on race, but instead on a combination of several factors including applicants’ high school GPAs, extracurricular activities, personal essays and standardized test scores. It is a holistic approach which examines a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses in a variety of areas.

At a time when college admissions across the country are becoming increasingly competitive, students and their families are looking for a way to make sense of a process that is rarely straightforward. Students often wonder why they were denied admission when their peers were accepted.

The college admissions process is, by nature, nuanced and subjective. And all too often, students use race as a scapegoat to justify their rejections. They sometimes assume that if a minority student receives a spot in the incoming freshman class, that student had an advantage because of his or her race. This cultural reality is proof that inequality and racial bias still exist on campuses across the country.

While race is a factor in admissions, it is not the only one.

In the past, the Office of Admissions has made diversity a priority.

However, the outcome of this case threatens to undo the University’s efforts toward racial equality and representation on campus. Although it is impossible to predict the court’s ruling, if affirmative action is struck down, the makeup of future classes at GW and on other college campuses could be radically different. If race is removed from the application process, it will be more difficult for admissions offices to admit an ethnically diverse class.

If affirmative action is struck down, GW could become more homogeneous. Efforts to promote a multicultural open house would be undermined.

But more importantly, GW would no longer be able to use race as a factor in its admissions process.

The 2003 benchmark case on affirmative action, Grutter v. Bollinger, states that there are tremendous social benefits to receiving an education in a diverse environment. And subsequent studies have affirmed this. Exposure to different races, ethnicities and cultures is a cornerstone of the college experience at GW.

There are a lot of factors within any admissions process, but race is the one factor that is most often contested. Still, there are other admissions criteria also of importance which are rarely called into question. Racial bias is still a tenuous subject in the U.S. That’s why the preservation of affirmative action at colleges and universities is vital, and why cases like the one at hand are so important to the future of higher education.

The Constitution is a living breathing document, one whose meaning must continue to be debated and allowed to evolve as the country changes socially and culturally. The issue regarding affirmative action is something that will likely be discussed for decades to come.

Perhaps one day, there will be no need for race to be considered in the admission process. But until all Americans have equal opportunity, until we are all truly on a level playing field, race must continue to be a factor in college admissions.

Harvard conducted an investigation into nearly 125 students accused of collaborating on a final exam last semester, making it the latest school to fall victim to a rising trend of academic dishonesty in U.S. higher education. The trend raises ethical questions about how universities, including Duke, can maintain academic integrity in an increasingly collaborative environment where students are pressured to succeed.

The students, who were enrolled in Harvard’s “Introduction to Congress” course, allegedly collaborated on the class’s take-home final exam. Yet some undergraduates said the professor was unclear about the course expectations, saying they entered the course expecting an easy A.

“[The professor] said ‘I gave out 120 A’s last year, and I’ll give out 120 more,’” an accused student told the New York Times.

But by the time finals came around, the exam on which the alleged cheating occurred was significantly more difficult than anticipated.

“Classes change,” said Michael Gustafson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. “Certainly, having the answer be ‘I’m taking this course that’s supposed to be an easy A and now it’s not so we’re going to create this mechanism by which we turn it back into an easy A,’ that’s a disaster.”

He noted that the widespread allegations are a timely reminder for Duke, which has dealt with similar cheating scandals in the past. In 2007, 34 Duke MBA candidates at the Fuqua School of Business were suspended, expelled or flunked for collaborating on a take-home test, causing concern about integrity and commitment to the school’s honor code.

In light of the recent Harvard scandal, the Duke community should pay closer attention to the results of a study on issues of academic trustworthiness published every five years by Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, said Noah Pickus, director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and associate research professor of public policy. The latest survey was conducted in 2011.

Although Duke continues to show significant improvement in both percentages of students committing outright plagiarism and falsifying data on their reports, the type of unauthorized collaboration seen in the Harvard case is on the rise.

According to the Kenan report, the category “Receiving unpermitted help on an assignment” was self-reported by 27.43 percent of Duke undergraduates in 2011, up from 22 percent in the previous 2005 study. Students “Working on an assignment with others when the instructor asked for individual work” rose to 34 percent in 2011 from 29 in 2005.

For students, collaboration can be a gray area in the world of academic integrity, Pickus said. As Duke attempts to foster new ideas and learning by encouraging in-class group work and out-of-class discussion of material, it is difficult to distinguish where earnest learning ends and cheating begins.

“The rules we have for academic integrity were written for a time when work was supposed to be solely individual,” Pickus said. “This mismatch causes a great deal of confusion and it’s time to create new approaches that distinguish between appropriate collaboration and inappropriate collaboration.”

Furthermore, as students race to distinguish themselves in the high-pressure job competition seen at today’s top schools, they may be more inclined toward academic dishonesty, especially unauthorized collaboration that they view as more benign.

“It raises the question of how far the university wants to go about placing boundaries around a competitive ethos,” Pickus said. “Being competitive is what we’re good at, but at the same time we don’t think that competitive success is the only standard by which we should judge success.”

Explicit communication is vital in avoiding incidents like the one at Harvard, said Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director of the Student Conduct Office. As Duke pushes toward group based learning, expectations for individual assignments are becoming increasingly ambiguous.

If faculty—especially in courses that rely largely on group work and take-home assignments—fail to make clear the demands of their class, students are more likely to bend their own moral codes to fit what they think is reasonable, Pickus said.

And when these two expectations do not meet, the student can face anything from teacher-student discipline to suspension for two semesters, Bryan added.

“A good rule of thumb I have been preaching lately: Students are likely to interpret the acceptable parameters for collaboration far more liberally than their instructor intended,” he said. “If both instructors and students keep this in mind, it will help prompt questions and discussions between faculty and students to reduce any confusion.”

According to the release, the warning came as a result of the findings of former FBI Director Louis Freeh’s investigative report and the binding consent decree between the university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Accreditation is the act of granting credit or recognition, especially regarding an educational institution that maintains suitable standards. The Middle States Commission is recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, according to the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs website.

The Commission’s warning states there is “insufficient evidence that the institution is currently in compliance with the Requirements of Affiliation 5 (compliance with all applicable government policies, regulations and requirements) and 9 (institution’s governing body responsibility for the quality and integrity of the institution, for ensuring that the institution’s mission is being carried out and for making freely available to the commission accurate, fair and complete information on all aspects of the institution and its operations) and with Standard 4 (Leadership and Governance) and Standard 6 (Integrity).”

“We must be clear about what this warning means so there are no misunderstandings,” said Blannie Bowen, vice provost for academic affairs, who also is the University’s accrediting liaison officer, according to the release. “This action has nothing to do with the quality of education our students receive. Middle States is focusing on governance, integrity and financial issues related to information in the Freeh report and other items related to our current situation.”

The Commission has required Penn State to submit a monitoring report no later than September 30, and Erickson said he is “confident” Penn State will meet that deadline.

“We are a University that is fully committed to its core values of honesty, integrity and community. We are a University that will rebuild the trust and confidence that so many people have had in us for so many years,” Erickson said, according to the release.

According to its website, the Commission is an association “that defines, maintains and promotes educational excellence across institutions with diverse missions, student populations and resources. It examines each institution as a whole, rather than specific programs within institutions.”

The Commission has been a voluntary, non-governmental membership association since 1919.

Erickson has said that Penn State is already working toward implementing the 119 recommendations that the Freeh investigators outlined for Penn State.The Penn State Board of Trustees hired Freeh’s group of investigators in November to look into how some university officials handled reports that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was abusing boys.

UCF wasn’t the only Florida institution to rank at the top of the list – Florida State U. ranked directly behind UCF at No. 2, U. South Florida ranked No. 4, Florida Atlantic U. ranked No. 14 and U. Florida ranked No. 21.

The rankings were compiled using data from College Prowler and information on student-to-faculty ratio from the National Center for Education Statistics. Other information that was used to determine the rankings include degree of selectivity and workload score.

SAT scores, ACT scores and percentage of applicants admitted to the university were used to determine UCF as the least rigorous college in the nation.

The median SAT score for current UCF students is 1185 and the median ACT score is 26, according to UCF’s Facts at a Glance page. College Prowler ranked UCF’s manageability workload score at 7.2 out of 10 possible points.

According to Newsweek, 45 percent of applicants are admitted to UCF and the student-to-faculty ratio is 32:1.

Sederia Washington, a UCF junior, doesn’t agree with the findings. Washington’s ACT score upon admission in 2010 was 28 and she believes the admission process and requirements when she applied in 2010 was similar, but not less stringent than other schools in the nation.

“I have friends at other schools who were unable to get into UCF. The teachers here work hard and everyone works hard to get the grades they get, they aren’t just passing out grades or letting just anyone come to school here,” Washington said.

According to the UCF website, last year’s freshmen class averaged a 3.87 GPA in high school and the average SAT critical reading score was 617, which is above average according to collegeboard.org.

“I know the requirement, including the expected GPA and ACT scores, have changed since I’ve been here. …It’s become more competitive,” Washington said.

According to Washington, UCF used to be a popular back-up plan for students who weren’t able to get into any other colleges. Washington says many people saw UCF as a safety net, but she has seen the perceptions change through the years and, in her social circles, has seen UCF become one of the top three choices for high school students looking to receive quality continuing education.

“I wouldn’t base my college decision on this study. I would do more research, Washington said. “Some of the stuff they used to rank colleges like class size doesn’t have everything to do with the quality of education you receive. You’re learning no matter what, it’s up to what you want to put into it.”

The study also found that those who took seven or more years to complete a bachelor’s degree were paid the same average salary as those who had not gone to college at all. The researchers stated many explanations for this finding in their study, including the idea that many employers view extended college stays as a negative reflection on a student’s ability to complete tasks. Another explanation is that those who completed their degrees within the four-year time period had more time in jobs and may already begin receiving raises and promotions.

“Finishing faster is a sign to employers that you are able to get things done, are efficient about it and hard working,” Bill Fox, a researcher from the group at UT, said. “All of these are positive signals.”

The New York Times conducts an annual study of the success rates for graduates from each school in the country. For 2011 UCF graduates, the starting median pay is a $40,800 salary, which is $11,000 less than the national average. However, by mid-career, those same graduates are making almost double the amount they received when they started.

Some students take a longer amount of time because they plan on pursuing a graduate degree post-graduation. Nicole Valdes, a summer 2011 U. Central Florida graduate, will attend the Stetson U. College of Law in the fall.

“My years as an undergrad allowed me to pursue my dream of becoming an attorney. It provided me with the critical-thinking skills and the educational foundation necessary to become a lawyer,” Valdes said. “In addition to time spent in the classroom, all the extracurricular and leadership opportunities I participated in helped with my professional development.

Valdes said that many factors should be considered when looking at how long a student takes to finish a degree, such as if the student had to work part time or full time.

Ashley Kohrt, a UCF alumna, now works at Florida Hospital as a residency coordinator after taking four and a half years to complete her degree in allied health sciences.

“I don’t feel as though not completing my degree in the society standard of four years has had any monetary effect on me, and that it has actually had a positive influence on my life because I was able to enjoy college and not feel pressured to finish quickly,” Kohrt said.

Bill Blank, the director of career development in Career Services, advised that the time a student spends in school is not always the issue.

“The standard for a college degree is now five years, so employers don’t tend to look at the length of time spent in school,” Blank said. “It’s about what he or she achieves while here by participating in clubs and other things offered on campus to get the best experience before they go into their field.”

According to a study done by the Complete College America foundation, 63 percent of UCF students will finish their four-year degree in six years.

“It is difficult to judge someone on their efficiency and hard-working ability based on when they graduate from college,” Kohrt said. “Most students spend their time changing their major and deciding what would be a good fit for them, which causes them to spend more time in school but isn’t a sign of their skills.”

Fox pointed out that the increase in yearly income could be due to stronger connections in the workforce. Building connections can lead to better jobs both monetarily and atmospherically, Fox said.

“For graduate students, time doesn’t matter,” biomedical sciences graduate student Andrew Teblum said. “Companies are looking more for the type of thesis work, publications and experience with equipment, which normally, longer means you are more experienced and therefore sometimes are actually more useful.”

Kohrt agreed.

“Students want to be happy where they decide to go, and sometimes finding their niche can take a little longer,” Kohrt said.

Pressure.

“Pressure” is one word that single-handedly unites college students from all walks of university life. All students have felt it, whether from their parents and peers or within their major. There is pressure to keep up, to slow down, to stay focused, to stay current and, most of all, to succeed.

This push for excellence has brought many to their breaking point. Everything students once achieved in high school all of a sudden just isn’t good enough anymore, and the pressure to do something about it can be overwhelming. Finding themselves in this situation, many students believe they’ve found a way to push their excellence to its limit using one, or sometimes two, pea-sized pills that send their mind into a utopia of concentration. Out of all this pressure a new “study drug” is born, and its name is Adderall.

Adderall is a combination of two drugs, dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, and is used to treat attention deficit hyperactive disorder, more commonly known as ADHD. Those who struggle with ADHD have trouble focusing and holding attention on a day-to-day basis. Adderall helps to focus those who are prescribed to take it by releasing different chemicals into the brain.

Simply put, it’s a whole lot of focus all bundled up in one small, convenient pill. This focus, however, is meant for those who are rightfully diagnosed with ADHD. Studies suggest students with ADHD are at an increased risk for academic problems, lower GPA and compromised academic coping skills. College students with ADHD tend to report more academic problems than students without the disorder.

Adderall allows those students who are given a disadvantage by this disease to keep up and be on the same level academically as those who do not have ADHD. Therefore, those students who do not in fact have ADHD, but still take Adderall to get that extra push of focus to help them academically, should be considered cheating when they pop that pill.

Like steroids are illegal for athletes to help increase their performance levels, Adderall should be considered a method of cheating when it comes to performance in the classroom, especially at the college level.

Many ISU students have this nasty cheating habit. Some use it daily and some only when large tests or finals week arrive, but most have the same reasons for wrongly boosting their brain power. One student said: “It motivates me to study longer and be more focused, and [it] makes other activities feel uninteresting, like Facebook and Twitter. I feel like it makes me zone in on whatever I’m doing.” Another argued that it allows them to retain the information they study better: “I’m able to read through an entire textbook in one sitting and remember every word I read.”

Although taking Adderall as a study drug has its benefits when it comes to test time, it administers some scary, health endangering side effects while being used. Studies show that symptoms of Adderall include a suppressed appetite, dehydration, sleeplessness and rapid mood swings. Students who have taken the drug can attest to these defects while on the pill.

“I have spent a 14-hour day in the library before with nothing but a water bottle and a sleeve of saltine crackers. Some people forget to eat because they are so focused.” Even too much focus can make one lose focus. Another using student explains, “One morning I was waiting for the Adderall to kick in, and I realized I had been brushing my teeth for 10 minutes. It’s powerful stuff.”

If it’s not the unnatural side effects that make students more cautious about using Adderall, it should be their conscience. Taking this pill to academically advance your performance is the same as copying someone else’s work during a test to get ahead. Under university guidelines, any kind of academic misconduct is punishable by receiving a failing grade in a class, performing community service, and even being expelled from the university.

If classes are proving themselves challenging, take more time to study using your nondrug-induced brain. If you’re feeling like there’s not enough time in your day to get everything done, then close out of Facebook and learn better time-management skills. It’s not worth ingesting chemicals through your body just to turn into a mood-swinging, cheating zombie. Get up, get motivated and study with what you have, because cheating is never the right way to excel academically, especially when you have to abuse drugs to do it.

I see this idea constantly in articles, cartoons and blogs, and it drives me crazy: “A liberal arts degree is useless in this job market.”

I don’t know if the intended purpose is to scare away potential liberal arts students or to pressure universities to focus more on vocation-specific types of training or just to make people like me furious.

The liberal arts, as I understand it, are a field of academic studies meant to develop the intellectual abilities of the student, as opposed to occupational training, which prepares the student for a specific job.

I’m 30. I’ve been out there in the job market since I was 18, doing everything from working behind a counter to construction to working on a fishing boat to serving on the ground in Iraq. I don’t mind manual labor — I never have — and as such, I will forever have a Plan B that I know won’t kill me.

I’m not in college to obtain a degree; I’m in college to obtain an education.

If, after grad school, I find myself back on a building site or back in a uniform, so be it. If that happens, I know I’ll have the wherewithal to make the most out of any situation life throws at me. And believe me, life can throw a curveball.

The obsession with the liberal arts degree and the downplay of the education gained is a big problem right now, I think — the idea that it is the degree and not the education that gets a person where they want to be in life. For some professions, the degree is certainly important, but it’s the quality of learning that takes place while earning the degree that seems to generally determine how successful one is likely to be.

Of course I want my physician to have a degree from a reputable institution, but more than that, I want him to really know what he is doing. If you haven’t had a bad doctor experience, please trust me: Graduation from medical school alone isn’t enough. If it was, people wouldn’t have the wrong limbs occasionally amputated, or in my case, the wrong medicine prescribed (almost fatally).

The bachelor’s of arts today is the vestigial remnant of the once mighty Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). Since classical antiquity, this education model has created citizens as opposed to strictly workers. Most of the notable minds we encounter in our studies at the university level had such an education, including almost all of those credited with founding this country, though most of them had law degrees as well.

The result of this kind of educational worldliness, obviously, is the ability to ask and begin to answer questions that are bigger than ourselves and even our societies. The really big ideas don’t just occur to people — they are sought out, historically, by people who took the time to train their brains to do the work. Not to say that getting a liberal arts degree will make you John Adams or Thomas Jefferson, but at least you will be able to read their work and follow along.

While degrees shouldn’t matter as much as the quality of education, they do in many cases, and a sad reality is still reality: Your bachelor’s of arts might not be enough. The same goes for the business majors and the biology majors and everyone else, really.

To be competitive in a non-entrepreneurial setting, it’s a good idea to go beyond the four-year degree, even if you have to work while you do it. A minor in a business or computer science field also can help widen your job-searching net. Give yourself as many tools as you can to succeed, but the last thing you want to do is graduate from college having learned to do a job but having failed to learn how to live and what it is that you love.

It’s a scary world out there, and graduating into it can be overwhelming. Don’t let the fear of not owning a yacht stop you from pursuing what you are passionate about. This country desperately needs many more people capable of thinking on their own, drawing their own conclusions and acting on those instead of what is popular or partisan.

Don’t let public opinion convince you that critical thinking and knowledge of humanity are unnecessary and frivolous. On the contrary, you can use those skills and knowledge to adapt to any work or living situation, which in this ever-changing modern economic landscape will be more useful in the long run.

President Obama addressed the issue in this year’s State of the Union address, declaring, “Higher education can’t be a luxury. It’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.” His administration calls for increasing Pell Grants, controlling rising tuition costs, and investing in community colleges. Although these steps ultimately will likely accomplish little in addressing core issues, they are necessary federal actions that should help alleviate existing problems.

Graduation Failures

After getting students to college, another core problem remains. Professor Philip Altbach of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College told the HPR, “We do a pretty good job on access, but a bad job on completion. It should not take five or six years to get a four-year degree.” Even worse, the student may not actually graduate: according to the 2009 U.S. Census report, 31 percent of students who attend college do not earn a degree. Altbach contends, “The biggest problem is secondary education. It needs more funding, attention, and accountability.” Poor secondary education has forced many students to arrive at college unprepared, leading them to either drop out or take extra time to finish.

Beyond that, Dr. Edward Valeau, former president of Hartnell Community College, tells the HPR, “Economics plays an enormous role in the dropout rate. A lot of times, students must balance their family and work life in addition to school.” These personal financial issues particularly affect those students who would often benefit the most from a college degree, creating a cruel paradox. While these students are seeking to improve themselves financially, they are forced out because they cannot sustain themselves and their families without working more often. This barrier limits the number of U.S. adults holding degrees.

Swelling Tuition

Tuition has increased steadily over the past decade in nearly all post-secondary institutions across the country. For many young adults, the cost makes attending college simply impractical or even impossible. Harvard economics Professor Claudia Goldin notes, “More students are having to work in college than ever before in order to offset the high cost of their tuition. Working while in college is a real drain on the amount of time you can devote to studies.”

The recession is partly to blame, given that state funding for public universities has been cut significantly. President Obama has been putting pressure on states to stop these cuts, but the problem is beyond his control. However, Carl Rist, vice president for Assets and Opportunity Programs at the Corporation for Enterprise Development, tells the HPR, “Part of the agenda must be a more universal saving policy.” He argues that households must increase savings to afford college, which itself is an investment.

Although many factors contributing to rising tuition are uncontrollable, one part of President Obama’s plan aims to alleviate costs. Under the 2010 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, Pell Grant funding has doubled. This funding increased the number of grants awarded annually, providing more funding for poor Americans.

Increased accessibility to college is invaluable, and Valeau details, “As a former president of a community college, I can tell you that once someone spends at least one semester in college, they will likely finish or come back. They’ve gotten a taste of the college environment, and they will be hungry for more.” Beyond Pell Grants though, the President’s plan outlines an additional solution: investment in community colleges.

Why Community Colleges?

With admissions to selective U.S. institutions becoming more competitive every year, it is clear that top U.S. universities are still among the best in the world. “We do a great job in the upper echelon of higher education in comparative global terms,” according to Altbach, but millions remain who would benefit from higher education. Community colleges, meanwhile, are easily accessible to students throughout the country due to their convenient locations and relatively lenient admissions process. Rist points out, “Community colleges are sought after by families with a broad range of incomes, and they can be a door to either a four-year degree or an employment opportunity.”

The community college investment component of President Obama’s plan is perhaps the most lucrative. Altbach describes community colleges as, “a key part of American higher education that has been underfunded for many years,” and under the Reconciliation Act, more than $2 billion has already been invested. Valeau explains, “With additional funding, community colleges can add additional faculty and make them more accountable, make college more affordable, and enhance pathways that lead directly to employment or a four-year degree.” The benefits of investment in community colleges have real effects, making students’ experiences more worthwhile and affordable.

Looming Issues

President Obama’s higher education plan is idealistic, but it will provide short-term relief. States meanwhile must confront the issue of education funding, and with the shortfalls of No Child Left Behind, there will likely be little federal involvement in education policy for the foreseeable future. States must pick up the slack, because too much depends on the next generation’s education.

Riley’s controversial entry was in reaction to a recent feature in the Chronicle on NU’s black studies class of 2012. A sidebar story profiled the five students in the Ph.D. program, as well as their planned dissertations, which address issues ranging from racial profiling in the New York City courts system to the rise of black Republicanism.

“What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,”  Riley wrote in the April 30 post on the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog. “The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.”

Under the headline “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations,” Riley continued to pan the graduate students for their chosen topics, concluding that the NU students should “let some legitimate scholars” find “solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.”

Within days, the 533-word critique sparked more than 1,500 comments on the Brainstorm blog, as well as 6,500 signatures on an online petition calling for Riley’s firing. The Chronicle published condemnatory responses from three of the graduate students spotlighted in the Chronicle’s original story and 16 members of the NU African American Studies faculty.

“To write such disparaging comments about young scholars and their expressions of intellectual curiosity is cowardly, uninformed, irresponsible, repugnant, and contrary to the mission of higher education,” the faculty letter reads before noting the United States is “barely one generation removed” from a time when black students were denied admission at most colleges.

Fifth-year graduate student Ruth Hays, whose dissertation topic Riley cited as her first example of “left-wing victimization claptrap,” declined to comment Thursday on whether Riley’s dismissal was justified. Hays, however, said she was encouraged that “so many people saw the problem” in Riley’s argument.

Hays recalled being disappointed but not angry when she first read Riley’s writing, which was circulated on an email list of black studies graduate students.

“I feel it speaks to the privilege she’s exercising,” Hays said. “She feels she can look at the titles of the dissertations and dismiss our entire field of study.”

Chronicle editor Liz McMillen initially defended Riley’s piece, writing in an editor’s note that she encouraged readers to “debate Riley’s views, challenge her, set things straight as you see fit.” In a second note announcing Riley’s dismissal Monday night, McMillen said she realized her invitation to an open debate elevated Riley’s commentary “to the level of informed opinion, which it was not.”

“What’s she doing is dismissing out of hand that the interests and lives of black people are worthy of study,” Hays said.

In an interview Thursday, Riley was unapologetic about the now-infamous blog post, saying she often takes a critical and sometimes sarcastic tone in her writing.

“They completely caved to pressure,” Riley said of the Chronicle’s decision to fire her. “It’s most evident from the fact that after last week, they thought my post was fine. They thought it was up to their standards. Four days later, suddenly it didn’t meet their standards.”

Riley stood by her blog post in a column published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal, where she recently covered “religion, higher education and philanthropy for the editorial page,” according to her website.

In the commentary, Riley acknowledged the reaction to her blog post “ranged from puerile to vitriolic,” with the NU graduate students and faculty accusing her of “bigotry and cowardice.”

“It’s hard because they’re not really interested in open discourse,” Riley said Thursday. “The left always talks about how they want to have more dialogue about race. I was engaged in a dialogue on the issue of race, and I was shut out.”

Hays called Riley’s gripe “disingenuous,” especially because Riley made judgments based on dissertation titles and descriptions only.

Instead of cheering on the blogger’s dismissal, Hays encouraged disgruntled readers to devote their energies to broader issues.

She is currently conducting initial research on her dissertation topic, which examines how black women form opinions about childbirth and how those opinions influence their childbirth experiences.

“We need to pay less attention to these periodic eruptions of spectacular racism or problematic racism discourse and have more serious discussions of race in our day-to-day lives,” Hays said. “If she was more familiar with the problems of racism in our day-to-day lives, she wouldn’t be able to make the comments she did.”

Jessica, who asked that her named be changed for this article, takes an Adderall extended-release pill when she feels pressure to meet a deadline.

“I think of it as an escape route,” says the freshman. “If I get really desperate I have something that can save me.”

Jessica, who has not been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder—the condition that Adderall is officially prescribed to treat—only uses the pills when she has a paper due the next day or a big exam to study for. Since she does not have a prescription, Jessica buys Adderall XR—usually at a cost of $5 per 20-milligram pill—from her peers.

Adderall XR came onto the market in 2001 and quickly passed Ritalin to become the most popular “study drug,” according to a 2006 study by Northeastern University professor Christian Teter.

As an amphetamine, the drug is classified alongside cocaine and opium as a Schedule II controlled substance by the Drug Enforcement Agency. But for harried students seeking improved concentration, alertness, and even a sense of euphoria, the threat of the law serves as little deterrent to taking the little orange pill.

A DARKER SHADE OF ORANGE

Bianca, another freshman whose name has been changed, reflects on her first experience taking Adderall soon after she started high school.

“It just felt so, so good,” she says. “Even though I couldn’t sleep, it felt awesome. After that I started taking it a lot. During the next two months, I took it every day.”

Bianca started using the drug to help her with her schoolwork, then came to rely on it more when she realized it doubled as a weight loss method. But she soon learned first-hand why Schedule II drugs including Adderall are considered to have a high potential for abuse.

She found herself hospitalized in ninth grade. Two months of daily use had taken their toll: her weight had plummeted from 130 to 94 pounds, and she had not had a full night of sleep in weeks.

“By the time I was actually hospitalized, I was kind of fucked up,” she admits with a slight laugh. “I wanted more weight loss—that was one reason for taking it—but I also had become psychologically dependent on it. I really loved it.”

Though she obtained her Adderall legally—she was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder after her parents divorced when she was ten—Bianca had saved her first bottle of pills, only turning to the drug in high school on the eve of a big paper deadline.

Before Bianca’s hospitalization, her concerned mother scheduled regular meetings for her daughter at an eating disorder clinic, but Bianca found ways to trick her doctors.

“I would stop taking the medicine two days before a meeting so that I would not have the amphetamine in my blood,” she recalls.

Bianca was able to quit Adderall after her stay in the hospital, but when college applications hit during her senior year she felt it was “really urgent” to finish everything in time. She returned to her doctor for a refill and was surprised by how easy it was to get the pills, given her history of abuse.

“He didn’t verify anything,” she says. “He gave me a ton of Adderall—over 90 capsules at a time. It was a really ridiculous amount, and I saved them all up.”

Soon Bianca found herself in a dangerous cycle: a pill in the morning would prevent her from sleeping at night, and she found the only way to avoid being tired the day after was to take more Adderall. When she came to Harvard, she brought a stash of more than 100 pills with her.

She stopped taking them after her boyfriend threatened to end their relationship if she continued.

“There are days when taking Adderall would be a smart choice for that day, when it really would make me so much more productive, but I think for me it has been a really good decision not to take it,” she says now.

Bianca sold her remaining pills for $250 to a fellow freshman—Jessica.

“It’s not something I use all the time, but it’s there for me to fall back on,” Jessica says.

SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE

“There is a prevailing notion that since doctors prescribe medications such as Adderall, that they must be safe,” University Health Services spokesperson Nanci Martin writes in an e-mailed statement. But despite this perception, Martin writes that stimulants like Adderall can cause cardiac problems.

Harvard Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors outline further risks of stimulants like Adderall on their website—including addiction, stroke, psychosis, and schizophrenia.

But labels and doctor warnings fail to prevent some students from popping pills. Though statistics on Adderall misuse vary widely, studies show that prescription drug abuse occurs on campuses across the country.

The 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 6.4 percent of full-time college students age 18 to 22 misused Adderall that year. The number did not include students diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder, even though experts claim that some students fake symptoms in order to get study pills.

Closer to home, a 2011 survey by the Boston Globe found that among an “informal sampling” of students at four Boston-area colleges, 15 percent admitted to taking prescription drugs, most frequently Adderall, for stress relief, increased focus, and other unintended purposes.

Peter, a junior whose name has been changed, worries that doctors might discover long-term effects in the future, even though his occasional use of Adderall has not produced any immediate side effects.

“There is no way you can take a drug to make your brain work at twice the speed and intensity as normal without having some consequences,” he says.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON ADDERALL

Despite concerns about Adderall abuse, Stanford law professor Henry Greely argues that using prescription drugs to boost studying should be as commonly accepted as drinking caffeine.

Greely and his six co-authors said in a 2008 article in Nature that study pills like Adderall have “much to offer individuals and society.”

The article counters critics of study pills who charge that they are “unnatural” by pointing out that nearly every aspect of modern life—food, shelter, clothing, medical care—bears “little relation to our species’ ‘natural’ state.”

These drugs “should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology—ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself,” says the article.

Peter disagrees. Even though he uses study pills to increase concentration, he admits that their use on college campuses gives students unfair advantages.

“Adderall is absolutely cheating,” he says. “Coffee and other natural stimulants keep you awake, but Adderall keeps you focused. I read an entire course’s assigned reading in a five-hour period. That is not natural. That was cheating.”

Jessica has a different take. “I don’t think it’s cheating to take study drugs,” she says. “But I do admit that I sometimes get annoyed with people who fake a prescription. They get extra time on tests, and I think a lot of people get prescribed Adderall knowing full well they do not have ADD.”

As Jessica knows from first-hand experience, Adderall’s power to increase focus comes at a mental as well as physical cost. The drug is known to impair creativity and alter thought patterns.

“The papers I write on Adderall are nowhere near the same quality as the ones I write not on Adderall,” she says. “They are wordy and convoluted. It’s like I can’t step back and see the big picture, but at the time it feels like I’m writing smart stuff.”

Yet time-crunched students juggling competitive classes, leadership positions, job and graduate school applications, and social lives turn to study pills for an extra edge anyway.

As Jessica puts it, “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

So when questions from a lab practical were posted to a 600-plus member Facebook group for a U. Illinois human anatomy and physiology lab course, MCB 247, the cheating was not going to go unnoticed. Finally, with physical evidence, there was no way this cheating would slip under the radar.

Professor Chester Brown, who teaches the course, canceled the students’ grades for the practical and doubled the worth of the final exam upon discovering the Facebook page. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is currently investigating the violation, according to an email sent out to MCB 247 students.

Cheating is neither new nor condoned, but the irresponsibility of posting the questions and their answers in a public forum like Facebook is baffling. Why cheat in the first place? It only gives everyone else a chance to set the grading distributions higher, working against the cheater. But students do it in hopes someone will return the favor later. Is it worth the risk, though, when penalties for cheating can be as severe as expulsion?

In the grade-determining weeks before finals, students may be pushed to cheat out of desperation. But even when it’s hard to find a way to succeed, students shouldn’t resort to cheating.

Mitigating cheating is on the professors as well. If multiple students will be taking an exam at different times, then there should be multiple versions. This singular example is an outstanding case of extreme cheating, but it does serve as a message: The way people cheat is changing, so we need to update the way we monitor and stop it.

“I have a lot of three hour classes,” she said.  “If I focus for the first two hours, I feel like it’s okay to send a text.  It’s a reward system for paying attention and staying on task.”

A recent study, which will appear in the July 2012 issue of the National Communication Association’s journal “Communication Education” found students who text more in class were less attentive and demonstrated lower grades.

Boston U. psychology Professor David Somers said the results of the study were not surprising.

“It seems pretty obvious to me that students who are distracted in class, by texting or anything else, will get less out of lectures,” Somers said in an email interview. “Multitasking typically leads to impairment of performance of both tasks, unless one of the tasks is very automated.”

Students who text in class often perceived themselves as having learned less, according to the study, which surveyed 190 U. Pittsburgh-Bradford students.

Those who reported higher levels of self-regulation graded themselves better and reported learning more.

Somers said he is more interested in why students cannot restrain themselves from texting.

“I believe that texting, for many people, is something of an addiction,” he said. “Each text message that you receive is a reward. To get that reward you need to send a text message.”

Somers said those who text frequently have an expectation of regular “rewards,” and they will unconsciously initiate text conversations to get that reward, which disrupts their focus.

College of Arts and Sciences junior Denise Wong said she rarely texts in class and is not very attached to her phone.

However, Wong said she notices a correlation between the characteristics of a class and how frequently people text in it.

“A lot of times, in my classes which are more interesting, I see less people texting than in others,” Wong said. “It’s also harder if you’re in a smaller class or in harder classes.”

Mounica Donepudi, a BU junior, said she does not usually text during class.

“I don’t get service in a lot of my classrooms,” she said. “Even if I did, I still probably wouldn’t text during class.”

However, Donepudi said professors do not often feel the need to force their students to pay attention.

“In college, you’re expected to do what’s necessary to learn,” she said. “Professors don’t monitor you like they did in high school.”

BU freshman Wesley Kang said he texts during class despite knowing he should not.

“I think it’s not okay to text in class, but I do it anyways,” he said.  “It’s rude. “

Kang said he often texts more in large classes that he finds boring.

“I get bored, and if you’re in a large lecture hall, it’s impossible for the teacher to know,” he said.  “But if you’re in a discussion where everyone is expected to participate, it’s rude to text.”

“I was just reading something last night from the state of California,” Santorum said at a campaign stop in Wisconsin. “And that the California universities — I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught.”

UC Berkeley history professor Robin Einhorn, who is teaching a course titled “The United States from Civil War to Present” this semester, called Santorum’s claim “completely, laughably false.”

Santorum’s campaign headquarters could not be reached to clarify what Santorum was reading, but a perusal of course catalogs from the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges reveals a plethora of courses focusing on U.S. history.

Each of the state’s 112 community college campuses offers a course in U.S. history, according to community college spokesperson Paige Marlatt-Dorr.

At the UC and CSU, all undergraduates must take a U.S. history course in order to graduate, UC and CSU spokespeople said.

However, an April report released by the privately funded conservative think tank California Association of Scholars states that students at four UC campuses can “achieve a bachelor’s degree without doing any coursework in science, mathematics, a foreign language, economics, literature, or the history and institutions of their country. Those four include the Berkeley campus.”

Whether Santorum was referring specifically to that report in his statements has not been confirmed.

Liberal faculty and politically correct thinking at U. California has resulted in students receiving a decrepit and biased education, a report released this month by a conservative think tank claims.

An April report released by the privately funded California Association of Scholars entitled “A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Influence of Political Activism in the University of California” states that a “leftist” education has resulted in a decrease in the quality of academic teaching, analysis and research at the university.

The report — addressed to the UC Board of Regents — encourages them to impose “a rigorous marketplace of ideas” and establish a sanctuary for a broad political and social ideological spectrum at UC campuses. Presenting dissenting opinions is a quintessential characteristic of quality academics and must be reintroduced to the university, according to the report.

“I think the report simply raises the undeniable reality that many of our UC campuses are failing to truly encourage a marketplace of ideas from all ideological backgrounds,” said Berkeley College Republicans President Shawn Lewis. “There is an important difference between promoting ideological exploration in the classroom versus simply ‘not blocking’ conservative viewpoints.”

In the humanities, teaching classics and rigorous analysis have been replaced by professors advocating their viewpoints and discussing minorities’ grievances, the report states. The report also claims that the influence of “radical politics in academia” results in lowered academic value at the university.

However, according to media studies professor Jean Retzinger, political advocacy and high-quality academia are not mutually exclusive.

“The challenge is to find a way to make the past continually relevant to people,” she said. “The way contemporary politics are played out could be a great vehicle to understand the past.”

Arguments against the university’s liberal reputation are not new, she added.

Though the study primarily focuses on the UC, it also looks at research done by other higher education institutions. The study examines newspaper articles, graduation requirements, course descriptions and syllabi and includes faculty and student interviews.

The report also states that UC campuses silence minority opinions.

The status quo in society is generally conservative, so progressive UC professors are needed to balance out the bias, said Berkeley Political Review National News Editor Luis Flores.

However, according to the report, when faculty members and departments attempt to advance social justice, they undermine their credibility.

It is important to have faculty in academia who are unbiased, said Jeremy Palmer, who is running for both ASUC executive vice president and senator with the Defend Affirmative Action Party. Biased faculty risk disenfranchising students, Palmer said.

Jessica Payne, a Notre Dame psychologist who specializes in sleep studies, studied 207 subjects who regularly slept at least six hours per night. The study was focused on how much information a subject remembers after learning it directly before sleeping.

Participants studied either related or unrelated word pairs in the morning or evening, at 9 a.m. or 9 p.m., and would be tested on their ability to remember the word pairings 30 minutes, 12 hours or 24 hours later. Some of the word pairs were semantically related and some pairs were completely unrelated.

This studied declarative memory, which is a person’s ability to remember facts and specific knowledge.

“Following a 12-hour retention interval containing a night of sleep or a day of wakefulness, overall recall was superior in subjects who slept,” the study stated.

These findings were similar at the 24-hour retest. At this point all of the subjects had received a full night’s rest, but researchers found that subjects who went to sleep shortly after learning the words remembered better than subjects who did not.

“Our study confirms that sleeping directly after learning something new is beneficial for memory,” Payne told Science Daily. “What’s novel about this study is that we tried to shine light on sleep’s influence on both types of declarative memory by studying semantically unrelated and related word pairs.”

Jude Kehoe, a nurse at U. Oregon’s Health Center, stressed the importance of sleep for students. She discouraged irregular sleep patterns for studying because the body does not learn as efficiently with irregular sleep. The body can also only make up two hours of sleep, she said.

“Our brain does all of this filing when you are asleep and the REM sleep helps students learn better,” Kehoe said. “If students would study during the day and then sleep eight hours, they would remember the information much better. When you don’t have sleep, it causes a stress reaction to go off in your body, with negative cascading effects.”

Payne encouraged studying directly before sleeping for the greatest recall in the morning.

“Since we found that sleeping soon after learning benefited both types of memory, this means that it would be a good thing to rehearse any information you need to remember just prior to going to bed,” Payne told Science Daily. “In some sense, you may be ‘telling’ the sleeping brain what to consolidate.”

Continued cuts in state funding have forced some cash-strapped public schools to reduce class offerings and collapse programs, forcing students to turn to for-profits, a February study by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at U. California-Berkeley shows.

This trend may continue, as public universities would struggle to expand accessibility in the face of potential cuts of $200 million to the UC and CSU, should voters reject Gov. Jerry Brown’s November tax tax initiative.

The CSU announced earlier this week that it will not accept new students at most of its 23 campuses in spring 2013 and may reduce enrollment next fall if the initiative does not pass — cuts that could result in more students enrolling in for-profits.

But Rich Williams, higher education advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said he was concerned that for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix fall short in ensuring their students graduate with marketable skills.

“The incentive structure for for-profit schools is based on profit,” he said. “Their accountability is less to the students and more to their shareholders.”

For-profit schools represented just 12 percent of all higher education students in the nation in 2011 but accounted for 46 percent of all student loan dollars in default, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

For-profits benefit tremendously from government grant programs.

A winter 2012 study by Harvard U. economists found that in 2008-09, federal grants and loans received under Title IV of the Higher Education Act made up almost three-quarters of the revenues for eligible for-profit higher education institutions.

“The combination of relatively weak oversight — including virtually no oversight for a few recent years — and an unusually generous state grant program have made the state an attractive place for for-profit colleges to do business,” said Debbie Cochrane, program director of the Institute for College Access and Success, at a Feb. 14 state Assembly Higher Education Committee and Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development hearing.

Documents show that these institutions lobbied heavily last year when the state was considering budget cuts.

Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit college company, gifted Assemblymember and chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee Marty Block $346 worth of events tickets last year — the largest gift amount he received from any single source, according to recently released Form 700 statements of economic interest from 2011.

Without much regulation, for-profit colleges have engaged in predatory recruiting practices, said Ed Emerson, chief of federal policy and programs at the California Student Aid Commission.

“You had schools recruiting students from homeless shelters, admission counselors working on commission — a practice called churning, where you have to over-enroll — a lot of fairly unscrupulous effort,” he said.

Last March, Brown signed SB 70 into law to improve regulation. The legislation ties an institution’s eligibility to receive Cal Grants to the rate at which its students default on loans.

Now, higher education institutions in the state cannot have more than 30 percent of students default within three years of beginning payment on loans in order to receive Cal Grants starting in the 2012-13 academic year.

The California Student Aid Commission has already cut off about 70 for-profit campuses from Cal Grant money as a result, Emerson said.

Kent Jenkins, spokesperson for Corinthian Colleges, which operates a number of Everest College campuses in California, said the company acknowledges high student default rates.

But, he added, the company has improved student financial literacy over the past few years by spending around $8 million to $9 million on new programs to reduce default rates.

Emerson confirmed that a number of colleges, including those run by Kaplan, have recently established pre-enrollment programs to increase students’ awareness of their financial burdens.

“We understand that the money students invest in tuition needs to pay off for them in terms of a diploma and a degree and increased job skills, and we understand that taxpayers have to feel the money from Cal Grants is well spent,” Jenkins said.

Soetoro-Ng delivered a lecture titled “Education for Peace and Global Awareness” at U. Michigan last night in honor of Asian Pacific Islander month, during which she emphasized the importance of equipping children with the ability to understand multiculturalism, language and personal identity.

The lecture marked Soetoro-Ng’s second visit to UM as she campaigns to transform education. Her first trip was in 1986, when she visited the University with Obama.

During the lecture, she focused on changing expectations in education, which is a central goal of her non-profit organization, Our Public School.

In an interview after the event, Soetoro-Ng encouraged students to take an active role in world events and causes they believe in.

“You don’t have to wait for anyone to tell you that your voice is valuable or that it matters,” she said. “There are so many open spaces for dialogue and for action … I want all young people to raise their voices. I think it would be a great idea — bring on the cacophony.”

Soetoro-Ng said during her speech that few Americans she met while on the campaign trail for her brother during the 2008 presidential election took an active interest in the country’s public education system.

“People who had kids in the public schools or who were teachers … those were the only folks who were actively engaged in the discussion about what public schools and public education should be, what should happen in the classroom, and how policies should be impacted,” she said. “I want to make sure that we remind ourselves that these schools belong to all of us.”

Soetoro-Ng works with schools and teachers to remedy the disconnect between teachers and students that she said hinders learning initiatives. She added that young teachers can become “overwhelmed” and resort to lecturing students instead of allowing them to learn through experience and culture.

“The additive approach of bringing in people and names in events in the margins in the textbooks, that is not enough,” Soetoro-Ng said.

She urged students and educators to examine information from more than one perspective and include students’ personal identities in the learning process, noting that her mixed ethnic background taught her the importance of flexible cultural expectations.

“The notion that culture never changes, and that identity never changes — that what existed 30 years ago is the same as what exists today — is not the case,” she said. “We need to be able to negotiate the truths that exist today.”

Soetoro-Ng implements her ideas through a peace education course she teaches in Hawaii. She said these classes have helped her identify obstacles facing education, such as a lack of cultural awareness among teachers.

She said many of the teachers who attended her multicultural education classes could not fill out more than half of a world map.

“This is a problem,” she said. “There are so many parallels between what happens over there and what happens over here.”

She added that children often struggle to think beyond their most pressing and immediate realities and part of building global competence, multiculturalism and peace education is to help students find their voice.

She encouraged others to engage in conversations with young people about their experiences and make them aware of their surroundings.

“You don’t show (children) high levels of violence, but you can certainly begin to talk to them about what to do afterwards, how to rebuild their own power, how they can help each other,” Soetoro-Ng said.

UM sophomore Katie McGraw said she heard Obama speak at the University in January, and she attended Soetoro-Ng’s lecture because she was interested to hear what his half-sister had to say.

“I don’t honestly know a lot about the topic but I figured I would kind of come and learn more and learn her philosophy,” McGraw said.

UM sophomore Sophie Boudreau also said she attended the event to learn more about Obama’s family.

“It was perfect because I just finished reading (Obama’s) book, ‘Dreams From My Father’, which talks about Maya, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to tie an event into what I’m studying,” Boudreau said.

The Medical College Admission Test, more commonly known as the MCAT, and the Graduate Management Admission Test, or the GMAT, will undergo changes in the future, with the GMAT changes going into effect this year.

The GMAT, an exam for graduate business school admission, will change on June 5 of this year, according to Andrew Mitchell, Kaplan Test Prep’s director of Pre-business programs . He said that if a person is interested in a business management degree, taking the GMAT is the first step.

Starting in June, a new “integrated reasoning” section will be introduced to the exam, in addition to the already existing writing, quantitative and verbal sections. There are currently two writing sections at the beginning of the GMAT, but one will be cut to make room for the integrated reasoning section, Mitchell said.

The point of the integrated reasoning section, Mitchell said, is to work with multiple sources of information to answer questions.

Mitchell added that while most people will not take the GMAT until a few years after they have graduated college and are already in the work place, there are benefits to taking it as soon as possible.

“A few benefits of taking it in senior year is that the score is good for five years,” Mitchell said.

If a person were to take it before June, they would not have to prepare for the integrated reasoning section, he said.

Mitchell did warn that it takes about 100 hours of preparation to prepare for the GMAT and the June test is quickly approaching. He added that if students were to take a preparation course for the exam, Kaplan has accounted for both exams in their course offerings.

The MCAT will also undergo significant changes in the next few years, according to Dr. Jeff Koetje, Kaplan’s director of pre-health programs. This will be just the fifth time the MCAT has been reviewed and altered since it was first administered in 1928, he said. The last time it was reviewed was in 1991.

Koetje said the reason for its review was because of the many advances in molecular biology and genetics that are now being used in the medical field. He also said there was a need to switch to a “more holistic view of patients,” taking into account economic situations and culture to better help them.

These changes, Koetje said, would include the removal of the writing sample section for the 2013 exam and the addition of questions on a broader range of subjects for the 2015 exam. These questions include the addition of upper-level biology content to the biological science section and a new section on behavioral and social sciences, he said.

The upper-level biological content will include mostly biochemistry questions, but there will also be some molecular biology and genetics material added, Koetje said. He added the new behavioral and social sciences section would feature introductory psychology and sociology questions.

Overall, the addition of these subject areas would increase the amount of multiple choice questions from 144 questions to more than 250 questions, he said.

Koetje also said these changes would also change the amount of time the exam would take. Even with the removal of the two writing samples, the exam, which now takes five and a half hours, would take seven hours once the changes were implemented.

Each of these changes — the addition of questions, the new behavioral and social sciences section, the removal of the writing sample and the global timing change — were all approved by the board of directors at the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Koetje said all of these changes were new developments and encouraged students to stay up-to-date in the event anything was to change.

Penn State U. senior AJ Foister said he plans to take the MCAT next spring or fall, thereby avoiding the 2015 changes. And while he believes the removal of the writing section will make it easier, the addition of the new sections will make the MCAT tougher.

“Some people are thinking that [the MCAT] will be easier with the new sections since there are more questions,” Foister said. He said it makes sense to make the exam more difficult because you only want the smartest students going into medical school.

Out of 1,400 schools surveyed by The Chronicle, nearly one-third reported lower graduation rates for the six-year period ending in 2008 than in 2003. This survey doesn’t include people who graduated in more than six years or people who transferred and completed their degree at another college, and it only includes first time, full-time students. This means that while a one-third lower graduation rate doesn’t seem so bad at a first glance, the number of people represented in the survey is lacking.

However, the survey revealed a trend: students who graduate in four years are now a minority. In fact, U.S. News reports that only 40 percent of full-time, first time students graduate in four years. The U. Arizona Fact Book indicates that on campus, the graduation rate has been slowly rising, but only about 34 percent graduate in four years, while 60 percent graduate in six.

People immediately assume the college is at fault when a student drops out, but in reality, it’s not the school’s job to graduate students on time. Students need to motivate themselves. After all, the longer it takes to graduate, the more money it costs, which is a major reason people drop out of school.

“Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them,” a 2009 Public Report for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, reports that the top two reasons students drop out of college are financially related. Fifty-four percent reported that, “I needed to go to work and make money,” and 31 percent reported that, “I just couldn’t afford the tuition and fees.”

Some colleges are trying to alleviate this financial burden by instituting “degree guarantee programs.” According to U.S. News, these programs would guarantee a student will graduate within four years, or the college will pay the subsequent tuition costs until they graduate. Of course, the bar is set high for students because they must earn good grades and have open communication with their advisers.

Randolph-Macon College in Virginia debuted this program last fall, and is pleased with the results thus far. “In some sense, this was kind of a low risk thing for us,” Anthony Ambrogi, director of admissions and enrollment research, said to U.S. News. “This was a way for us to put (families’) minds at ease.”

Colleges that want higher graduation rates should consider altering their finances to provide more academic support for students. Tuition is rising all over the country, and perhaps a degree guarantee program here at the UA, or a tuition freeze, as Arizona State University’s President Michael Crow recently proposed, would produce more graduates.

However, money isn’t the only thing driving students out of college. The next seven reasons for dropping out, according to the report, have very little, if anything, to do with finances. The survey showed 21 percent said they needed a break from school, 16 percent said they had to take too many useless classes and 16 percent didn’t have enough time for their family. Only 10 percent reported dropping out because the course material was too difficult.

The Chronicle reported that, “colleges have raised graduation rates through proactive advising and by better integrating freshmen into campus life, among other measures.” Cornell University researchers found similar information, including that, “colleges that spent more on student services, such as tutoring, tended to report increased graduation rates.” Tutoring and advising are certainly useful tools for determined students, but if students drop because they think their classes are boring, as so many indicated by their answers in “Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them,” they probably aren’t too determined.

Low graduation rates look bad for colleges, but if the reason students aren’t graduating on time is because they need a vacation or a consider classes useless, then we should stop pointing fingers at the institution and start placing the blame where it should lay: students. School officials shouldn’t lose any sleep over the students who drop out for bogus reasons.

“I took them in high school mainly to get credit,” Young said. “I’ll be graduating early. Some of them actually counted toward my major. They’re actually really useful.”

In a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwestern U., researchers found inner-city students who took part in college-preparatory programs were more likely to attend college in greater numbers, remain in college past their first year and secure employment.

The study, published in February, focused on the AP Incentive Program, a high school initiative that includes cash incentives for teachers and students with passing AP exam scores. The results reflected a general correlation between taking and excelling in AP classes and long-term success.

“Students [who take AP courses] are more likely to go to college and graduate,” said Devon Wible, executive director of academics at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions.

AP courses offer a rigorous curriculum designed similarly to college courses, Wible said in a phone interview.

“It prepares students for the rigor that they will face in college,” she said. “[AP courses have] more reading, more writing and more inquisitive thinking, opposed to standard memorization.”

More than half of the students who enrolled at BU had with AP credits, BU spokesman Colin Riley said in a phone interview. On average, a prospective student applied with having taken one or two AP courses, but some students took many more.

Riley said admissions looks at an applicant in a holistic way, but the most important component is their academic transcript.

“What an academic transcript shows is that students challenged themselves with the most rigorous curriculum available to them in high school, meaning AP and honors courses, and [had] done well in them,” Riley said.

Admissions look to see what the students selected for classes in high school, Riley said.

“People who are high achieving, challenging themselves, . . . are going to take every opportunity gain more knowledge and succeed,” Riley said. “It’s not surprising to see high achieving students succeed and then go on to succeed in college and the business world.”

Wible said the APIP seemed like a good way to motivate student, but that the “best reward” is to gain knowledge from having taken the course.

BU freshman Ross Huston said he took the AP U.S. History and AP English classes, but did not take the exams.

“[The classes] would look good on a transcript, granted I received a good grade, so I chanced it,” Huston said. “I took neither of the tests because I didn’t want to spend money on only a possibility of credit.”

Anneliese Scheck, a sophomore at BU, said she took the AP Language and AP Literature exams, both of which she said she passed. However, Scheck’s school did not participate in the APIP.

“We didn’t get rewarded for taking the tests, but we got penalized if [we] were in an AP class and didn’t take the test,” she said. “I definitely feel like AP Literature class and preparing for AP Language helped strengthen my writing skills, so I was well-prepared for college.”

All colleges in America are not created equal. This comes as no surprise considering the vast disparities in ranking that exists between American schools, as stated by publications such as U.S. News & World Report and Forbes Magazine. However, the disparity in American colleges lies not in the schools ranked but in those we do not see on the traditional college list.

For-profit institutions for higher education are increasingly educating students in America. But it has become evident that the students at for-profits are granted a level of education far from the caliber of education offered at leading non-profit institutions. Over the last 30 years, the number of for-profit institutions has grown on average by 9 percent each year, with about 400 schools established in the last decade alone. The government cannot continue to allow mediocre organizations educate an increasing portion of our country without setting standards for the education that must be delivered.

Although one may not be familiar with the difference between for-profit and non-profit institutions, chances are one has come across a for-profit institution because of their ubiquitous marketing efforts. Non-profit schools include the likes of NYU and Harvard U.; schools that fund their programs through tuition, federal student aid and endowment funds. For-profit institutions, on the other hand, such as the famed U. Phoenix and DeVry U., are profit-driven and owned by corporations that generate money by means of tuition, federal student aid and stock revenues — as for-profit schools are more likely to be owned by public companies traded on a stock exchange.

For-profits are an indignity to the principle of education. A school’s purpose should be to educate its students, yet at for-profits more money is spent on marketing than on instruction for students. Students that attend these schools are promised an exceptional education but usually end up with an unaccredited degree and student loan debt or a degree with inadequate training and student loan debt. Clearly, the common theme here is student loan debt.

Despite only accounting for 12 percent of degrees, for-profits account for 50 percent of defaulted student loans in the country. The main reason for this is that students are paying more than they can afford for a lacking education and are subsequently unable to attain employment or find other means to pay off their loans.

Only 28 percent of the American population holds a college degree. The U.S. government has announced the Graduation Initiative, which hopes to increase the percentage of college graduates by the year 2020. Given the need for higher education, a potential solution to the problem of ineffective for-profit schools is not to abolish them, but rather to reform them. With an increasing demand for higher education in America, our country needs successful for-profit schools.

In order to make for-profit schools successful, the government must step in and stop treating for-profit schools solely as corporations. It is not enough for the government to be critical on the economics of these schools; educational standards must also be a priority. A for-profit should not be accredited if it is not able to educate students adequately for a given career. By regulating the accreditation agencies, for-profits will be forced to be more critical of the education they are providing.

The government must step in to prevent the corruption of education. Simply having access to education through for-profit schools does not mean Americans will grow to be more educated. If the quality of education in America does not become a priority, what will the quality of America become?

Starting in spring 2015, students taking the MCAT will see more material on upper level biological sciences, such as biochemistry. A new section will test the behavioral and social sciences to encourage students to provide holistic care.

Each section of the test will also be lengthened, adding 90 minutes to the current 5 1/2 hour test.

Starting in January 2013, the writing sample will be removed from the test because it was not a major deciding factor in the admittance process.

The changes were made to ensure that those admitted into medical schools will be well-rounded students and move in the direction of the changing medical field.

More than 40 percent of medical school admission officers said the MCAT is the most important admissions factor, according to a 2011 Kaplan Test Prep survey.

“They’re trying to plan 10-15 years out because the health care system has to change,” said Kathleen Watson, senior associate dean for students and student learning at U. Minnesota’s Medical School.

The medical system is moving toward a holistic care system, and more pre-med students need to be exposed to the psychology of themselves and others to be more equipped to treat patients, said Jeff Koetje, Kaplan Test Prep’s director of pre-health programs.

U. Minnesota biochemistry and psychology senior Holly Bui is currently studying for the MCAT. She said the changes will be beneficial because they will make it more balanced.

“I think it’s a good thing to test if people have the social skills to understand people’s behaviors,” Bui said.

She also said that pre-med students generally don’t have a strong background in the humanities — knowing social sciences would make them better physicians.

The MCAT has only been changed five times since its creation in 1928. It was last altered in 1991.

Overall, medical school admissions officers have been receptive to the changes. According to Kaplan Test Prep’s 2011 survey of medical school admissions officers, 73 percent of those surveyed believe the 2015 changes to the MCAT will better prepare students for medical school.

Koetje said it’s the right time to bring about changes to the test because of the current state of the medical field.

“The changes make the test relevant to today and tomorrow’s doctors,” he said.

The changes could cause problems in scheduling courses for undergraduate students. They will need to take additional classes that they may not have taken until their senior year in order to prepare for the exam and increase the number of credits they’ll need to take each semester.

“It may be more challenging, but it will be manageable,” Koetje said.

This first experience at a German workplace gave me the impression that German society strongly values the variety of skills and talents that their education system is designed to produce—and not just in theory. The German system offers different vocational and academic options within a comprehensive structural framework, with many permeable options for students as they progress through secondary and tertiary education. For students preparing for higher education, for instance, there is the option of a purely academic pathway.  At the same time, there exist multiple other vocational or combined tracks, each with different emphases on academic study, vocational theory, and practical training supported by employers. This pervasive structural incorporation of vocational training into the education system allows graduates with different skills and expertise to be respected in society regardless of the perceived “prestige” of their chosen professions.

As such, it is unsurprising that only approximately 20 percent of German students opt to earn university degrees. Compared with the 68 percent of U.S. high school graduates who were enrolled in college in 2010, the differences between the two systems become apparent. In the U.S., there has been growing concern over the lack of structural vocational education, with some expressing the view that there are simply too many young people in college. College degrees, many argue, are so ubiquitous in the U.S. that they are no longer a reliable indicator of either knowledge or skills.

Known worldwide for consistently producing both cutting-edge ideas and world-class products, Germany is in no way lacking in either academic or technical talent. Rather, the diversity of respectable paths that are incorporated into the structure of all levels of the education system allows students to choose the paths that suit them best. This is in stark contrast to the system in the U.S., where it seems that the public response to the ever-increasing demand for an educated workforce has been to create still more academic options, resulting in a situation in which—to use a generalization—many students earn college degrees but acquire neither academic knowledge nor practical skills.

Many employers in the U.S. are starting to address this issue, which to them amounts to a serious crisis in workforce skills. With admirable foresight, they are building comprehensive training programs to encourage long-term, skilled employment. Some industry leaders are even pushing for the reincorporation of vocational options into public education. Beyond these sincere efforts, however, the U.S. needs to recognize the importance of fostering the right social context for the successful implementation of a structural vocational education system.

Germany has a relatively liberal, homogeneous, equal, and individualistic society where there is a pervasive understanding of the inherent value of a population with different strengths. Perhaps because of Germany’s cultural history, the modern perception of “education” still acknowledges the dissociation between “Bildung” and “Ausbildung”—or the ideal of whole-person humanistic development and the training that prepares one for a vocation. There is an understanding in German society, reflected by the humanistic curriculum that introduces literature and philosophy even to secondary students, that one can be an educated person in a classical sense even if one chooses a more technical vocation. Indeed, my experiences working, studying, and living in various parts of Germany have shown me that German society respects vocational training because everyone is expected to strive for this humanistic ideal of education regardless of the nature of the practical path that one chooses.

This is not to say that a system like Germany’s does not create certain systemic problems of inequality and inefficiency or that the U.S. cannot exhibit social support for such a system without a similar cultural tradition. Rather, there is room to learn from several aspects of the German model and to contextualize them for the U.S.. In particular, we need to recognize that the most important first step is to raise the social prestige of non-academic pathways so that students from all backgrounds can view them as genuine options. This will take a renewed cooperation between employers and the education system to make vocational options both attractive and stable and to promote the idea that there are multiple pathways to success. Only then could we shift from a system in which college is indiscriminately seen as the right path to a system in which there is a right path for everyone. This shift has serious potential to ameliorate the crises in the workforce and in higher education, and it might even prove to be a step forward for educational equality.

There’s her associate of science degree, an office support certificate and her paralegal degree. She got them while serving seven years for promoting prostitution of teenage runaways.

Some of her classes in the Shakopee prison cost just $10. But those cheaper opportunities are drying up, and soon the funding behind them will be gone.

Congress didn’t renew the “Specter” funds, named for correctional education advocate and former Sen. Arlen Specter, for 2011 or 2012. As the leftover money runs out over the next year, some prisons will lose a chunk of their courses; others will have to turn away more inmates. With tight budgets, college for convicts doesn’t sound sweet to many, and it’s often an easy cut to make.

U. Minnesota used to offer prisoner education, too, but that program fell victim to money problems decades ago.

Numbers show that college education makes an ex-convict less likely to wind up back in prison. Corrections officials and sociologists say the long-term gain of fewer criminals outweighs the cost of educating convicts. But with the Specter cuts, prisons nationwide have to look at other options.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections is still trying to figure it out and hasn’t confirmed any alternatives.

“I’m not a pessimistic person, but I don’t see this one coming back any time soon,” said Stephen Steurer, executive director of the national Correctional Education Association.

“We’re cutting our own throats.”

‘Pick, choose and refuse’

Minnesota prisons got about $150,000 a year in Specter funds for inmates to take college courses over the past decade. Most of that went to partnerships with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, which provided class materials and teachers. When that funding was cut, the state’s Department of Corrections had carryover from previous years to get through this year.

But the DOC doesn’t know where the money will come from for next year.

“It’s an important program, and we’re going to do what we can to try and keep it continuing,” said George Kimball, director of adult education for Minnesota prisons.

Spokeswoman Sarah Berg said the DOC is looking at alternatives. The same is true for prisons around the nation.

In West Virginia, courses will be cut in half or worse, said Fran Warsing, superintendent of the Office of Institutional Education Programs there.

West Virginia used to get about $100,000 a year in Specter funds. Now, Warsing is discussing with colleges how the partnerships can be more cost-efficient.

“There’s no money. They did away with Pell grants,” she said, “and now they’ve done away with this.”

Pell Grants — federal financial aid based on student need — were once available for inmates. Back then, inmates could study much more extensively — some even worked toward doctorate degrees. But Congress ended prisoner eligibility to those grants in 1994 as part of the “tough on crime” era.

About a third of state prisons nationwide offer post-secondary education, according to a 2009 study.

“I’m not a bleeding heart liberal. Some people need to be locked up,” said Don Kiffin, president of the Correctional Education Association. “But a lot of these individuals, they can return to society and be very productive in society.”

Kiffin also oversees education at an Oklahoma prison, and he’s down to his last semester of funds.

His prison got $7,000 to $10,000 a year during the Specter era. He had about $3,500 left over for this semester. Next semester, he’ll have pennies — if anything.

“I have a lot of people coming to me that want to go to school and [are] wondering why I can’t give them money to go,” Kiffin said. “I have to pick, choose and refuse.”

“You can basically kiss the post-secondary programs goodbye,” Steurer said of programming in Maryland, where he worked in corrections before retiring.

Steurer said politicians don’t want to look at possible long-term benefits, like fewer prisoners eating up tax dollars and instead being more productive, tax-paying citizens.

Incarcerated learning

Marla Thao, 29, took history of rock and roll, principles of psychology, math, interpersonal communication and other courses during her seven years behind bars.

She’d given birth to her daughter three months before going to prison and knew that an education would help turn her life around once she got out.

“Education was a really big piece of my journey,” she said. Thao now studies social science at Metropolitan State U. in Minneapolis.

“If I hadn’t taken the classes I probably wouldn’t have any goals.”

Evalyn BheAanu took sociology, math and philosophy classes while serving time for aiding and abetting the nonfatal shootings of a man and a pregnant woman in 2008.

BheAanu, now 30, attends St. Paul College and wants to go into biomedical engineering, merging computer science and medicine. She’s taking 21 credits.

She said a philosophy course in prison opened her eyes.

“It really boosted my self-esteem,” BheAanu said. “I can be independent, and I can think openly, and I can speak my mind.”

She’s following through with the plans she made in prison.

“I’m actually on the right road,” she said, “for once in my life.”

In many ways, taking classes behind bars is like any other college. Students must apply to get in. Professors come each week to teach. There’s homework to do and papers to write.

But getting in is partly based on an applicant’s discipline or behavior record, and papers are often handwritten.

Only 15 percent of the more than 9,000 Minnesota inmates enter prison with any college experience.

Right now, eight of Minnesota’s nine facilities offer 11 total courses. The classes are full with about 25 students each, Berg said.

“You’re getting these people that are way less likely to go to college; they’re obviously undereducated,” said Shannon Watson, who has taught courses at the Stillwater prison.

Minnesota prisons give colleges about $5,000 to bring in a professor and class materials.

Restrictions on inmates who can use Specter funding reflect the purpose: helping former inmates fit back into society when they’re released.

Specter money isn’t used for people imprisoned for serious sex crimes or “lifers,” like murderers. Offenders must be 35 years or younger and within seven years of release.

“Somebody who’s committed a heinous act isn’t going to be able to work on their associate degree,” said John Schadl, spokesman for the Minnesota DOC.

At least five MnSCU schools partner with nearby prisons to offer semester-long classes. A few private colleges run programs as well. Globe University, for example, provides instructors at no cost, Schadl said.

Specter-funded classes cost inmates a $10 co-pay.

A big argument in favor of college in prison is economic. It costs $83 a day to keep an inmate locked up in Minnesota, and studies show that classes have reduced re-incarceration rates.

A 2008 study showed participation in education programs reduced re-incarceration by 7 percent to 46 percent.

“It’s common sense that we would like the individuals that are released to become tax-payers instead of tax-takers,” Kiffin said.

And it does more than get offenders jobs, experts say — it can change their outlook on life.

“They go to prison, they’re supposed to be rehabilitated, they have this opportunity and hopefully it changes the way they view their world,” Watson said.

Kiffin said that prisoners’ behavior often improves if they’re taking classes.

He let one inmate take two classes this semester. The man is well-behaved in the prison and had a good academic record.

He was so grateful, he told Kiffin, “Man, I’ll give you a kiss.”

Project Newgate

High on drugs and serving time for burglary, Barry Voss got a month of segregation for fighting with a guard.

He was ill and isolated. He had no drugs to shoot up or cigarettes to smoke. But over those weeks, his mind cleared. Alone in a cell in 1972, Voss decided he wanted to change.

That led him to Project Newgate and the University of Minnesota.

“You saw a genuine, sincere effort by people to reach out and try to help people who really truly needed help,” Voss said of the program.

In the early 1970s, the University campus hosted newly-released inmates like Voss who attended classes as part of their re-entry into society.

After becoming full-time students while doing time at the St. Cloud prison, offenders got out on parole or for study release to enroll on campus.

A big part of the program was group therapy. Newly-released inmates, often bewildered by their new independence and responsibility, lived, ate, studied and talked out issues together.

Newgate students lived in University dormitories for the first couple years. In 1972, the school made 1901 University Avenue — once a fraternity house and now University offices — the program’s home.

In 1975, one participant, a sex offender, abducted a nurse and raped her. In a Minnesota Daily article on the incident, then-University police Chief Eugene Wells questioned Newgate.

“Putting a rapist back in [the University area] is like trying to cure an alcoholic by making him a bartender.”

But for the most part, the program was well-received.

In a 1979 academic journal article by the program’s leaders, a “Newgater” explained how the environment and conversations with housemates helped him.

“You find out that some of the things you thought were really lousy about yourself really aren’t that bad, that it’s a common problem,” he said.

The group therapy was worthwhile for Voss.

“Everybody has these collective experiences and you add [them] up … and they can solve almost any problem,” he said. “If you can’t deal with these problems, you revert back to something you know very well.”

Voss said he hasn’t done drugs since that day in 1972, and he’s now a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis.

Ronald Severson, who directed Project Newgate, said then-University President Malcolm Moos wanted to extend the school’s resources beyond the average classroom.

Newgaters blended into campus.

“There would be no way to know that these were not just regular students,” Severson said. And that helped.

“You don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you’ve just completed three years [in prison].”

After its original funding ran out, Project Newgate struggled to make ends meet and was gone by the mid-’70s.

The program cut re-incarceration, Severson said. Graduates found the shared sense of responsibility and the collective challenges helped them prepare for the real world. Some, like Voss, went on to get more education and find success.

The same year it opened the Newgate house, the University began supporting prisoners with the Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners group, which allowed law students to get experience by helping inmates with civil matters like divorce or bankruptcy.

But once budgets got tight in the early 2000s, the University backed away, “to its noncredit,” said Brad Colbert, who now heads LAMP at the William Mitchell College of Law, which took over the program.

The University of Minnesota’s College of Continuing Education also did some work with prisons, but that stopped in the 1980s. The University doesn’t have any educational partnerships with Minnesota prisons now, spokesman Jeff Falk said.

Political pushback

Many of the prison education programs have carryover funds from previous years to keep classes afloat as they look for alternatives for next year.

Classes will still be available for some, but more prisoners will soon have to pay full tuition themselves. Many won’t be able to afford it.

“If you don’t provide that kind of stuff for them,” Thao said, “then they’re just going to go back out there and go back to what they know and commit more crimes.”

Few groups are adamantly against prisoner higher education. It’s just easy to cut and a political taboo.

Watson, who also helped facilitate the incarcerated students program at St. Cloud State University, says people ask her why their kids have to jump financial aid hurdles to go to college when prisoners get it for free.

It’s kept under the radar, she said — “it’s hard for society to stomach that moral pill.”

The schools that do participate feel it’s part of their duty to “to provide education equally for all,” Watson said.

In a 2011 keynote speech at a prison education conference, Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, linked what experts have coined the “era of mass incarceration” to the future. About 700,000 people leave U.S. prisons each year.

America imprisons a larger fraction of its people than any country in the world, he reminded his colleagues.

“As we live with the consequences of the massive buildup of our prison population, we face the long-term costs of that policy choice,” Travis warned, suggesting public higher education may be the answer to reintegrating the millions leaving prison.

An education study co-authored by two Harvard professors found that top teachers increase students’ lifetime income and standard of living, confirming the commonly-held belief that a single teacher can transform a student’s life.

According to the study, high value-added teachers—or those in the top 5 percent as measured by test scores—produce students who are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, live in better neighborhoods, and save for retirement. The students are also less likely to get pregnant as teenagers.

The study, titled “The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood,” was published in December by Economics professor Raj Chetty and Kennedy School assistant professor John N. Friedman and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia.

The research examined 18 million 3rd through 8th grade test scores in English and math drawn from 1989 to 2009 and compared the data with tax records to determine outcomes. A teacher’s “value-added” was determined by averaging his or her test score gains during the academic year, and the scores were adjusted for differences such as students’ previous scores.

The data was obtained from a large, diverse public school district that encompasses neighborhoods of differing socioeconomic statuses, Friedman said.

The research suggests that value-added assessments of teachers effectively predict long-term outcomes.

According to the study, “Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5 percent with an average teacher would increase the present value of students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000” on average.

“If you’re concerned about growth, especially in a global economy, you’re concerned about making U.S. workers competitive,” said Chetty. “Investing in education, especially at the elementary level, makes a lot of sense.”

The study’s findings add to the debate over education spending and reform.

Friedman said that teachers should be evaluated like other high-earning professionals.

“If we want to pay teachers $100,000, we should treat them like people in other professions that are getting paid six figures,” he said. “We should evaluate performance, we should give feedback, we should improve them as much as possible, we should richly reward those who are successful, and we should improve performance among those who are not doing so well.”

Yet Friedman noted that test scores not the only means of evaluation.

He suggested combining tests scores “with other things like principal evaluation, classroom observation, peer evaluation, and student evaluation” in order “to put together as rich and as accurate a picture of each teacher as you can.”

The study’s findings have attracted significant attention, and was the subject of a column in the New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof.

Allison R. Kimme, Director of Advocacy at Harvard Students for Education Reform, said the study shed light on the importance of effective teachers.

“People don’t realize that teachers have these long-term effects on students,” Kimmel said. “We think that teachers matter for one year to make sure students master content, but great teachers are able to affect people’s lives long after they leave the classroom.”

During the past several decades, the impact of a person’s income level on her or his college attainment — for better or worse — has been amplified even as income inequality has increased, stalling the traditional equalizing power of a college education.

That’s according to a recent analysis by Martha Bailey and Susan Dynarski from U. Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The pair analyzed 70 years of U.S. Census data and compared Americans born in the early 1960s and early 1980s in terms of how many get to college, stay there and come out with a bachelor’s degree.

The results shows a clear trend, as the nation’s highest earners are several times more likely to stay in college long enough to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 25 than the lowest earners.

But the researchers instead focused on the gap between the extremes: Between the two samples, the bottom 25 percent of the country who finished college rose from 5 percent to 9 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, however, the percentage of the country’s top earners succeeding in college shot up 18 percent, from more than one-third of the group to more than half.

Meanwhile, shock waves from the 2008 recession still echo throughout the economy and national student debt is at its highest level ever, likely aggravating these effects.

The lowest earners clearly have a wall between them and college, but what the wall’s bricks are made of depends on who’s asked. Many social scientists believe the forces behind the numbers extend deep into the country’s social and economic landscape.

The pure power of money is hard to ignore, as high-income parents spend almost 10 times as much as low-income parents on each child, according to a recent article in The New York Times on the country’s growing education gap. Women in poverty are more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy, perhaps persuading many to leave college or never go.

Race and income are also intertwined, as the legacy of centuries of racism that continues today leaves a lasting imprint on the financial resilience of people of color.

But there’s more to this trend than just money, many observers agree. Some focus on the impact of parenting, pointing out that low-income families are more likely to have a single parent.

“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” James J. Heckman, an economist at U. Chicago, told The Times. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty … (when) giving families more (money) would improve the prospects of their children.”

“If people conclude that, it’s a mistake,” Heckman said.

The problem is instead incredibly complex, said Kelli King, program coordinator for U. Nebraska-Lincoln’s William H. Thompson Scholars Learning Community, which focuses on low-income students.

“It’s an enormous question,” King said. “Is it solely money? No. Is that a factor? Indeed.”

Three students and friends at U. Nebraska-Lincoln also pointed to single parents as an important factor, but not just because of the lost half of income.

“In a sense, we kind of owe it to our parents to be here,” said Cristina Garcia, a freshman child, youth and family studies major who lives with her dad, to nods of agreement from fellow freshmen Kateri Hiatt and Cristina Moreno. She’s the first in her family to go to college, and added that for many students like her, lacking an example and guide in the family can be another barrier.

“I come from a one-parent family and I’m here,” said Moreno, a UNL freshman who pointed to a necessary ingredient: hope. “It’s possible; of course it’s possible. I’m proof.”

Bailey and Dynarski suggest attempts to bridge the income-education gap must begin early to be effective.

“Differences in high school completion between children from low-income families and those from high-income families explain half of the gap in college entry,” they wrote in their analysis. “Interventions that operate mainly on the college-entry margin — such as scholarships, college outreach campaigns, and mentoring — can only alter the college-entry decisions of those who are able to respond. Those who have already dropped out of high school, in body or spirit, cannot benefit from these interventions.”

Along those lines, UNL began the Nebraska College Preparatory Academy in 2006. The program finds gifted, low-income students in middle school and provides guidance and other resources to facilitate acceptance to UNL while holding them to certain academic standards. All three of the freshmen are part of the academy and said they and most of their peers wouldn’t be in college without it.

“In addition to financial assistance, students must imagine themselves at a university,” Amber Hunter, the academy’s director, wrote in an email. “Imagine if you played football but didn’t know the rules of the game. How could you be successful and win?”

Student-teacher ratios have reached unrealistic proportions, and schools can no longer accommodate the masses they try to seat.

As a future teacher, I strongly support providing quality public education, one that delivers more than just the bare minimum. But there is one major change, brought to attention by the budget, of which I have become a supporter — eliminating tenure.

Perhaps I’ll regret saying this four years down the line when I’m living out of my car after losing my meager teaching salary to budget cuts, but hear me out.

While I believe fairness and job security is important (especially my own), I think the education system (both general and university) need to reevaluate keeping teachers staffed based primarily on their seniority.

In most education systems, tenure is defined as padded job security, which ensures that a teacher cannot be fired unfairly. While this is great in theory, “unfairly” seems to have lost it’s true value.

At U. Nevada, Reno, for example, it takes a tenured professor two years of consecutive unsatisfactory remarks to even be considered for dismissal.

In other words, even if a teacher is abysmal, it will take 730 days (in other words, approximately 12 college classes) before that teacher can be removed and replaced with someone more adequate.

That means that, for two years, students will be receiving instruction that is considered less than satisfactory.

And in the grand scope of the budget, that is two years of wasted salary pay.

In an ideal world, teachers would get better as they spent more time in the classroom.

The real world, however, couldn’t be any further from the truth.

Nevada is full of teachers who have become ingrained in their old ways, refusing to adapt to the changing personalities and learning styles of students.

Teachers become comfortable in tenured positions and lose their desire to contribute and put their best effort into the classroom.

At the university level, we continue to employ professors based on their research, despite poor ratings from students and only satisfactory teaching skills.

In any other profession, the idea of tenure is ludicrous. Jobs in marketing, journalism and even engineering can be lost in an instant based on one poor judgment call.

Only teachers are given a two-year window for messing up. And it’s an important place to clean up the flack.

For every day a poor teacher is in the classroom, there is a student who is likely not understanding the material.

Don’t get me wrong. I support education to the fullest — but not the type that focuses on keeping its employees more than educating students.

And while I agree that every employee deserves job security, it should not impede our ability to keep the most able and flexible teachers in the classroom.

Although this was Chomsky’s first visit to the UA, he has a long lasting connection to the university. The UA has an “unusually large number of people” who have either been a student or department fellow of Chomsky’s, said Thomas Bever, a regents’ professor of linguistics.

“Imagine that we had Einstein or Newton come and speak. In the world of linguistics and cognitive science, Chomsky is like Newton or Einstein for physics,” said Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of linguistics who has collaborated with Chomsky for many years.

Thousands of people lined up to hear Chomsky speak. Those who were unable to get into Centennial Hall were taken to the Social Sciences building to see a recording of the event.

David Blechman, a political science senior, waited in line for more than four hours to hear Chomsky speak.

“This man is one of the premier intellects of our day,” he said. “It’s important to be on the forefront of intellectual thought, especially being in an academic environment like this.”

Chomsky was introduced as the most cited living author and third most cited individual in the world, behind Plato and Sigmund Freud.

At the start of the lecture, Chomsky addressed the question, “Who is education for?”

“For a long time there was a thought that education is just for the upper elite, they are the ones who should make decisions,” Chomsky said, adding that education should be accessible to everyone.

Chomsky also criticized instructional teaching, in which students simply memorize information.

“The early joy of discovery is ruined by memorizing the facts,” Chomsky said. “I remember when I was a 16-year-old freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I had to take a general chemistry class that was exceptionally boring. So I never went to class, just memorized the book,” Chomsky said he received an A in the class.

Chomsky recalled a time when a professor who he had worked with at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was once asked by his students on the first day of class what material was going to be covered. The professor said, “It doesn’t matter what we cover, it matters what we discover. If you discover that everything that I’m teaching is wrong, that would be good.”

For the rest of the lecture, Chomsky focused on the relationship between people in power and the education system.

“The great charter that calls for preservation of the commons has been forgotten. Failure to attend to the commons is a serious problem,” Chomsky said. “Extraterrestrials watching must think that we’re all lunatics. Unless that is restored, we’re in trouble.”

A related problem, he said, is that fashionable consumptions are becoming more important than human values. People used to hold strikes for dignity, but this has been beaten back for generations.

“In fact, the Occupy movements that have be appearing all over have been reviving it (striking for dignity),” Chomsky said.

Chomsky talked about Tucson Unified School District’s decision to get rid of its Mexican-American studies program.

“It’s a particularly ugly part of the whole attack on the enlightenment ideal on higher education,” Chomsky said, adding it’s particularly dramatic that this happened in Tucson, a place that could be called “Occupy Mexico.”

Chomsky quoted Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of the modern university system, and said education is like a string in which the student progresses in his or her own way.

When Chomsky finished speaking, he spent some time answering questions from the audience.

Garrett Swenson and Kendra Hilty, retailing and consumer sciences seniors, said they had never heard Chomsky speak about education before.

“His insight to tuition increasing was great. We both think that everyone at the university should have attended and been able to hear what he had to say,” Hilty said. “Knowledge is power, and Noam Chomsky definitely understands that.”

Dr. Stephen Rodgers, the medical director for the James Madison U. Health Center, has the science to back it up. He said recent studies prove that students with less sleep have lower GPAs than students who do get sleep.

“The mean GPA for students is 2.8, but for sleep-deprived students, it’s 2.65,” Rodgers said.

Only 11.4 percent of students in the past week have gotten enough sleep to feel rested, according to the 2011 health survey by the American College Health Association.

One contributor to this pervasive sleepiness might be all-nighters. They may be a great way to cram for exams, but all-nighters aren’t exactly the best idea. Lack of sleep causes depression and irritability, which affects the brain’s ability to retain information, Rodgers explained.

A crucial part of adding new information to memory is the part of the sleep cycle called rapid eye movement sleep. During REM sleep, the brain embeds the information it’s taken the day before.

Without REM sleep, the brain can’t perform up to its full ability or retain memory.

Jeff Dyche, a JMU psychology professor, said that cramming limits the amount of information the brain can actually learn due to an enzyme produced called protein phosphatase 1.

“It is a molecular constraint to learning,” Dyche said. “In other words, it keeps you from learning things very well. The only way to avoid this is to distribute your studying over a long period of time.”

Caffeine, after a certain point, doesn’t help either.

“Up to three cups of coffee or soda would help performance,” Rodgers said, “but anything more than that would lead to a crash and then more drowsiness the next day during a test.”

Some students said exam week was the most popular time to pull all-nighters.

JMU sophomore Katie Dudek has gone a few sleepless nights to study for exams.

“I have done maybe eight total, and it was during midterm and finals time,” Dudek said. “The most I’ve ever done is two nights in a row, but I had naps during the day. It was finals week.”

JMU freshman Nick Minahan said all-nighters are a necessary evil. He said he gets hit harder with tests and projects on some weeks more than others.

“I feel as if all-nighters aren’t even optional at times, especially around midterms,” Minahan said. “So with that said, they’re worth it because it’s the only way I can complete my work and study an adequate amount.”

Dyche hopes to dispel the popularity of all-nighters.

“I think there are students who think they haven’t studied enough unless they pull an all- nighter,” Dyche said, “so they think it is a requirement or something.”

A study released earlier this month by Georgetown U.’s Center on Education and the Workforce shows a strong correlation between risk of unemployment and certain undergraduate majors. The study indicates that students who choose non-technical majors, such as the arts or social sciences, have unemployment rates of 11.1 and 8.9 percent, respectively. In contrast, recent graduates in engineering, the sciences, education or health care experience a 5.4 percent unemployment rate. These fields also tend to yield the highest earnings.

Even so, students with a specific major are not guaranteed to get a job, said Kedamai Fisseha, a recruiter for a large international bank based in New York. When recruiting at top-tier institutions like Duke, Fisseha said he is confident that applicants have the educational background to be successful in the workplace regardless of their chosen major.

“You come to a place like Duke to study what you want to study, and you will get the skills for a job that you want,” Fisseha said. “Some technical jobs like engineering may require that major, but aside from that, you’ll learn the necessary skills, whatever your major is. That’s the beauty of Duke.”

Standing out in a crowd

At the 2012 Duke Career and Summer Opportunities Fair held Thursday, many students scribbled “econ” on their name tags to boast a more technical major. However, Fisseha said that his company looks for smart, motivated and hard-working people with good communication skills above anything else.

Throughout the job recruitment process, President of Duke Venture Forward Chong Ni, a senior and former member of The Chronicle’s editorial board, noted that future employers looked beyond his economics major during interview rounds. Ni recently accepted a position at a global securities and investment group in New York City.

“Interdisciplinary [studies] is undervalued,” Ni said. “In a lot of the interviews I had, the interviewers told me that they would look at a stack of resumes. Out of 150 resumes, 115 would be economics majors.”

According to the study, specialized majors are not necessarily the highest paying positions. For example, students who majored in architecture experience an unemployment rate as high as 13.9 percent, as their work is correlated with the struggling housing and construction sector.

Given the complexity of Duke’s interdisciplinary undergraduate program—where is it not uncommon to find students with double majors, multiple certificates and minors—William Wright-Swadel, Fannie Mitchell executive director of the Career Center, noted the challenge of identifying patterns between majors and job prospects.

“Because [Duke students] are all diversely able and diversely interested, and with the flexibility of the curriculum, it means that if you simply take the major and try to use that as the sole correlation between what somebody is doing at graduation, it is very difficult,” he said.

Wright-Swadel said that he is much more interested in looking at a student’s holistic experience at Duke when advising them about their future. Rather than focus solely on academics, Wright-Swadel said he hopes to find connections between students’ academic work and their extracurricular interests to find the right career path for them after graduation.

Majors are not the sole indicators of a strong applicant. Ni noted that extracurricular activities are necessary to stand out against the competition during on-campus recruitment events.

“People who get involved and take leadership positions have management and communication skills that employers actually ask about,” he said. “This is the distinguishing [factor] since everyone has a major, and everyone goes to Duke.”

Weighing the options

Students consider different variables when choosing a major. Some pick a major related to a specific career path to gain a sense of security, while others see their studies as more of a vehicle to further their education and not necessarily as a means to a career, Wright-Swadel said.

Senior Emily Burke, an evolutionary anthropology major with a concentration in behavior, ecology and cognition, said she plans to go to Madagascar next year to study a critically endangered species of lemurs in the rainforest. Although her major may help in her next academic endeavour, Burke noted that her studies may not directly correlate to her end career.

“I realized that my major was going to be what I liked studying—I knew it wasn’t going to be something practical,” she said.

Other students opt to go back to school after completing their undergraduate education. According to the study, people with graduate degrees have an unemployment rate of approximately 3 percent and boast yearly earnings between $60,000 and $100,000, compared to $48,000 to $62,000 per year for people with a bachelor’s degree.

After majoring in chemical engineering at Columbia U., Albert Chen decided to enter Duke’s Master in Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship Program because he had trouble finding a job. Chen, who is graduating this year, said he hopes to combine skills from both engineering and management to make the transition to the financial and consulting industry easier.

“I came to Duke to do the MEM because in my school you couldn’t get a job at graduation unless you’re majoring in economics or finance,” Chen said.

Ultimately, Wright-Swadel said he encourages students to choose a major that will allow them to accrue a variety of skills in different areas, as that is a good way to make themselves more attractive to future employers.

“If you’re choosing a major, don’t choose a certificate program that’s the restatement of the major,” Wright-Swadel said. “Look to build breadth, as well as depth, because it will help you not only at launch, but throughout the life of your career.”

Inspired by the success of the Harvard IOP, the new group—for which Axelrod will serve as director—will aim to help young people explore careers in public service.

“We’ll be making the University of Chicago a top destination for newsmakers, political actors, people in the public arena,” said Axelrod in a conference call on Wednesday, adding that it is increasingly important to get fresh faces involved in politics “in a time of great cynicism.”

Although the new institute uses the Harvard IOP as a blueprint, Axelrod said it will have some distinct priorities, many of which are related to its location. In addition to giving Chicago a larger presence in national politics, the new institute hopes to place greater emphasis on “urban politics,” said Axelrod.

C. M. “Trey” Grayson, the director of the Harvard IOP, believes that this direction could be beneficial to the new institution’s growth and identity.

“Harvard’s IOP reflects a very national and international focus,” said Grayson. “You’ve got the challenges that nations face, and also the problems that urban youth face in terms of issues like schools and transportation.”

The institute is not scheduled to open until January 2013, and because Axelrod still faces the substantial hurdle of the 2012 presidential election, its programming is a work in progress.

But following what he refers to as “the last campaign,” Axelrod hopes that he will be able to put aside the competitive work of national election strategy and make his new IOP “studiously nonpartisan or multipartisan.”

Axelrod said that he will step down from the Harvard IOP board at the end of 2012, and make this new institute his main priority.

Another area in which the Chicago IOP has standout potential, Grayson said, is its close association with Obama. Axelrod said the new IOP will “look for ways to create synergy” with Obama, perhaps through housing all or part of the future Obama Presidential Library.

In addition to the close ties Axelrod and Obama share, Obama served as an Illinois state senator in a district that includes part of the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Chicago Law School.

The institute already has a number of recognizable public figures as board members, including historian Dorris Kearns Goodwin, Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick, and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Axelrod hopes that this star power will lead to high levels of student involvement.

“My goal right now is to help encourage young people who are going to be, you know, the David Axelrods and better of the future,” he said.

I was not particularly surprised by the majors this list named (horticulture, animal science, theater, fashion design and agriculture). However, something about this article got students on Facebook really fired up.

Perhaps it was the use of the word “useless” in the title. Useless? Surely Yahoo isn’t endorsing the notion that any college degree can be useless?

It can’t be denied that certain areas of expertise yield a higher pay rate than others, but to have a degree of any kind is not only recommended to the millennial generation, it also is becoming increasingly necessary.

I could easily produce a lengthy explanation as to why any of the majors Yahoo listed supply a number of tools usable in any workforce, but I won’t insult your intelligence. Any reasonable individual can deduce that a degree in animal sciences could assist with everyday life in a number of ways.

No, this argument is shallow, and it does not accurately represent the message I wish to send. A diploma is a diploma, and no matter what the degree is in, the graduate will have obtained skills usable in many environments.

The offense lies not in the idea that any given degree is less practical than another. This is simply a fact. For instance, everything about acting is impractical, but that is arguably a reason to delight in it. This brings me to my point. I believe that practicality is far less urgent than the happiness obtained from chasing your passion. In other words, do you really want to drag yourself to classes you hate in preparation for a job you will despise?

It is hard for many of us to consider placing happiness over frugality. There are times when I wonder if they are one in the same.

Money and employment have been presented as absolute top priorities our entire lives. Many of us have watched our parents put in extra hours to keep the water running, and yeah, being hungry isn’t exactly an awesome sensation. Money is comfortable. Most of us are not used to being without money, and such a state would cause discomfort. You would be lying to yourself if you expect to become an instant success at anything, especially in a highly competitive field like acting.

I’m not a mystic. I don’t believe in callings. I do, however, believe that everyone was born with a biological aptitude for success in a certain field. Call it what you will, but these talents help define us. They make us the beautifully distinct creatures we are. To deny yourself the chance to live passionately because “it‘s not practical” is tragic. Have faith in yourself. Even if you don’t, believe your biology doesn’t lie.

Lose yourself in what you love, and remember that no degree is useless.

Upon his arrest on Sept. 27, Eshaghoff could have faced up to four years in prison on the charges of Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, Falsifying Business Records in the Second Degree and Criminal Impersonation in the Second Degree, according to a Sept. 29 article in the Wheel. He was initially accused of taking the SAT for only six students, but that number has since risen to 16.

Eshaghoff’s actions — including taking the exam for a female student — have led to a national inquiry on SAT cheating, with some calling for tighter exam security measures.

Senior Vice President and General Counsel Steve Sencer specified in an email to the Wheel that Emory played no role in the legal proceedings in Long Island against Eshaghoff.

In his “60 Minutes” interview — which also included interviews with Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and the Educational Testing Services (ETS) President Kurt Landgraf — Eshaghoff revealed precisely how he pulled off taking the SATs for multiple students.

“I took the template from my high school ID, pasted my picture on top of it, and whatever person’s name whose test I was taking, I would have their name and date of birth on it,” Eshaghoff said in the interview. “It was really as easy as that.”

He said that his parents received a phone call with the warrant for his arrest; he immediately felt “shameful,” as if his “world was gonna come crashing down,” he noted.

Eshaghoff noted in an interview with the Wheel that the “60 Minutes” interview lasted for five hours, but the aired segment was about 20 minutes long. He noted that he wished the show had aired more portions of the interview in which, he said, he had exhibited his remorse, particularly for Great Neck and the Great Neck School District.

“I can’t even explain how much damage it did to where I grew up and the community where I grew up and my school district,” he explained.

He also stated that he was not the first to take the SAT exam for others. He had heard of other students successfully cheating in the same way in his own high school. Still, for him personally, it began when he was approached by another student.

“He’s like, ‘Yo, you’re good on your SATs, and I’m not, and you know this is possible, so how much is it gonna take?’” Eshaghoff said in “60 Minutes” of the first student who approached him about the test.

When asked whether he was concerned about the scores he would receive for other students, Eshaghoff noted that he was: “just like any businessperson, you need a good track record.” What he described as his “clientele” was eventually based on word-of-mouth.

In the interview with the Wheel, Eshaghoff said he agreed to appear on the show because he wanted to tell his side of the story.

“I felt like there was some damage control I needed to do and I felt like I owed an explanation to the world about what actual community I grew up in and my reasoning at the time for something like taking the SATs for other people,” Eshaghoff explained. “Before I spoke to anybody I was kind of getting a lot of heat for it. I felt like the image of myself, my family and my community were all tainted.”

Though he was also asked to appear on major television shows such as “Good Morning America” and “20/20,” Eshaghoff said he agreed to an interview on “60 Minutes” because “there’s a certain degree of professionalism that comes with [the show].”

He said he feels that because the interview was shortened, the interview made him appear “proud” of his actions.

“I was kind of disappointed [with the aired interview],” he admitted. “But once the recording was in their hands there was nothing I could have done.”

Eshaghoff added that he wants to dispel sentiments that he appeared on the show for self-promotion.

“It wasn’t to make myself more out there,” Eshaghoff said. “It was to numb the attention of the situation.”

Eshaghoff said he is now required to complete community service but added that he could not legally disclose what the work entails. He did mention that it would involve tutoring underprivileged students.

Eshaghoff said that he is currently being investigated by the Office of Student Conduct to determine whether he is in violation of the conduct code.

Director of Student Conduct Eric Hoffman wrote in an email to the Wheel that he could not comment on an individual student’s case but noted that the Undergraduate Code of Conduct applies to behavior on and off campus.

Hoffman cited the Student Handbook, which states that consideration may be given to: the nature surrounding the violation, the student’s acceptance of responsibility, conduct history, previous cases, the impact of the sanction on a student or any other information deemed relevant to Student Conduct.

In the interview, Eshaghoff noted that he feels there is certainly room for improvement in SAT exam security, including requiring government-issued IDs at test centers and being able to only take the aptitude test at a student’s own high school. He added that he feels colleges should be notified of confirmed instances of cheating.

Tom Ewing, press relations director for ETS — which administers and scores the SAT — explained that immediately following Eshaghoff’s arrest, College Board required test-center personnel to take what he described as a “refresher course” focusing on ID requirements and “the need for vigilance.” Ewing said ETS conducted the test for thousands of test-center supervisors.

In addition, College Board sent out print materials and bulletin updates related to test center operations.

Still, he said he feels the SAT cheating rings that have been discovered since Eshaghoff’s arrest are “not a nationwide epidemic.” Each year, according to Ewing, ETS analyzes test-score data to identify instances of cheating and misbehavior before scores are actually reported.

“If there were large-scale rings all over the country, it would show up when we look at score [data],” Ewing said. “We’re a company that collects data and keeps track of data and scores, and we’re not seeing rings of impersonators.”

As for the future, Ewing noted that New York State Senator Kenneth LaValle has been proposing changes to New York education laws to make SAT-cheating penalties more severe and strengthen student identification requirements and test-center procedures.

The officially unpublished report—“What Happens After Enrollment? An Analysis of the Time Path of Racial Differences in GPA and Major Choice”—examined how minority students close the gap in academic performance as compared to white counterparts at Duke. The research found that black students’ GPAs indeed converge eventually with those of white students, but attributed this to black students being more likely than white students to switch to less difficult majors. About 35 people protested the study Sunday, claiming that the research minimizes the achievement of black students and wrongly characterizes some humanities disciplines as easier than other majors.

The Black Student Alliance sponsored the protest following remarks by Donna Brazile, vice chair of voter registration of the Democratic National Committee, in the Duke Chapel Sunday. In a statement released by the organization Monday, BSA expressed concern about the study’s methodology and called for action.

“We reject the notion that majors in the humanities and social sciences are inherently easier and call on the University administration to do the same, publicly,” the statement said. “Furthermore, we ask the entire Duke community to stand with us against this attack on the academic achievements of all students in the humanities and social sciences and black students at this University.”

BSA members declined to comment further.

“This study does not embody Duke’s values as an institution,” said sophomore Jacob Tobia, who attended the demonstration. “We do not stand for that type of racist inquiry and that misuse of academia to mischaracterize the accomplishments of the African-American students at our institution.”

For the purposes of the research, the investigators quantified the difficulty of certain majors based on student evaluations, measured study times, grades and grading standards. Among the “more difficult” majors were engineering, hard sciences and economics. Subjects in the humanities and social sciences were deemed less difficult.

According to the study, among students matriculating in 2001 and 2002 who initially expressed an interest in majoring in engineering, economics or the natural sciences, 54 percent of black males and 51 percent of black females ended up switching to other majors in the humanities or social sciences. By contrast, only about 8 percent of white men and 33 percent of white women switched majors.

Black students are slightly more likely than white students to express an initial interest in engineering, economics or the natural sciences—61.7 percent for blacks compared to 60.8 percent for whites—yet less than 30 percent of black students finish with a major in that realm compared to 50.5 percent of whites.

‘Not the intent’

Peter Arcidiacono, the report’s lead author and professor of economics, said that he is not certain what BSA and others are criticizing about the study.

“I was very surprised that the study received coverage given that it is unpublished,” Arcidiacono wrote in an email Sunday. “The reaction may be because others are using the study in a lawsuit against racial preferences in admissions.”

Arcidiacono is meeting with BSA members Thursday.

“I hope that people have actually read the study,” he said. “When I meet with BSA, I hope to make clear what the paper says and what it doesn’t say.”

Although most of the controversy centers around the racial aspect of Arcidiacono’s study, he and his colleagues also observed similar results with legacy students, who—like minorities—are often given an advantage in college admissions.

In the report, the scholars argue that their findings undermine other studies that play down the difficulties experienced by recipients of affirmative action and legacy students by asserting that these students eventually earn the same GPAs as their white counterparts. The research found similar major-switching patterns in legacy students as well.

BSA President Nana Asante, a senior, said in a speech before Brazile’s remarks that the study undermines the scholastic achievements of black students at Duke.

“That was definitely not the intent,” Arcidiacono said. “I don’t think other academic economists read the paper in that way, either.”

He added that people may be misinterpreting what the study actually says.

“The study doesn’t say anything about what races are better at Duke or anything like that,” he said in an interview. “What it actually says is that if you take white students and black students with similar levels of academic preparation, then they leave the hard sciences and economics at the same rate,”

The reason that the gaps are so different in terms of how many people switch out is that students are coming to Duke with very different academic backgrounds, he added.

‘Affront to the liberal arts’

Protesters, who held signs reading “GPA has no race” and “My major is not easy” among other statements, had an equally passionate response to the fact that some majors were quantified as less difficult than other subjects.

According to the report, self-reported assessments of course difficulty indicated that the sciences were more difficult than the humanities. Students taking courses in the natural sciences, engineering and economics earned grades that were on average 8 percent lower than courses outside those fields. Moreover, these subjects were associated with 50 percent more study time than others.

“The study is an affront to the diversity of our institution and an affront to the liberal arts in general,” Tobia said.

Sophomore Alston Neville said he thinks the study is biased.

“It doesn’t take into account anything about the value of the majors,” Neville said. “It’s just assuming that hard majors are in pre-med classes, so it’s really not taking into credit what majors at Duke are different, and it’s not all about color as it is making it seem.”

Arcidiacono said that, in contrast to some accusations, his study did not label majors that fall within the social sciences as easy.

“I just read [the report] again and could not find anything that said humanities and social science majors were easy,” he said. “All statements are about relative difficulties, given student answers to the survey questions.”

Senior Thomas Burr, an economics major, said BSA overreacted to the study and misunderstood economics department’s purpose. He added that he believes the professors who spearheaded the study—Arcidiacono and Kenneth Spenner, professor of sociology, psychology and neuroscience—were unfairly attacked in the email BSA sent to students that called for a protest and labeled Aridiacono’s study “hurtful and alienating.”

“Essentially, BSA has implied that the professors had malicious intent when performing this research, which is absurd,” Burr wrote in an email Sunday. “They should have met with the professors before making such an inflammatory charge against their characters.”

Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Brian Connolly told Spectator that Columbia’s Committee on Instruction has not approved the proposed class, which would allow students to conduct fieldwork at OWS protests.

“A few news outlets reported that Columbia would be offering a new undergraduate course regarding Occupy Wall Street,” Connolly said in an email. “News reports and some departmental postings regarding the spring semester were premature.”

The course listing was removed from Columbia websites earlier this week. And according to two members of the Committee on Instruction, the proposed course has not even been presented to the COI.

One of those COI members, political science professor Gregory Wawro, said that it’s “pretty late in the game” to start thinking about approving a course for next semester.

“Given that the semester starts in a week and a half, I don’t see how it could be offered in the spring,” he said. “But, it could be offered at a later time.”

Wawro added that the COI holds all proposed courses to a high standard and examines their syllabuses carefully.

“You don’t want to not follow the process because you want to rush something into the curriculum,” he said. “The COI is pretty differential when it comes to course approval.”

The course, titled, “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement,” would be taught by Hannah Appel, an anthropology professor who has written about her support for the Occupy protesters. Appel did not respond to request for comment Friday.

Astronomy professor and COI member Jacqueline van Gorkom had not heard anything about the proposed course before media reports this week, but she said it sounded like it would have a good shot at approval.

“It sounds like a very good idea—it’s something very interesting that is happening now, and it’s kind of crazy not to analyze that,” she said. “Aren’t we supposed to do that?”

Connolly said that the study of “contemporary political, economic, and social issues is entirely appropriate” at Columbia. Wawro added that an OWS course could still be offered in future semesters.

“The Occupy Wall Street movement does touch on a lot of important topics that students and faculty should be talking about,” he said. “I could see a course that would discuss the movement in the context of other movements within the United States and beyond.”

Even though it’s currently removed from Columbia U’s spring anthropology course listings, the university has announced they will offer a class on Occupy Wall Street next semester, according to the New York Post.

Postdoctoral scholar at Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought Hannah Appel, will teach the anthropology course, which is entitled “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” An anthropologist by trade, Appel has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Equatorial Guinea’s transational oil and gas industry.

The course will combine seminars at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus with fieldwork in and around OWS movements.

According to the syllabus, which features a ballerina in releve attitude balancing upon the Merrill Lynch bull, Appel expects students to be involved in ongoing Occupy projects, though she says a “particular orientation toward OWS” is not requisite for participation.” Along with guest lecturers, Appel plans to incorporate sociological, political theory, economics, history and primary source material “from OWS and beyond.”

Appel blogs for the Social Text collective about OWS, where she offers ethnographic observations and commentary on the movement.

Appel told the Post her support for OWS won’t keep her from being an objective teacher.

“Inevitably, my experience will color the way I teach, but I feel equipped to teach objectively,” Appel told The Post. “It’s best to be critical of the things we hold most sacred.”

The “risk of disengaged scholarship”, Appel says in her syllabus, outweighs the foreseeable risk of the course’s fieldwork.

Possible exposure to unsafe or violent situations will be minimized by “scrupulous contingency plans” including buddy-systems, phone trees and pre-determined meeting places, according to Appel’s syllabus.

In 1961, full-time undergraduate students clocked in 40 hours of study time per week, according to a 2010 report issued by Phillip Babcock and Mindy Marks. By 2003, that number dipped to 27 hours per week.

At Penn State U., one of the participating universities in the NSSE, students in their first year and senior year were surveyed on the amount of hours they thought they studied during a school week.

Given the option to choose from a range of numbers — 0, 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30 and more than 30 — senior and first-year University Park students, on average, said they study about 16 hours per week.

According to the study, University Park engineering senior students studied 19.8 hours per week and engineering first-year students studied 17.2 hours per week.

Angela Linse, executive director and associate dean of the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, said it is not as surprising to see that students in engineering and the sciences are studying the most, but to see education seniors studying the second highest — 18.8 hours per week — is quite interesting.

Penn State freshman Rackel Nderi said she feels that she studies too much. Nderi said she studies between 34 and 36 hours each week.

“I stress myself out from studying, since I am a pre-med major,” Nderi said.

According to the study, University Park business majors study the least amount of hours per week.

Seniors prepare 12.3 hours per week and first-year business students prepare 14.3 hours.

One factor to take into consideration for is that first-year students are coming into college with the same study habits from high school, whereas seniors are taking more classes that pertain to their major, Linse said.

The report may prove that engineering students are studying more than business majors, but it also found that business students, especially full-time seniors, are working about 16 hours per week.

For every hour of time spent in the classroom, a student should be studying two to three hours outside of the classroom, Linse said.

If this equation is based on the 15 to 18 credits per semester a student takes, then the average number of hours a University Park student studies per week is low.

Using the formula, a student taking 15 credits should study between 30 to 45 hours a week, and one who is taking 18 credits should study between 36 and 54 hours a week.

But she said that she questions how students interpreted the survey — for instance, what did students consider studying?

“Reading a textbook, reading over notes before class and doing group work is considered prepping for class, but do students consider this when they were asked how many hours per week they studied?” Linse said.

The same concerns were expressed by Penn State sophomore Brigitte Ruiz.

“It all depends on if I have an exam that week and what class it’s for. I probably study between five and eight hours per week, but it also depends on what work is considered studying,” Ruiz said.

For PSU junior Dave Furjanic, he said that some people are studying too much.

He considers a productive week spending five hours per week studying, and he still gets the grades that he wants.

“If two people can both get an A on a test and one person spends more time studying, than the extra time studying is wasted,” Furjanic said.

The aggregate information that was collected only “roughly” represents the student population — often times women are more likely to answer surveys — which insists gathering further data to find the nuances, Linse said. The best way to figure out how students are studying is to take a sample group and have further discussions, she added.

According to Babcock and Marks, “increased market pressures have empowered students, causing colleges to cater more to students’ desires for leisure.”

When Russell Chuderewicz, a Penn State senior lecturer in economics, taught in Miami, Fla., he said that he was up against the weather.

“I had to compete with South Beach,” he said. “Students would much rather spend a nice day on the beach as opposed to class, which is why I had to keep the class interesting.”

There is also the possibility of advances in technology, making it easier to accumulate information.

Chuderewicz said that in an hour’s time today, students could do more work than in 1961. There are many more alternatives to studying as well.

With the larger percentage of students that do attend college today, the quality of education they are receiving decreases, Chuderewicz said. Lack of communication between faculty and students could also cause for the decreasing numbers.

Chuderewicz said though he does not specifically tell his students how long to study, he expects them to work at least four to five hours per week on his class.

Even if this level of transparency exists between the two parties, some question if professors should be expecting more of their students.

Linse, a woman who has taught many classes herself, said that students are coming into college with the expectation of not having to study outside of class.

Unfortunately, the solution to this problem is not simple.

“Getting everyone here at Penn State to do one thing is not practical,” Linse said.

During the intensive studying and last minute cram sessions of finals week, students often blame Facebook for interfering in their study efforts and fueling procrastination.

While Facebook might not be helpful when it comes to studying, it doesn’t mean students’ grades have to suffer. According to a recent study, some types of Facebook use actually correlate with higher grade point averages.

Published in Computers in Human Behavior, the study analyzed 1,839 college students’ grades and Facebook usage.

These students reported spending an average of 106 minutes each day on Facebook. How those 106 minutes of time on Facebook were spent determines the kind of impact Facebook has on the student, according to the study.

Engaging in activities that involve collecting and sharing information, such as sharing informative links, proved to have a positive impact on students’ GPAs. Posting frequent status updates and using Facebook chat, however, were determined to negatively affect GPA.

This distinction is one that can also be seen offline and around campus.

“Those students who spend more time socializing to the exclusion of engaging in academic work have poor academic outcomes,” the study said.

At the same time, those who post links and use Facebook to communicate useful information are more likely to be engaged with the outside environment and in the classroom, the study said.

Penn State Learning Community Associate, Leagh Anderson said that the impact on GPA could also depend on when the students are accessing Facebook. Those who are frequently updating their statuses are often those who are on Facebook intermittently throughout the day.

This intermittent and frequent checking of Facebook can interfere with the time needed to digest and absorb course material, Anderson said.

Students Greg Brulo and Amy Niedbala both reported spending up to two hours each day on Facebook. Niedbala said that it sometimes interferes with her studying, but they both agreed that it does not have any sort of negative impact on their grades.

“I use Facebook to take a break so I don’t get mentally drained while studying,” Brulo said. “My time management has a stronger correlation to my grades than Facebook.

The U. Dublin study, cited in a Nov. 30 article in The New York Times, suggested that physical activity increases the level of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor protein that improves memory. The researchers tested male college students who exercised to varying degrees on their performance on memory tests.

Jamie Bunce, a Boston U. researcher who is not affiliated with the original study, said the exact role this protein plays in cognition and recall is still being researched.

“This study raises some interesting questions about the way exercise affects cognitive performance,” Bunce said.  “It’s still unclear what role BDNF is playing, as the study shows increases in BDNF levels didn’t necessarily correlate with more accurate memory performance.”

Karin Schon, senior postdoctoral associate at the BU Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab, said researchers at the BU Center for Memory and Brain are looking into the effects of cardio-respiratory fitness on memory-task performance.

The study suggested that a healthy lifestyle consisting of regular exercise promotes good brain health and may even protect individuals from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, according to the Times.

“The more we learn, the more it seems the old adage, ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ is apt,” said Bunce.

Students said they have heard that exercise can prevent future diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, but never knew physical activity could improve your mental processes in the mean time.

“Now that I know it’s not just for the aging population, I might test out the theory for myself,” said Harsha Reddy, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Craig Baldino, a BU sophomore, said this study has prompted him to consider his daily routine’s impact on his academic performance, especially as the Fall semester’s final grades approach.

“When I work out I definitely feel rejuvenated and more productive,” Baldino said. “I’m going to rethink my daily schedule if working out more would help me retain more information and bring up my GPA.”

BU sophomore Michalis Michaelides, however, said while exercise may improve your temporary cognition and memory, it probably does not mean that you will be a better or more productive student.

Despite what the study suggests about BDNF protein levels impact on memory, Bunce said she thinks students should not be quick to make assumptions about how much exercise can affect their academic performances.

“While the authors may argue that acute exercise is enough to increase performance on a memory task, I would hazard a guess that sprinting to your final, in and of itself, may not be sufficient to get that A,” Bunce said.

To fuel consecutive all-nighters, some students depend on substances, ranging from excessive caffeine consumption through coffee and energy drinks to the more extreme prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin. A popular habit among stress-induced students is relying on Adderall, a medication prescribed to people that suffer from ADD and ADHD and which increases concentration and information absorption. The health risks involved with this study habit are striking, and the threat the drug holds to the educational experience is equally as devastating.

Any absorption of knowledge is short-lived, and using Adderall undermines the concept of education as knowledge, redefining the college experience into one of temporarily memorizing enough information to succeed on the final exam. While Adderall may substantially improve student’s exam scores, these visible results are not representative of the student’s own abilities and cumulative knowledge in the course.

Joshua Foer, a freelance journalist who specifically focuses on science in his writing, concluded the following after experimenting with Adderall for one week: “I didn’t feel like I was becoming smarter or even like I was thinking more clearly. I just felt more directed, less distracted by rogue thoughts, less day-dreamy.”

In the current technological world we live in today, surrounded by our phones, social networking sites and television, in combination with the increased pressure on students to handle an overwhelming amount of coursework and perform well on exams, Adderall may seem necessary. The drug does not attract one particular demographic of students; both students with good study habits and procrastinators may feel that they cannot perform as well without an extra stimulant.

But while most students are familiar with the often unspoken, or at least ignored, reliance on study drugs during finals, university officials generally feel helpless in combating their usage. In a recent article in The Washington Post Daniel Swinton, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration and assistant dean at Vanderbilt University, stated that study drugs are “kind of a silent issue; everyone’s aware of it, but I think we’re all focused on the more prevalent one: alcohol.” The official effort that does go into reducing this dependence, such as campaigns for healthy study habits introduced at the beginning of the school year, are often disregarded by the pressing anxiety students feel in the last remaining weeks of the school year.

Students must be reminded that they possess the natural capability to perform well, if they only recognized the far-reaching benefits that a gradual approach to studying and a healthier lifestyle around the finals week — such as swapping caffeinated beverages for water, frequent exercise or some sort of enjoyable physical activity and taking study breaks to have calming personal time — have. Rather than being bombarded with the potential health risks, students should be asked the question of how study drug use is contributing to their long-term education. Not only does Adderall reinforce the stereotype that our nation is filled with a strained, overworked and prescription medication-dependent population more concerned with productivity than its physical or mental health, its use is essentially corrupting the process of gaining knowledge from university classes.

Recommendations for the 2015 Medical College Admission Test were finalized this November and are to be voted upon by the Association of American Colleges’ Board of Directors in Feb. 2012.

“The MCAT is evolving to be more relevant for the next generation of doctors, which impacts thousands of current college freshmen and sophomores who plan to take the exam in 2015 and beyond,” said Amjed Saffarini, Kaplan Test Prep executive director of pre-health programs in a recent press release.

Kaplan Test Prep Director of Pre-Health Programs Jeff Koetje said that while the changes have yet to be etched in stone, the company has an overall understanding of what the future MCAT will look like.

The proposal includes the implementation of more upper level sciences in the exam, such as biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, genetics, and statistics and research methods.

The committee that formulated the proposal is also recommending the creation of a completely new section of the MCAT, which revolves around the student’s understanding of psychology and sociological basis for behavior.

“Patients are now being appreciated for the diversity they represent; their socioeconomic standing, culture and geography,” Koetje said. “The complexity of patients requires an equally complex understanding from the physician in order to work with patients in a partnering relationship.”

The writing section of the MCAT will be removed in 2013, as AAMC research indicated that most colleges did not use the section when evaluating applicants.

If the recommendations are approved by the AAMC, the exam will be 115 minutes longer than it currently is, making for a 7-hour long test day.

Koetje said that while prospective med-school students may not be pleased by the MCAT’s increased time-length, he doesn’t expect the changes to lead to fewer test-takers.

“Premed students are used to a rigorous workload,” Koetje said.

To prepare students for the exam, universities with premed programs are expected to make curricular changes. Students will be encouraged to take more humanities and social sciences courses, as some of the new MCAT questions will relate to those areas of study.

Due to the tentative nature of the MCAT alterations, UCF College of Medicine Dean Deborah German was unable to comment on curricular changes that might be made at the school.

According to a Kaplan survey that included opinions of 69 of the 135 accredited AAMC schools, 73 percent of medical school admissions officers believe that the 2015 MCAT will expand critical thinking and “better prepare students for the medical school experience.”

UCF junior biology major and premed student Ryan Silverstein said that she understands the overall goal of the new MCAT.

“I like the idea of having more well-rounded med students and that they want us to have more of a background in the humanities,” Silverstein said. “But I feel like it’s going to make the test a lot more intense and difficult, and I don’t think people are going to be happy with that.”

Jonathan Littell, junior molecular biology and microbiology major, had a different opinion.

“I don’t think they should add those sections, because as of right now I think the MCAT shows a good base-line understanding of the person,” Littell said. “If they make the test harder, it will just make people want to study more. Admissions should be more about the person as a whole than how they did on a particular test.”

The review process began in 2008 when the MR5 committee, which put together the proposal, began consulting practicing physicians, deans and directors of medical schools, pre-health advisors and undergraduate biology professors in order to get an accurate depiction of what subject-area knowledge the doctors of today should be equipped with.

Koetje said Kaplan Test Prep is currently developing resources to address the proposed content and sections of the 2015 MCAT. The new material will not need to be reviewed with students, however, until they are preparing for the exam in 2014.

“We’re going to start talking about it with students now; bringing them up to a level of awareness of the test so they can think about it and figure out if the changes will be relevant to them,” Koetje said.

“In the end, it will make for better people and more empathic physicians because they’ll be more aware of the sociocultural aspects of healthcare delivery.”

For free resources related to the MCAT and medical school admissions, visit www.kaplanmcat.com.

Unfortunately, that may be one of the worst ways to prepare, according to U. Texas professor Russell Poldrack, who studies memory, learning and how we acquire new skills.

“Getting a good night’s sleep is probably the most important thing,” he said. “It’s a really important way that memories get transformed in the brain.”

In other words, walk into a test feeling like a zombie, and you’ll likely perform like one. Aside from getting a good night’s rest, there are other techniques to keep in mind while studying.

For one, make studying an active process. Rereading the same textbook for the eighth time isn’t going to do a whole lot for you on test day. A 2006 experiment by Henry L. Roediger, III and Jeffrey D. Karpicke confirmed this, suggesting that rereading boosts confidence in the subject matter without significantly increasing mastery of the material. This is a recipe for disaster.

A better way to prepare for the final is to continually test yourself.

“The act of retrieving something from memory is actually one of the most powerful ways to get it to stick in memory,” Poldrack said.

Additionally, Poldrack suggests that your surroundings can make a huge difference as to how well you can recall information. A classic study performed by D.R. Godden and A.D. Baddeley of U. Stirling placed subjects either on land or in SCUBA suits underwater and asked them to learn a list of words. When tested, the ones who learned the words on land performed better on land and those who learned them underwater performed better underwater. As such, it may be more effective to study in a library or classroom setting that’s similar to where you’ll be tested rather than curled up in bed.

Even something as simple as your mood could make a difference as to how well you remember things. A paper published in American Psychologist by Gordon H. Bower of Stanford collected several experiments testing this idea and the results very strongly suggest that if you’re in a crummy mood when you’re studying, you’re better off waiting until after the test to cheer up.

These are all things to keep in mind to minimize damage, but, ultimately, the most important thing to consider is how you found yourself in this mess to begin with. The nights you spent watching TV or going to parties may have seemed like good ideas at the time, but not in retrospect. And, ultimately, those nights may be what make the difference between the average students and those who excel.

A classic and on-going study by Walter Mischel (currently at Columbia U.) involved leaving small children alone in a room with a treat such as a marshmallow. If a given child could avoid eating the marshmallow until a researcher returned to the room, the researcher would reward the child with a second marshmallow. Approximately one-third of the subjects lasted long enough to get the reward, while the rest gave in to temptation.

The amount of time a given child could hold off eating the treat had a long-lasting impact. For instance, those who could wait for the reward ended scoring higher on the SAT more than 10 years later than the other group.

Of course, none of that matters at the tail end of the semester when there’s no time to give in to temptation, but it’s something to keep in mind for the next one.

Poldrack explains, “One very fundamental thing that we know about people is that events in the future get discounted. The impact of something in the future is much smaller than the impact in the present. Even if the prospect of failing a class is a very bad thing, that’s not going to happen until the end of the semester.”

So let this semester be a lesson of what not to do. Don’t just read through the book several times and call it studying — instead, put your brain to work and test yourself constantly. Be mindful of your surroundings as well as your mood and make sure you get plenty of sleep, particularly around midterm and finals time. And while a night of partying may be fun and even deserved every once in a while, remember not to give in to the marshmallow.

At least not too often.

As an undergraduate student, I once took a course on modern U.S. history from 1939 to the present. The course was heavily politicized because, according to the instructor, the history of modern America was the history of political dalliances. Politics permeated almost every aspect of the course, and conversations among students about politics were not uncommon. I remember getting into a conversation with another student about education and politics, and the conversation quickly turned into a rousing debate. As we were debating the place of politics in education, I could sense the discomfort building among my other classmates. It is this discomfort that all students are familiar with, especially in courses that lend themselves to political angles.

The wonderful and scary thing about college is that students — and teachers — never know exactly how a class will progress. Many courses do not start out as overtly political ones, unless the course is one in political science. While some in education argue that politics has no place in the classroom, it’s not easy to separate ideology from instruction. You can’t separate something from what informs it — it’s impossible to separate politics from education because education is created, informed and mediated by politics.

Teachers and students both bring their own cultures and understandings to the classroom, and political leanings are integral to both. Often, politics influence how we read texts or understand course material. However, that type of cursory politics in the classroom, the kind that is integral to the culture students and teachers bring, is hardly the most troublesome. Many students and teachers are more concerned with the type of overt politics that comes out during class discussion and debate.

These types of debates often create a contentious environment in classrooms because students and teachers become hyper aware and conscious of what they say, which could lead to them saying very little. The problems this reluctance creates abound. It may cause students and teachers to be uncomfortable, it may cause them to not speak or interject into a conversation and it may disrupt learning. The last problem is of particular concern to me because the primary goal of any classroom and any teacher should be to create a space where learning is encouraged.

As a teacher, I’m always aware of the politics I bring into my classrooms. I’ve never wanted to force my political views onto my students because that’s not my place. My place is to help my students find and secure their own beliefs, their own interests and their own destiny. There are many times when I disagree with a political point a student brings into a discussion, but I’ve never put down the student or openly disagreed with the student. I try to use those times as a way to connect to larger issues in and outside of the university. It’s important to believe in something, but it’s equally important to understand that other beliefs exist.

As a student, I’ve had teachers blatantly tell me and other students that our political ideology was wrong or our understanding was incorrect. I doubt it was wrong or incorrect but more that we just disagreed with the teacher. Our way of understanding the world was different from the way the teacher understood the world.

I think students should challenge their teachers. Education is not about complacent knowledge saturation. It’s about dialogue. It’s about give and take, and it’s about understanding that no one person is always correct. There are many different views, even of trivial things. The issue of politics in the classroom only becomes contentious when in-class discussions start to be interpreted as personal attacks. Often, though, these aren’t really personal attacks but last-ditch efforts to “win” a discussion or debate. Most students and teachers remember these types of discussions because it highlights the negatives of overtly bringing politics into the classroom, and it pushes teachers to avoid politics altogether.

Unfortunately, you can never avoid politics, especially in an educational setting. Whether it’s the price of soda on campus or the current American military engagements, politics cannot be separated from how we understand the world, and therefore, how we understand course material. These issues affect students and teachers at many levels, and those issues don’t magically disappear when either enters the classroom. It’s ridiculous to think they ever do.

Perhaps the most important thing a teacher can do is mediate the discussion and change the topic if necessary. Students should never be afraid to speak up in class because they feel their understanding will conflict with everyone else’s understanding. If they fear such things, then one of the points of education is lost, and the teacher has failed. Open and civil disagreement about course material and what influences said material should not only be allowed but encouraged. It is only when we are afraid to talk about such things in the classroom that our ideas, concept and understandings of the world fail to evolve and change.

Politics and education are not static; they move, change, adapt and evolve to become something else. The same can be said of students and teachers. Instead of avoiding politics altogether in the classroom, students and teachers should see such discussions as a practical way to connect what they’re learning to what happens outside the university.

As more and more classroom content finds its way to an online format, this policy seems like a step in the wrong direction.

The policy was prompted largely by an incident in April, when two Missouri professors nearly lost their jobs after a video posted on an anti-union blog apparently showed them promoting union violence during a class lecture.

At first, some called for the professors’ resignations, but the university eventually sided with them after it was determined that the two seven-minute videos had been deceptively edited from about 30 hours of lecture footage that was posted on the university’s Blackboard system as part of a distance-education course, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Gail Hackett, provost of U. Missouri-Kansas City, issued a statement in April critical of the videos, stating that a review of the original footage made it “clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning. Such selective editing is disturbing, and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights.”

The proposed policy change is intended to make students and professors comfortable with talking openly in class. Steve Graham, senior associate vice president for academic affairs for the U. Missouri system, said to The Associated Press that the policy “protects the sanctity of the classroom for our students so they can freely discuss their thoughts and opinions.”

This seems like an exaggerated concern, however. Most students probably aren’t worried about what they say during discussions finding its way out of the classroom, and the policy would only hinder students’ abilities to take notes and learn in class.

The videos represent a deliberate attempt to manipulate words, and the policy would do nothing to limit such extreme cases. Individuals with agendas will still find ways to discredit professors they disagree with ideologically, while legitimate students suffer under such policies. Additionally, the videos were created from lectures intentionally posted online, though only students in the class were meant to see them.

Many USF professors include recording policies in their syllabuses, such as requiring some form of permission before recording or banning the sale of recorded lectures. Individual policies like these are a better solution than a university-wide policy that could damage the learning environment it is trying to protect.

Assistant NMU professor of sociology Jeanne Lorentzen gave her SO 101 students the option to earn 20 extra credit points if they participated in the Occupy the Upper Peninsula protest held Saturday, Oct. 15.

The students were also given another option sent through an email Oct. 13 to her entry-level classes. It was to write a 20-page paper about a social movement.

Lorentzen stated in the email that the paper “should be a critical sociological analysis of a particular social movement and must include at least five substantive concepts from the course text.”

It also said if students chose to attend the march they “must make a protest sign as long as it’s not offensive, rude or divisive you can write anything and sign an attendance sheet twice, once at 9:45 a.m. and once after the march is over.”

“Overall, I feel that Dr. Loretzen’s extra credit opportunity was politically biased,” said President of the NMU Chapter of College Republican Sarah Morrison. “There was no equal opportunity presented for students who held opposing view points. There needs to be more diversity of opinion in our academic programs.”

Northern received several complaints stating the paper was not a fair alternative to attending the protests.

“Instructors are expected to make assignments for their courses and it is not the university’s place, as a whole. To approve or disapprove them,” said Cindy Paavola, NMU director of communications and marketing.

Paavola said she is not aware of any special rules for extra credit, but all course assignments, whether mandatory or for extra credit, must relate to the course topic in some way and must be fair.

“If a student files a formal complaint about a course, an instructor’s teaching or grading, or course assignment(s) with the Dean of Students Office or one of the related academic offices, it is reviewed and addressed by the appropriate academic leaders,” Paavola said.

An article about Lorentzen’s extra credit opportunity was published on theblaze.com Oct. 15. Many people commented on the article and criticized Lorentzen’s teaching abilities. Some even threatened her life.

One person posted Oct. 17, “she’s a candidate for a .22 ca. brain transplant just like most Liberal professors!”
Paavola stated that NMU will not be changing their rules on extra credit and that the current expectations in place work very well.

“The university administration only gets involved in curricular issues when there are questions about whether an assignment is relevant to a specific course,” Paavola said. “For example a sociology professor shouldn’t have an assignment that involves a chemistry project.

According to Paavola if the assignment is appropriate to the learning level of the course and if it impacts a student’s grade fairly the administration does not get involved with curricular issues.

The above question is one I hear all the time from my friends and family. But most times, content in the pursuit of my passions, I ignore the criticism.

But I can’t anymore. According to author Michael Ellsberg in an op-ed in The New York Times, “American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians.” He continues to make an argument describing how college is appropriate only for regulated fields, by which he means the ones with clear career paths such as engineers, doctors and lawyers. His argument relies on two premises: High school graduates are ready to enter the work force and skills including thinking innovatively and networking are best learned outside of higher education.

Eighteen-year-olds are barely old enough to vote, are still poor drivers and are unable to consume alcohol or check into hotel rooms by themselves. Those limitations aside, most have yet to move out of their parents’ homes and may not have held a real job yet. As for networking, what network is greater than a college campus and its huge alumni base and avid sports fans? Innovative thinking results from exposure to new ideas and situations, both of which are present on university campuses.

So I disagree with Ellsberg on both counts. I would also like to point out that it was my training in liberal arts that taught me how to explicate his argument, but that is, of course, an undesirable talent. His argument also fails because most of his support comes from using the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Michael Dells of the world to support his point — all of whom represent a uniquely talented and successful group that is incomparable to the rest of the population.

Given that this is a university-sponsored paper, you probably already believe in some worth of a college education. But apparently, U. Texas doesn’t — at least when it comes to the College of Liberal Arts.

This mentality is perpetuated by the dismal showing of career opportunities at last week’s UT career fair. I was appalled at the jobs offered that my degree in liberal arts apparently prepares me for.

There were several companies that would love for me to work as an unpaid intern. Do they eventually hire those interns? No, but the experience would be good. Multiple financial advisers were at the fair recruiting students with degrees in finance, a major not even offered in the college.

Several companies recruited me for managerial positions in retail, but I would have qualified for all of them at this point in my life had I simply dropped out of high school at 16 and started working for them then.

Should you find yourself desiring the ability to drive trucks and deliver salty snacks to vending machines across the country, guess what? The college thinks your degree prepares you to do that, too. How is the job market and everyone else supposed to take liberal arts degrees seriously if the university granting them to us tells us that after four years of schooling and at least 120 credit hours of education, we are now qualified to drive trucks for a living?

If UT believes as I do that the skills gained in a liberal arts education are worthy of jobs that are more difficult than that, it needs to act that way. Quit giving us fluffy speeches about the merits of “thinking critically and expanding our minds” if you do not believe they will get us a real job. Most job opportunities ask for employees to think creatively, solve problems and write well, all of which are skills that are most emphasized in liberal arts. Also, since the college regularly admits and graduates more students than any other college, pull on the giant alumni network to find opportunities for us. The opportunities are there; the support from this institution isn’t.

If the University thinks we are qualified for great jobs, they need to show us where they are. If not, perhaps one day, all of us liberal arts students will be fortunate enough to visit vending machines on college campuses to deliver our salty treats. I imagine we will sigh, chomp on our tasty confectioneries and shake our heads at all the ignorant masses pursuing degrees with pathways to nowhere.

Students and professors seem to accept this as a routine part of Harvard life. An explanation for this widely accepted phenomenon, however, is far from obvious.

Harvard students are, for the most part, intellectually curious. Their professors are leaders in their fields and senior advisers to governments and corporations.  Why such talented students choose to surf the internet over actively listening to their distinguished professors is quite the paradox.

The question gets more perplexing when considering that outside of class, the same students are eager to meet people who are intellectual leaders in their field. The same students will desperately try to lottery into an Institute of Politics forum event with the president of Chile or a dinner discussion with Larry Summers. A recent event with the former president of India was so well attended that a police officer physically prevented me from entering the room because it was literally overflowing.

Intrigued by this paradox, I started asking my classmates “Why do you Facebook during class?” Answers were mixed, but generally a variant of the following responses. People say they go on Facebook under one of the following circumstances: A professor starts regurgitating exactly what they’ve read in the textbook; paying attention won’t clarify confusion; a professor starts on a random tangent that is neither interesting nor relevant; students need a break to re-focus; students feel pressed for time and decide to multitask.

Deeper probing of these responses has led me to the following conclusions. Harvard students are generally pragmatic and hyper-concerned about maximizing their Return On Time Investment.  During class, students will give their attention to whatever they think will give them the most utility in each moment. Past generations of students must also have wanted to maximize their ROTI during class. But technological innovation has provided today’s students with more options to do so in real time, via their smartphones and laptops.

At the same time, the IT revolution has destroyed the traditional professor-student knowledge hierarchy. Access to knowledge has become easier. In the past, professors were knowledge gatekeepers when lecturing at the pulpit. To do well in class or feed their intellectual curiosity, students had no choice but to listen actively in lecture to uncover the knowledge residing with their professors.

But today, much of knowledge has become commoditized on the web. Knowledge in any subject—semiconductor fabrication, Kantian logic, or exchange rate policy—can be accessed through a quick Google search. Online sources like Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, Wikipedia, and Google books are all freely and instantly available online. Today’s students have many choices in deciding how to educate themselves and can do so in a highly personalized and customized manner.

The Facebook phenomenon is part of a much larger knowledge and cultural paradigm shift that Harvard must proactively respond to if it wants the educational experience to remain a central part of students’ lives. Faculty need to realize that they are in constant competition for students’ time and attention and their quest for personally relevant knowledge. Professors need to start thinking of themselves as service providers who must constantly innovate to serve students better, servicing students’ curiosity and their desire to apply knowledge to create impact.

Facebook doesn’t compete for student attention equally in every class. From personal experience, classes taught by Michael Sandel, Niall Ferguson, and Donhee Ham, have a very low Facebook Index. These professors interpret knowledge and make it relevant to students in a uniquely personalized manner. Sandel makes abstract philosophy relevant to everyday life. He extracts and synthesizes student perspectives to create a classroom experience that shares knowledge in a way that can’t be found in a book. Ferguson wows classes by candidly sharing his strong opinions on world history and current events. His classes are so unique they develop into popular new books.

The demonstrated success of these professors and others like Computer Science 50’s David Malan should motivate all Harvard faculty to approach their classes with some fundamental questions. How can we add the most value to our students? Can we personalize the content to each student’s unique interests with readily available technological tools? What specialized or experiential knowledge can we provide that is unique? What knowledge and resources can we share to help our students achieve their goals?

In a world that has been impacted by knowledge flattening, Harvard clearly is not alone in struggling to capture student attention. Rather than perceiving technology as a competing force in the classroom, our creative and distinguished faculty should explore innovative teaching methods that harness the same technological force to uniquely personalize class content and deliver it in a powerful, Facebook-type manner. Doing so, will not only improve education here at Harvard but also position the University to take leadership in improving education worldwide.

Calling on undergraduates to shape education reform, Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools, launched the college outreach initiative of her organization, StudentsFirst, at a panel discussion at Cornell U. Tuesday.

At the event, titled “Up to Us: Student Voices in Education Reform,” Rhee was joined by Nathan Daschle and Raymond Glendenning, co-founders of www.ruck.us, which aims to generate conversation around public issues while avoiding partisan divide.

Rhee founded Stu­dentsFirst in 2010 after resigning from her post as chancellor of Washington’s public schools. The organization’s mission is “to build a national movement, to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world,” according to its website.

“When you want to start a movement, you need people who are passionate, and this kind of energy is brought by college students,” Rhee said during an interview with The Sun preceding the event. StudentsFirst primarily works to create a network of people from diverse backgrounds who want to change the country’s public education, according to Rhee.

Although Rhee recognized that some have labeled her as anti-labor unions, she said that “unions are doing exactly what they ought to do by protecting teachers’ interests.” Through StudentsFirst, Rhee said she wants to achieve a similar kind of collective collaboration.

“We do not have any national groups that have come together to protect the interest of students and this is what we need,” she said.

During the event, Rhee responded to questions from the public concerning her views on teacher performance and school-choice initiatives, like vouchers and charter schools.

“We need to recognize the power that individual teachers have in shaping the lives of kids,” she said. “It does not really matter if kids are getting a great education through a public or private school. What matters is the fact that they are getting it.”

Daschle and Glendening explained how initiatives like Rhee’s can be achieved through non-partisan platforms, such as their website. Daschle and Glendening — both former political consultants — expressed that the sharp delineation of American politics along party lines is obsolete.

“Our political parties bring people together on the base of differences and not their similarities,” Daschle said. “Although we live in a world constantly marked by innovation, we still follow a political system born in the 1880s.”

For Daschle, the increased number of independent voters supports the public’s disenchantment with partisan politics and its desire to reshape the system.

“Since 2004, the country has voted for change, in terms of political parties, during every election. We have a country that is dissatisfied about the change being provided, and this is one of our drives behind creating www.ruck.us,” he said.

Glendening echoed Daschle’s words by emphasizing “discomfort with traditional institutions currently seen in the country.”

“It is very refreshing to be at a place like Cornell, where students from different ideological backgrounds maintain a level of discourse marked with a decorum not seen in the country’s capital,” he said. “We need to reevaluate how education can be modeled to better serve our lives, and this should be done by transcending party lines.”

Both Glendening and Daschle said they hope their website begins this transformation by bringing people from different ideologies together in discussion.

“It is time to shift our allegiance from obsolete institutions and innovate in order to transform our education system,” Daschle said. “We do not really need political parties anymore — the future will not come in the shape of a static political system.”

Students in the audience had divergent responses to the views of Rhee, Daschle and Glendening.

Jessica Powers said there is “nothing immediately tangible about the proposals that were presented.”

Scott Monsky said, however, that the Rhee’s plans have immediate resonance,

“Cornell students coming from privileged backgrounds often do not realize the big education inequality that exists in our country,” he said.

Molly Beckhardt, president of the Cornell Organization for Labor Action, and Karen Li, another member of COLA, were more critical of Rhee’s proposals.

“Rhee’s reforms have demoralized teachers by removing tenure and basing [their] teaching quality on student standardized test performance,” Li said.

Beckhardt added that if Rhee’s organization truly seeks educational excellence “it needs to account for the teachers and their needs.”

Outside the event, COLA members distributed quarter cards, which stated that Rhee received funding for StudentsFirst from Rubert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers, and that Rhee supports anti-collective bargaining bills in various states, among accusations that her initiatives artificially inflated test-scores in D.C.

Geoffrey Block, director of Cornell’s StudentsFirst campus campaign, said this discussion was the first of many events that aim “to make students understand there is a problem with our current education system.”

To borrow Elizabeth Warren’s phrasing, our generation is being “chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered.” Youth unemployment is at a record high, as is college tuition. We’re paying money we don’t have for an education that guarantees less and less in terms of future success because it feels like the only option on the table.

I don’t believe that college educations should be valued only in terms of salary increase nor do I think the solution is to tell smart, talented kids not to go to college. The rates of unemployment and underemployment, even when factoring in student loan debt, are worse for those only with high school diplomas.

What I find fascinating is that many students are giving so much — mortgaging their future — for the education they’re getting at NYU when they clearly don’t want to be here.

This isn’t an issue of judgment, or how-dare-kids-these-days-be-on-Facebook-during-lecture-Andy-Rooneyism. It just fascinates me: People look at each class they’re taking as a slog to get through and are ecstatic every time they can close their books and pursue whatever else they do.

I’m not naïve. There are long days and classes I wish I didn’t have to take. But for the most part, I’m overjoyed. I’m in New York. I’m taking interesting classes (mostly) with tough, demanding, brilliant professors (mostly). I know what I want to study.

But too many NYU students are here because it was the next logical step. They were smart kids, did well in high school, are here at college because it’s the “thing you do” and then, who knows?

What raises this from a my-that’s-interesting observation to an issue worth writing about are the economic issues I raised above — it’s simply too easy to be convinced in this culture that it’s worth it to while away $200,000, lots of it in loans, on an education that you don’t even want with any passion or zest. It’s too easy to walk out of NYU with a diploma worth little in an economy like ours, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and very little to show for it.

If you don’t want to be here, don’t be. No judgment. Go work for a while. Figure out what you want to do. It might not require any more extraordinarily expensive semesters. It might very well require many more pricey semesters. But at the end, there will be something for all that. We need to make that an option for people who feel like the crushing debt of student loans is the only choice they have for their future.

In an interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Monday, Gov. Rick Scott laid out his plans for higher-education reform – one of his top priorities for the state legislature when it convenes in January.

In addition to rethinking faculty security, Scott said he hopes to move more funding to programs that promise the best job opportunities after graduation, namely the science, technology, engineering and math departments, or “STEM” disciplines. This would ideally draw more high-tech companies to the state, thereby increasing job opportunities.

The governor cited liberal arts degrees like anthropology and psychology as examples of those with poor job prospects, saying he hopes to come up with more ways to incentivize students to pursue the STEM disciplines while discouraging them from liberal arts tracks.

“If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education, then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” Scott told the Herald-Tribune. “So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

U. Florida President Bernie Machen said he agrees that the state should emphasize and support STEM disciplines, noting UF is a very science-intensive university.

However, Machen said he would not support funding STEM degrees at the expense of liberal arts programs.

Scott also told the Herald-Tribune that he wants universities to provide their students with information about the average salary for each degree program.

According to 2011 salary data from PayScale, a company that tracks employee salary information, the major with the highest median starting salary was petroleum engineering, with a starting salary of $97,900.

Chemical and electrical engineering took second and third with starting salaries of $64,500 and $61,300, respectively.

The median starting salary for anthropology majors was $35,600. For psychology majors, it was $35,000.

Paul D’Anieri, dean of the U. Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said in an email that a liberal arts education gives students a versatility that allows them to adapt to a wide variety of jobs, including ones that haven’t been invented yet.

“Educating people with the creativity and aptitude to invent new jobs and to adapt to new jobs is what a liberal arts education is all about,” D’Anieri said. “And the record of success is obvious.”

A 2008 study by Duke U. and Harvard U. surveyed the CEOs and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies.

The researchers found that while 92 percent held bachelor’s degrees or higher, only 37 percent held degrees in engineering or computer technology.

D’Anieri also said Scott has failed to recognize some of the crucial roles anthropologists play in the state of Florida.

For example, tourism, one of Florida’s largest industries, relies heavily on anthropologists who preserve and explain historical sites.

He also pointed out the importance of forensic and biological anthropology to law enforcement during criminal investigations, as well as the cultural anthropologists who work with the military to help them develop construction relationships with foreign civilian populations.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the largest at UF, with 42 majors and about 13,400 students.

In 2010, 3,220 students graduated from CLAS with bachelor’s degrees. Of those graduates, 257 had anthropology degrees.

The largest degree program at UF is psychology with 485 graduates in 2010. This is followed by finance with 405 and political science with 362.

D’Anieri pointed out that many of the liberal arts graduates will not go on to work in the same field as their undergraduate degree.

Students with liberal arts degrees often dual major or use their undergraduate degrees to apply to law or medical school.

This is the case with Jessica Branston, a 21-year-old UF psychology senior who plans to attend medical school.

She said she understands the importance of scientific or technical majors but thinks taking away funding from liberal arts programs would be akin to taking away the arts.

“Through those majors, we learn so much. We learn about cultures, languages, behavior,” she said. “We learn about ourselves.”

The director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College charted trends in university systems across the globe during a talk Tuesday at Harvard U.

In particular, Director Philip G. Altbach said poor people around the world continue to see growing access to higher education. He used the United States as an example: “From the 1960s up to today, we see a tendency of higher education in the United States moving from being only accessible to elites, to including general masses of people, and ultimately towards the direction of being universally accessible.”

Altbach, a professor at Boston College who focuses on educational leadership and higher education, also said that students are increasingly going abroad for their educations—opting for semester-long study abroad programs or full-time enrollment outside their home countries.

While students are becoming more mobile globally, large numbers are especially flocking from Asia to English-speaking countries.

Altbach said that, among other reasons for students’ newfound mobility, they often can’t find the education they are looking for in their home countries.

Meanwhile, some countries are shaping their university systems to attract the best and the brightest from around the world.

“Germany had for a long time treated all its universities equally. The end result is that most German universities lagged behind in global rankings,” Altbach said. “In response to this problem, Germany began to adopt the differentiating system which focuses resources on certain distinguished universities. This strategy has indeed increased the positions of a number of German universities on global rankings,” he said.

In response to one question about the need for universal higher education, Altbach said there have been arguments from both sides.

“I can’t really say whether it’s necessary,” Altbach said. “But I can say that the higher education nowadays is indeed moving towards that direction.”

The report is called “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling” because there is no scientific evidence that boys and girls learn differently from each other, and it looks at why single-sex schooling exists, Bigler said. She said there are conflicting hypotheses about the benefits of single-sex schools.

“Gender stereotypes restrict [childrens’] friendships and the skills they learn from other kids, such as verbal skills, reading emotions and using nonphysical ways of influence,” Bigler said. “[Without diversity they] miss out on what could be learned from others, and it affects career goals because kids that endorse more gender stereotypes have much different occupational goals.”

One of the major arguments for single-sex schooling is that boys and girls have different brains and different ways of learning and therefore needed to be separated, but research found otherwise, Bigler said.

The researchers, including Lise Eliot, a neuropsychologist who studies brain development, found no differences between girls’ and boys’ brains supporting single-sex schools, Eliot said.

“Our argument is that not only do [single-sex schools] not promote academic achievement over coeducational schools, but they have the downside of causing kids to be more sexist and being institutionally sexist,” Bigler said.

She said that from research of children, whenever a child’s environment is organized and labeled by a social group, he or she develops stereotypes and prejudices.

“College students should care about the direction of education and [consider if] we want to put tax money into creating single-sex schools when there’s no evidence it works,” Bigler said.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex in schools receiving federal funds.

Bigler said that changes were made in the interpretation of Title IX that for the first time allowed for single-sex public schools. Public schools that were single sex had been illegal for decades until 2006, and now single-sex public schools have been opening around the country, she said.

The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders is a single-sex public school in the Austin Independent School District, said Michelle Krejci, executive director of the Ann Richards School Foundation.

“It’s a process where the applicants are selected based on grades, TAKS scores, teacher recommendations and an essay,” Krejci said.

She said they don’t look for the straight-A students but the girls who do exceptionally well in all areas to get a diverse background of girls.

Krejci also said they are like other magnet schools in Austin because students must submit applications, and the best candidates are chosen based on performance and their desire to attend college.

“One of the things I’ve learned is that there has been a debate about single-sex schools for years, all I know is that Ann Richards School is successful and it’s working here in Austin,” Krejci said.

AISD proposed opening two more single-sex middle schools, according to AISD’s Draft Annual Facilities Recommendations, which is set to be finalized by Dec. 12.

A recent study conducted by Sunita Sah, a post-doctoral associate at Duke U.’s  Fuqua School of Business, and George Loewenstein, Herbert A. Simon professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon U., found that advisors with conflicts of interest are more likely to give biased advice when the identity of a recipient is unknown and when there are multiple advisees instead of just one.

“The main goal was to look at whether advisors take care to suppress bias from conflict of interest in a situation which affects more people,” Sah said.

Sah said she derived her inspiration to research this issue from the conflicts of interest she observed between physicians and pharmaceutical companies.

The findings are not surprising, she added.

“I hypothesized these results due to prior research that showed that people are more empathetic towards a single identified victim,” Sah said. “But the results are indeed surprising since it is the exact opposite of what logic dictates we should do.”

She said logic would dictate that people would invest greater care in the quality of advice offered when such recommendations affect more people.

Richard Larrick, professor of management and organizations at Duke, affirms said he agreed with the emphasis on supporting individuals over the logically-prescribed route of supporting general welfare. From a psychological perspective, these findings are reflected in charity situations where the donors tend to contribute more generously to one person rather than a group, he said.

“We feel an immediate emotional connection when it’s one person,” Larrick said. “But when it becomes a group we don’t feel that same personal connection—it becomes more abstract. When it’s one other person we feel like we’re harming that one person, but when it’s a group, individuals become faceless.”

The study—published in Social Psychological and Personality Science—involved two experiments with 660 test subjects. In both cases, Sah and Loewenstein said they established conflicts of interest in the advisors—random test subjects assigned another test subject to advise—by offering the advisors money for biased advice.

In the first experiment, advisors were either informed of their advisees’ names and ages, or they remained ignorant. By manipulating knowledge about advisee identity, Sah and Loewenstein said they sought to determine whether relative familiarity affected biased advising.

The second experiment tested whether the number of advice recipients affected biased advising.

Biased advice can greatly impact our daily lives and decisions in areas such as physician medication prescriptions and public financial recommendations, Sah said.

Patty Carter, financial advisor at Edward Jones, said she thought there is potential in the financial industry for conflicts of interest. She added that mutual fund companies who vie for clientele could be an example.

“There are so many mutual fund companies to choose from,” Carter said. “They are all trying to woo you to subscribe to them.”

Yet while the industry was very biased-driven when she first entered the field, it has since progressed to become more client-centered, she said.

“You must put the needs of their clients first,” she said. “If you don’t, then your career will be short-lived. Financial advisors should live by the golden rule and ask themselves, ‘Would I do this to my mother?’”

Despite the movement of the industry towards client prioritization, Sah said she urges consumers to be cautious.

“From a consumer point of view, you shouldn’t assume that public recommendations are of better quality than advice received in a one-to-one situation,” Sah said. “Most importantly, you want to determine if the advisor has a conflict of interest and try to seek un-conflicted advice wherever possible. If not, make yourself known to the advisor.”

For some students receiving academic advising, the implications of the study’s findings may be cause for concern, said senior Kaveh Danesh, Duke Student Government vice president for academic affairs. He added that he sees the results as further encouragement to foster relationships between students and mentors.

“In many ways, this research affirms the importance of getting to know people who we admire, whether our professors, advisors or administrators,” Danesh said. “A casual friendship with a more seasoned member of the community is something that every student at a university deserves.”

With midterms fast approaching, students on campus are readying to face those dreaded subjects that never made sense during class. The hours spent cramming in the library are only going up, and students are putting in more hours than they have up till now. However, such study habits may not necessarily spell success. There is a large gap between the right way to study, and what one may think is the right way. Lori Marie Petrovich, senior lecturer in chemistry and coordinator of the general chemistry laboratories at N.C. State U., advises students on studying, and busts some myths in the process.

Myth 1: The class notes will be available to study later, so paying attention in class means listening intently to the teacher.

Reality: It’s advised to take notes in class. Merely listening in class is not as effective as writing down keywords and points during the lecture. You are more likely to remember them during review. Use different colored pens: blue for in class points, black for notes from lecture slides and teacher’s notes and red for additional information from reference books.

Myth 2: If you don’t understand a concept, leave it. Go ahead with the next topic.

Reality: Studying a bit each day and fully understanding all homework questions is important. If you don’t follow a concept, pursue it. Material tends to pile up at a later stage, and you may not be able to recall what that one piece was that you did not follow up with. Ideas are often interconnected in the course.

Myth 3: Group study is the quickest way to learn.

Reality: Group study is a very efficient way to gather information as long as you can generate the same independently. While studying in a group, you may think you understood a derivation, or a problem technique. But, during a test, you find yourself unable to arrive at the solution. This is the reason why some students get a 90 on their homework and yet get low marks on the test.

Myth 4: If there are four textbooks listed for a course, read them all.

Reality: We live in an information age, and there is an overwhelming amount of material available. Students should use their instructors and their notes as a guide. The class syllabus will help keep you within the framework of what you are expected to know. Textbooks must strictly be a supplement to these notes. You can go ahead and explore more detailed information in these, but the moment you enter an unfamiliar territory, you should know to stop. Today, students participate in many extra-curricular activities. Some even have part-time jobs. They look for efficiency. Studying all hours, and being a bookworm does not help. Study smarter, not more.

Myth 5: Pick a subject and pursue it until you are done studying. Then, move on to the next subject and repeat the process.

Reality: One must always rotate subjects while studying. Study a subject for 45 minutes while paying full attention and within your cone of silence. Then take a 15 minute break to refresh before resuming your studies. If you are taking both science and humanities, switch between the two so that you don’t get bored. Study chapters in small parts.

Myth 6: If you haven’t performed well on the first test, it means you need to slog. Work hard, and study all the topics.

Reality: Everyone takes up the first test blindfolded. It’s what you do after this that decides your success on the next. After the first test, sit down and dissect the question paper. Try to analyze where the questions are coming from. They may be coming from the lecture notes, footnotes in the text, or exercise questions after a chapter. When you gain this predictive power, you can target your study for the next test.

Myth 7: You learn better if you study late into the night, and whenever you study, stick to your study table.

Reality: Students have to identify the kind of study environment that works for them. A study environment is the time of the day and the place that suits them. Some students study best during the day and some into the night, while others learn better early in the morning. Identify what works for you. Also, change your study environment if you tend to get bored of a particular place.

The Graduate Records Examination — a standardized test that is an admission requirement for many graduate schools — underwent significant revisions to its material, format and scoring system, effective Aug. 1, to make the test a more effective way of assessing applicants.

“This is the biggest change in the history of the GRE,” said Lee Weiss, director of Graduate Programs for Kaplan, which offers standardized test preparation courses.

The revised GRE features an overhaul of the scoring system. While the old version was scored on a 200 to 800 scale in 10-point increments, the GRE will now be scored on a 130 to 170 scale in one-point increments.

“Some grad programs look at a 620 versus a 600 and say that the 620 is much better,” said Weiss, noting that “the smaller scale emphasizes large distances.” What was a 20 point difference will now be represented as a 2 point difference in the new system.

Additionally, the Educational Testing Service will revise the means for each section, which had undergone uneven drift within the old scale. Before the revisions, a perfect 800 on the quantitative sections would get students no better than the 94th percentile, while a 750 on the verbal sections placed students in the 99th percentile, according to Kaplan.

Beginning Nov. 1, all GRE scores will be reported in the new scoring scale, including exams taken before Aug. 1. Admissions committees will receive concordance tables from ETS that will outline the scoring change and compare the new and old systems. Between Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, ETS will not send out any scores to allow time to complete development and the transition to the new scoring system.

ETS Manager of External Relations Christine Betaneli cited specific changes to the verbal and quantitative sections that include changes to question type and question structure.

The verbal section no longer includes antonym and analogy questions, replacing them with passage-based questions that test an in-context understanding of vocabulary, such as fill-in-the-blank, sentence completion and passage analysis. The quantitative section has a reduced emphasis on simple computation and instead focuses on data analysis and reasoning.

The ETS, which develops and administers the GRE, has worked with admissions officers throughout the revision process.

“Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, from both admissions and students,” said Betaneli. “Students are enjoying the new design features, which have made the revised test more test-taker friendly. For example, the preview feature allows students to move around in a section … this gives students more freedom to use personal strategies.”

Overall, students have said they enjoyed the increased flexibility, though many students seem unaware of the extent of the changes, according to a Kaplan survey.

“The revisions are an attempt at trying to better align the test with skills students are required to have for grad school,” said Betaneli, who cited the increased focus on analytical skills in the new GRE, and the reduced emphasis on simple computation.

Some students expressed concern about the changes and whether the available preparation materials will still be useful.

“I was worried about the accuracy of the study book because the new version hadn’t come out yet,” said Ting Yuet ’12, who took the revised exam in early August.

Many resources specific to the revised exam are available to students through the ETS websites, which has tried to ensure that the changes will place no additional stress on students.

Admissions officials, however, will be facing a time crunch for graduate programs with December deadlines, because ETS will withhold exam scores until Nov. 1. This is to provide time to normalize scores to the new scale, according to Betaneli.

“Any time there’s a transition, there’s a little confusion,” said Jason Kahabka, the director of student services for the Cornell Graduate School. “One issue we are aware of is that the embargoing of scores until November pushes back when the scores will be received to close to the deadlines.”

Graduate program applicants will likely not be affected by this issue.

“Take the test with plenty of time for your admissions deadlines,” Kahabka said. “And keep in perspective that the GRE is just one factor in the admissions process.”

The implementation of the revisions has so far gone smoothly, and ETS expects no negative reactions to the new exam.

The GRE is “one of the most widely administered standardized tests,” according to Betaneli, with an estimated 700,000 applicants taking the test each year during the graduate program application process.

A new report from the Education Policy Center at U. Alabama shows that students are taking on more and more debt to pay for college, and that community colleges are unable to meet the expanded need to retrain workers, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The report, titled “Access and Funding in Public Higher Education,” is based on the results of the latest annual survey of the 51 members of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges, conducted from July 5 through Aug. 24, according to the Chronicle.

This report is predicting cuts to state operating budgets at community colleges, regional public universities and public flagship universities. Tuition is going to continue to grow, and financial aid won’t be able to keep up because it will continue to dwindle or remain flat, according to this report.

We need to invest in our community colleges, and President Barack Obama has taken a necessary and significant first step in proposing to do so. Obama has proposed investing $5 billion to improve facilities at community colleges and tribal colleges. Ninety-four percent of the respondents of this survey said that the new money for construction and renovation was a significant need in their state. In a separate article, Jim Hermes, the director of government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, affirmed this need.

“This is certainly an area of great need among our institutions,” Hermes said. “We are heartened by the renewed recognition of this issue.”

Investing in community colleges has been one of Obama’s education objectives for quite some time. Shortly after his inauguration, he proposed a $12 billion program to rebuild community colleges, as well as increase the number of two-year students who graduate and go on to four-year institutions. It would have also improved remedial education and forged stronger ties between employers, according to the Chronicle. The plan, called the American Graduation Initiative, was dropped in negotiations over overhauling student-aid programs and health care legislation, according to the Chronicle.

Preserving funding for community colleges is critically important to the economic well-being of this country. Many students look to community colleges as an alternative to four-year institutions for a wide range of reasons. Some students want to train directly in their chosen profession rather than spend the extra time fulfilling the general education requirements of four-year universities.

For other students, a community college may provide a second opportunity to improve their grade-point average before applying to a public university. If students apply right out of high school, the high school GPA will be the one evaluated, whereas a community college gives the student a shot at having the community college GPA taken into consideration as well.

The other reason to preserve community colleges is a matter of helping students save money. Some students may choose to attend a community college prior to attending a four-year university in order to fulfill their general education requirements at a lesser cost. They can then choose to transfer their credits to a four-year institution that will accept them. Let’s preserve community colleges for the sake of education and the health of our economy.

“My friend was recurrently sick and had unfortunate things happen to him, so I just kept his clicker,” said Aslup, a sophomore theater major.

Aslup said he assisted his friend by using his clicker, in addition to his own, to answer quiz questions and report attendance.

Although he had positive intentions for lying for his friend, misusing clickers has grown across campuses nationwide. In his class of about 85 students, skipping was an easy matter for those who wanted to. With the clickers, lying about attendance just requires the goodwill of a classmate.

“In my Geology 101 course, many people skipped,” said Reed Felderman, an undeclared sophomore. “I remember one guy having five clickers.”

As reported in the Sept. 9, 2011, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, students at colleges across the U.S. have been misusing the clickers to skip class or cheat. Some UNL students have admitted to misusing clickers and don’t see it as a major issue, but UNL administrators can’t tell how widespread the problem is because the issue hasn’t been investigated.

“I’m an adult. I pay for classes,” Aslup said. “I can choose if I want to go to class and deal with the consequences.”

That attitude has faculty like Brad Buffum, an instructor at the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, frustrated.

Buffum has dealt with this issue, but has embraced the caveats of using the technology. Buffum said he understands the limits of evaluation techniques such as the clicker and knows students misuse them.

“I know that people know how to cheat with them, I’m not dumb,” he said. “If the student is dumb enough to get caught, they deserve whatever they get.”

In response to this, Georgetown U. has implemented a “5 percent” rule, which means that only up to 5 percent of grades can be derived from clicker attendance and questions. UNL currently has no regulations regarding clickers, but some professors have led the charge against their misuse.

In his classes, Buffum uses the clickers as a way to promote discussion, which he sees as the clicker’s purpose.

Because of his experiences, he altered his syllabus to reward people who come to class, rather than punish those who skip.

After an experience with a student who walked out on his class after using his clicker, he realized he had to change his thinking about the issue.

In that experience, Buffum said he saw no need to use clickers for grading students.

“No matter how cynical I get, it’s never enough,” Buffum said.

Kevin Lee, a research associate professor at UNL, supports the clickers in teaching and uses them for peer instruction.

“Its main benefit comes from students learning from each other by explaining and defending their understanding of concepts,” Lee said. “Often the percentage of correct answers to a projected conceptual question will go from 40 percent on a first vote to 90 percent on the second vote when a vibrant student discussion occurs in between.”

Voting gives both instructor and students good feedback on what is understood by the class and what is not, he said.

Lee said he thinks instructors who use clickers to take attendance and give quizzes are missing the boat, because they’re focusing on the technology instead of the teaching methods.

Even though the University Judicial Board hasn’t heard a case of clicker-cheating, misusing clickers is punishable under academic dishonesty. Offenders could lose credit from a class or face suspension if found guilty, according to the UNL Student Code of Conduct.

Matthew Hecker, dean of students, said he hasn’t dealt with any clicker-cheating students yet. But the attitude that it’s OK doesn’t sit well with him, he said.

“Where do they draw the line, at which act of academic dishonesty do you consider it a big deal?” Hecker said.

As soon as the word “English” leaves my mouth, it brings about a repulsive reaction. It can only be described as the noise a child makes when vegetables are placed in front of him. The second word – “Education” – brings an even worse noise that sounds something like a garbage disposal and pterodactyl making love.

We all know the stereotypes surrounding every major but, if you look at them honestly, you’ll find that all of them has value in our society. Each major is difficult in its own way. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be necessary to have a college degree to have a job in that field.

Certain majors are not any less important because their books cost less, their jobs pay less or because they don’t have to write 20 page lab reports. English majors may not spend hours in a lab, but we can read a 200 page book in 3 hours max.

A lot of science and math students undervalue the influence of a piece of literature. The Bible has created more change in the world than any other book to date. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, The Communist Manifesto; Betty Friedan’s  The Feminine Mystique, Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy all had a large influence on cultural development as well.

Equality of all majors is based on the fact that the world cannot function without each one. Our engineers cannot be educated without teachers. Our country cannot run without political scientists or economists; and without meteorologists, we wouldn’t know that Hurricane Irene was heading our way.

A narrower focus reveals that each field of study is dependent on other disciplines. Take, for example, my major. An English major cannot fully understand a reading if he or she does not understand the historical context. Sure, one can read and comprehend “A Raisin in the Sun,” but the cultural influence far outweighs the meaning of the text itself.

The cultural influence of a work is something that could only be understood if researched by the reader. This type of research crosses into the realm of a history major. This same merge of majors happens when chemistry and math mix to  understand the periodic table of elements. Even English and engineering can mesh in the form of technical writing. Students would not be complete in their knowledge without their major being influenced by another area of study. This is exactly why each major is required to take general education classes.

The thing I’m asking you to remember, fellow students, is the next time someone tells you about what you deem to be a “worthless” major, remember this article; remember that all majors are created equal.

New research in a St. Lawrence U. study suggests “undergrads whose classes started later were more likely to binge drink and get lower grades.”

“Students who had later class start times tended to stay up later, were not as well rested, had more daytime sleepiness and earned slightly lower grade point averages,” according to the study. In addition to the lazy daytime schedule, students “also reported more alcohol use and more binge drinking.”

While those 2:30 p.m. classes allow for sleepy mornings and late nights with friends, leaving the morning lessons off a class schedule can hurt more than help when midterms roll around. Many students who take afternoon classes justify late nights with not having to wake up early, leaving less time in the day to study and prepare for upcoming tests. While you might plan on studying after class ends, that study hour can easily turn into happy hour with friends when the evening rolls around.

With a booming bar scene just minutes from campus, the idea of skipping that boring test review to throw some back with friends can be tempting. The structure of getting up in the morning and hanging out for hours until class can be useful for some, but with work schedules, a mountain of errands to run and friends who want to see you, it is more tempting to skip a class when it is not the first thing on the to-do list.

Having a structured day that starts with class is a positive for many students. While waking up before the sun rises isn’t the most exciting way to start the day, finishing classes early and having the remainder of the day to go work, study and see friends is a recipe for success.

“Though most of my classes are only offered for one session, I prefer early classes so that I can do other stuff with the day,” said Allie Mertz, a U. Arkansas senior majoring in food science. “I perform equally well in both morning and afternoon classes, but afternoon classes are easier for me to skip, especially if it is nearing a holiday and I want to get a head start with my trip home.”

There are some downsides, though, to taking early-morning classes.

“Unfortunately with early classes people are less awake so they may need to spend extra time outside of the classroom learning the material,” Mertz said. “Since I am more attentive during my afternoon classes, I feel I get the material and can more easily justify skipping.”

If the majority of your classes start after noon, consider waking up early anyway and using the morning as study time. Grab a coffee, textbook and a pen and head out of the dorm room and into the study hall. By finishing any class work before the lecture meets, your afternoon is free for the occasional nap or night out on the town.

Though many students like to tackle class before the day has begun, some find later classes a better environment for focusing.

“I have an 8:30 a.m. class some days and an 11 a.m. class on others,” said T.J. Wuellner, a UA junior majoring in kinesiology. “I like the later classes because I can get a full eight hours of sleep that I don’t get on my early class days.”

Whatever time your classes meet this semester, be sure to set aside time for work and fun. Consider meeting with friends for a morning study session if class meets in the afternoon, and cut back on the social events in the week when classes are important.

If you get stuck with an afternoon workload, make sure to pick up a few study tips to have a successful semester on campus. Being a college student is about being responsible and making sure to maintain a healthy balance of work and play, regardless of when you head to class.

Dropout and delinquency rates are reaching an all-time high. There is a plague of apathy infecting students on a national scale. This is not because our generation is getting less intelligent. The problem is the American education system.

The over-regulated system we have in place teaches memorization instead of a more flexible curriculum that advocates problem solving skills, the promotion of student life-goals and allows students to reach their own conclusions about the subject matter they are studying.

Current textbooks tend to give mediocre information due to trivialization, omission and the manipulation of facts. This is coupled with the repetition of basic subject matter because of an oversensitivity to political correctness.

Furthermore, our method of educating students is often flavored with a strong American exceptionalism. There is a general refusal to change and become more open-minded toward information and policies even though the times deem it necessary.

Who is to blame for the state of America’s education system? Is it the teachers, unions, state and federal governments, students or the parents? The truth is, there is enough blame to go around. Teacher labor unions are often criticized for opposing meaningful reforms that could increase competition and for protecting lousy teachers while failing to reward the good.

And, true parental involvement often ends at kindergarten when it should be present through the duration of a young person’s schooling. However, parents are not the only ones who share a part of the blame.

Sometimes individual students need to be held accountable for their poor performance. It doesn’t matter how good the school or teacher is if the student doesn’t do the work and the parents do nothing to stop him or her. This attitude is only reinforced by the increasing amount of laws that lower standards and encourage a lack of student accountability and responsibility. School systems are subsequently deprived of the power and support to handle such problem students.

Universities are also not exempt from criticism. Every year students hang their heads at the reality of textbook price gouging, rising tuition fees, decreases in financial aid and frequently cut academic programs due to a great lack of government funding to public universities. This leaves students distraught at the idea of stumbling headlong into a future of unimaginable debt — if it’s not too expensive for them to attend college altogether.

Even though the issue is starting to gain more attention from a majority of America, the sense of urgency required from lawmakers is nonexistent. Education should always be the top priority and investment of our country. The payoff has a direct impact on the crime rate, the economy and the overall stability and progress of our nation. No civilization was ever toppled because its citizens were too educated and its educational system too effective.

Part of our American ideology has always been America is best. But it is a depressing thought, indeed, if we are currently the best we can be.

The GRE, a standardized test administered by Educational Testing Services, is an admissions exam required by most graduate programs in the U.S. and for many abroad.

“The GRE revised General Test replaced the GRE General Test,” ETS announced on its website, adding the new incarnation is now “the most widely accepted graduate admissions test worldwide.”

The new GRE format affected its 700,000 annual test takers as it changed from a three-hour long exam to a four-hour one, Russell Schaffer, spokesperson for Kaplan Test Prep, said in an email. The new test features a new scoring scale and is based on a format which is adaptive at the section level, meaning “the better a test taker performs in one section, the more difficult the next section will be,” Schaffer said.

Lee Weiss, director of graduate programs for Kaplan Test Prep, said ETS changed the test to respond to criticism from a variety of graduate programs who said the old test was not “the best indicator of success in graduate school.”

“Featuring the new test-taker friendly design and new questions, the revised test more closely reflects the kind of thinking you’ll do in graduate or business school and demonstrates that you are ready for graduate-level work,” the ETS website states.

The previous version of the test included an antonym and analogy section, but “having a great vocabulary doesn’t necessarily make you a better graduate student than someone who doesn’t memorize words as well as you do,” Weiss said.

The Verbal section on the new exam includes in-context questions which test reasoning skills as well as vocabulary to replace the previous antonym and analogy questions, Schaffer said.   Because the reformatted test is four hours long, Kaplan Test Prep experts emphasized the importance of training for a period of two to three months.

“The best way to build up stamina is to do a lot of practice tests and get used to what it feels like to switch from essays to verbal reasoning,” Weiss said.

U. Virginia senior Matt Jungclaus has tentative plans to attend graduate school, saying the reformatted test would not impact his decision to apply to graduate programs or how he studies. Although he had already purchased a study guide, Jungclaus said he still wants to fully understand what the changes entail.

Virginia senior Colleen Harrington said she took the test Aug. 11 and knew it was the revised version.

“I think I prepared differently then I would have for the earlier test,” she said. “Especially for the vocabulary.”

A recent study conducted by a group from the Pew Research Center led by director Paul Taylor found that women see greater value and benefits in their college experiences than men.

Women college graduates are more likely to say their education helped them grow and mature both personally and intellectually, according to the study. The researchers also found that approximately half of female college students rate the value for money spent on higher education as excellent or good as opposed to only 37 percent of men.

“Everything is tilting significantly towards women,” said Jacob L. Vigdor, professor of public policy and economics at Duke U.

Vigdor noted that in the last few decades the economy has shifted from primarily manufacturing to service industries.

“It’s changed from a male skill set to a female skill set,” Vigdor said. “You have to be able to talk to people and interact and provide good service to people, which is not something that’s normally associated with males.”

Donna Lisker, Duke associate dean of undergraduate education, said the pay gap between men and women has a role in the study’s findings because it leads female students to be more invested in their education.

Lisker said that this study clarifies that women need more education than men to make the same amount of money.

“There are more industries open to men and men don’t necessarily need college degrees for vocational industries,” said senior Rewa Choudhary, chair of Baldwin Scholars and a member of The Chronicle’s independent editorial board. “Women need that Bachelor’s [degree] to be taken seriously, and that aspiration leads women to really value their education.”

Choudhary noted the academic environment provides a place for women to excel.

“I think part of [the reason for women’s satisfaction] is because women are treated as equals in the classroom,” she said. “It’s become very commonplace for women to answer questions and be on top of their work. I’m in [the Pratt School of Engineering] and I’ve always felt treated equally.”

Vigdor also noted the rise in female university faculty may contribute to greater female satisfaction with college.

“There are female role models, which would make a difference,” he said. “I think that gives [female students] a different kind of mentality when looking at what others have pursued for themselves.”

The study also found that women across all racial and ethnic groups are more likely to be college educated.

“These universities 50 years ago were almost entirely white male dominated and it’s almost like they haven’t clued themselves in to the fact that there was competition and these people are setting themselves up for failure,” said Vigdor.

Lisker pointed out that although some of the findings resonate with Duke students, not all the conclusions about college in general may apply to Duke in particular.

“Highly selective colleges like Duke have such a low rate of admittance that all of our students, male and female, are very invested in their experience at Duke,” Lisker said.

Regardless of the dynamic at Duke, Vigdor noted the trends indicated by this study will continue to shape the state of education and the workplace.

“It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out, because the differences among college students today are going to make a huge difference in the next 20 years,” he said.

Certain majors reap higher salaries than others, but most college graduates find themselves, no matter what they major in, making on average almost $20,000 more per year than high school grads.

If this is the case for a graduate, loans should not be too problematic, provided he or she can make sacrifices and good financial decisions.

But why do people really go to college? The majority of presidents of four-year universities think it is for intellectual development and maturation — the old Greek way of brainwashing the young into virtuous citizens. Presidents of vocational, for-profit and two-year community schools think of a degree as job training.

The problem with both of these views is that the student, his or her family and plans for the future are left out of the decision.

Students and their parents should get real about when, where and why they should invest in a degree. Teens are horded into universities without a clear understanding of how much money they are about to spend and what it will get them in the long run.

Having a degree brings social capital. Every parent wants to experience the pride of their child’s college graduation, but great amounts of time and money should not be spent on something purely for an ego stroke or to meet arbitrary expectations.

Furthermore, our snobbish attitude toward two-year colleges and certificates is unfair. So is looking down upon people who never have the opportunity, or who take time off.

My friend’s parents took out huge loans so that she could enter a four-year college straight out of high school.

She chose a random Liberal Arts major, took much too long to complete it, and could not get a job afterwards. A few years later, she entered into a two year nursing program; now she has a stable job and loves her work. Had she simply taken a few years off instead of rushing to an expensive state university, her peers may have looked down upon her, but she would have saved herself time, saved her parents money, and may have found her calling faster while working and helping support herself.

A student’s major is the determining factor for career options. It would only make sense, then, for a student to enter a four-year institution knowing what field he or she wants to work in.

It might be a better idea to take two years off and hold a few diverse jobs instead of enrolling just for Mom and Dad. Many students enroll at 18 (or earlier), having worked only at Hollister or Target, and have never thought about building a career.

In that case, college becomes an expensive continuation of high school; the student might change majors multiple times, or take extraneous classes for lack of advising, and graduate in five or six years with more debt but nothing more to show for it.

College is worth the price for some people and not worth it for others. A step toward improving our higher education system could be improving how people make decisions and set realistic goals.

Parents should engage in a dialogue with high school students, not tell them “you must go” or “you can’t go.” A mandatory personal finances class during high school would also help young people make better decisions, avoid loan traps and manage their finances efficiently.

So would stressing the importance of college and career counselors, and reducing the stigma on public and community colleges. A Lexus might look shiny on the way to work, but a Corolla can get you to the same place and use less fuel.

Twenty-one percent of U.S. medical students who took a national 2010 survey said they’d been required to go shopping or babysit for a supervisor — and 5 percent said they’d experienced unwanted sexual advances in school. Most didn’t report it for fear of retaliation.

At U. Minnesota, the Medical School showed 14.5 percent of students reported mistreatment during their time in medical school. The rate was 8 percent in 2009 and 13.9 percent the year prior.

Kathleen Watson, associate dean for students and student learning, said more reporting of mistreatment, mostly verbal harassment, in the medical school shows that students’ awareness has fine-tuned.

Watson, the chairwoman of a committee that meets with mistreated students, said the most common form of abuse she sees is “belittling,” or being made to feel ashamed because of a comment.

The national average for the medical school students who report mistreatment was 16.9 percent in the 2010 survey, administered by the

Association of American Medical Colleges. That figure was nearly the same reaching back to 2007, when it was 14.5 percent.

Fifty percent of the 13,000 students surveyed said they had “occasionally” been publicly humiliated or belittled. Only 13 percent said they had never been publicly belittled, while 31 percent said it had happened “once” and 5 percent said “frequently.”

Watson said the medical school takes these events very seriously. “We try to be very proactive,” she said, “and simply will not tolerate the behavior that we have any ability to control.”

Chris Thompson, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Minnesota, said he doesn’t think the University is managing the issue of harassment effectively.

Thompson compared the public humiliation that he and some of his friends have experienced to domestic abuse because medical students are dependent on their supervisors’ approval.

“It’s a culture that values performance and punishes poor performance with personal humiliation,” he said.

The University dealt with other  complaints of mistreatment this spring, brought on by an accreditation survey from 2010.

The most abnormal results from that survey were from Duluth, where five students — or 12 percent of the medical school’s first-year class — reported feeling mistreated.

Phillip Radke, president of the University’s Medical Student Council, helped write the campus survey, which was part of the accreditation process for the Medical School. When he saw that the response from Duluth was higher than normal, he recommended that the medical school administration investigate further.

“I wasn’t alarmed per se, but I thought it was interesting,” Radke said.

Radke’s concern echoed down the medical school’s chain of command, starting a series of interventions. Initially, Gary Davis, the regional Medical School dean for Duluth, met with the student vice president of the first-year class. When that didn’t yield more information, the student representative met with the class to seek details, but those who had reported mistreatment remained silent.

In the end, Davis met with the first-year class himself and invited students to stop by his office, send an email or call an anonymous tip line.

“Disappointingly, [only] one person came to my office who had reported it,” Davis said.

That student told Davis that during her clinical rotation, her supervisor at a community clinic outside of the University made inappropriate comments about her race in fall 2010. The student’s University clinical instructor immediately switched her to another supervisor.

A second student, who had not reported mistreatment on the survey, emailed Davis about a University faculty member whose attitude was “uncaring” or “tough,” Davis said.

“Some kinds of mistreatment you get a lot more alarmed about than others,” Davis said.

Thompson said he has heard about friends being ostracized during their clinical rotation after expressing their philosophical and political views. He said one supervisor had made jokingly sexual comments about classmates during a rotation and another blatantly told a medical student who was pregnant that she should stay home.

“Right now the info on data harassment is collected by the University and not shared with Medical Students at all. I would like access to that information,” he said.

“People want to be stimulated and challenged but they don’t want to be mistreated,” Thompson said.

A recent article on the blog GOOD.is reported that Florida passed a new law requiring all public schools in the state to make the switch to e-textbooks by the 2015-16 school year.

This move will require an investment of a few hundred dollars in a Kindle, Nook or iPad. As the article points out, the digital textbooks are only about $10 cheaper than their hardback counterparts. An article on the website of News Channel 5 states that Palm Beach County School District officials could not put a total cost on switching all of their students to digital devices, but that the cost would top $30 million.

Gary Weidenhamer, a school district educational technology director cited in the same article, said the district would need to expand its Internet infrastructure to provide hundreds of thousands of students Internet access at the same time in classrooms. Adding that bandwidth would cost at least $9.8 million, according to Information Technology Director Deepak Agarwal. Despite an initial investment, there are several long-term benefits to making this transition.

E-readers can be used to obtain many books, which include classics, such as Romeo and Juliet. Because the copyrights of many of these classic textbooks are expired, they are part of the public domain. Students with e-readers can download these books for free, saving schools the cost of ordering hardback copies and paying high shipping costs.

Changing to this new technology will require that students be educated on the upkeep of these products. Schools can adapt to this not only by teaching students basics on how to care for these devices, but they also have the option of paying for insurance to cover damages. The article points out that a pilot program of this sort has already taken place at Clearwater High School in Clearwater, Fla., where parents had to pay a $20 insurance fee.

This fee is a small price to pay in light of the potential savings for schools. It also gives parents another safety net in case a student damages a device.

This change will, of course, come with some drawbacks. Students who are used to being able to highlight sections of their hardback books will have to adapt to new technology in order to do so. This may be one of the reasons that these textbooks have not yet been a hit with students.

In 2010, digital books made up only 3 percent of textbook sales, according to the National Asociation of College Stores. According to a column in USA Today, analysts say this is because digital textbooks really aren’t anything more than PDF copies of normal books. Students that are used to color-coding their textbooks and simply happen to enjoy the aesthetic quality of hardback books are less inclined to enjoy the new digital books.

Ultimately, however, the benefits of switching to e-readers greatly outweigh the cost — no pun intended. A recent study in USA Today found that second graders carry 5.3 pounds of books and supplies in their backpacks on an average day. Once these students get to sixth grade, the weight they carry increases to 18.4 pounds. A switch to digital books can save these students a good deal of back pain.

Digital textbooks will greatly benefit students and save schools money. Hardback books will always be with us, as well they should be. Making this change in our schools, however, is an important step toward providing a good education at a lesser cost.

I mean to say that I agree with you. The job market is sputtering right now, and it will most definitely recover back to its previous cruising altitude and speed once you have dropped $40 thousand or more on additional education. For you, I’m sure it’ll pick right up as you receive that second diploma. If you can sell yourself that fantasy, maybe you should think about retail – or politics, or advertising, or any of the booming industries that basically just lie to people.

Anyway, before you can actually enroll in the safe haven of a graduate school, you probably have to sign up for the GRE.

This exam and its alphabet-soup cohorts (the GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, etc.) are the Grendel’s mother of standardized testing. You should remember dispatching the ACT and SAT before college. Well, they were Grendel. That testing monster terrorized your mead hall of a high school and ate the dreams of your fellow sleeping students until you ripped a score off of the monster and hung it up in your house. It then could only return to its hellish dwellings and bleed out, much like this metaphor.

Four years later, Grendel’s mother – the literary version, not the Angelina Jolie remake – has risen to avenge its son. You must advance into the testing center lair of this beast on your assigned testing date, where you must follow its silly rules as you fight on its terms.

Beowulf could only kill Grendel’s mother with a sword forged for a giant, but for the GRE, you are stripped of your calculator, forced to battle unwieldy long division and square roots without a proper blade.

Not only that – the usual and expected battleground is displaced. Academic fights are waged on a computer screen with no room for error as combatants lose the power to revisit problems once completed.

The GRE is divided into three laughably incomprehensive sections that include writing, verbal and math. Rest assured, your graduate school will not be able to ascertain all it needs to know about you from these scores, so remember to qualify them in your personal statements.

Writing (given a score out of six): The GRE begins with two unique essays. The issue essay requires you to argue one side of a given issue, and the argument essay requires you to critique a given argument. This portion of the test readily transfers into a real-life skill, one that mirrors the valuable experience of writing a letter to the editor to The Crimson White. I urge you to practice.

Verbal (given a score out of 800): Welcome back to middle school vocabulary tests. The familiar returning guests are antonyms, similes and fill-in-the-blank questions, in addition to a few reading comprehension questions. I do not mean to recoil with recalcitrant indignation, but to base roughly one-third of a test on an erudite affinity with definitions is disconcerting. Not to mention, these words are given without context in a sentence. That’s like a math problem asking for the value of a variable without providing an algebraic expression.

Math (given a score out of 800): Have I mentioned you can’t use a calculator? The GRE assures that its problems will not require test takers to perform advanced calculations. But I assure you that is flawed reasoning. Forcing test-takers to squander precious time with long division fails to test the supposed important principles of math. The GRE also has an inferiority complex and openly admits to employing trick questions. If I wanted trick questions, I would have taken the X Games exam.

I’m taking the GRE today askance. With help from the Princeton Review, I hope to return home, like Beowulf, after landing a successful coup de grâce on my scholastic foe. Successful or not, I will still have to face that fearsome job market someday – or I could apply to Teach for America.

Renal Physiology, a digital textbook application created by Dr. Jonathan Kibble, an associate professor of physiology at UCF, launched on April 19 as a less-expensive, high-tech alternative.

The launch is the culmination of a project started two years ago by Kibble and David Rogers, founder and CEO of Allogy Interactive, the Orlando-based mobile application developer.

“The idea was to explore what a next-generation textbook is really going to be,” Rogers said. “We wanted to step beyond simply displaying the content in a new media to doing something more powerful.”

The Renal Physiology app gives students the opportunity to have learning materials with them all the time. It is also designed with a coaching system to organize daily learning and self-assessment.

“There is something special about having your personal things, like entertainment and social networking, all in one place,” Kibble said. “Why not your class materials too?”

This idea allows people to see the inner workings of the kidneys through their iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

This app, an interactive version of part of Kibble’s textbook, The Big Picture: Medical Physiology, is just the first in a series about physiology, according to UCF News and Information.

The material was reformatted, and some new writing was done to create features like terminology, quizzes and clinical correlations, Kibble said.

The app will save students cash and aggravation.

“It saves students a ton of money and keeps their backpacks as light as their phone or tablet,” Colin Forward, communications director for Allogy, said.

Not only is it beneficial to medical students, but it can also be a valuable tool for instructors. It is a tool that can enable instructors to monitor their students’ progress.

“It also coaches students all the way through the learning process, even providing reminders for important dates associated with the material, like exams,” Forward said.

After spending some time figuring out what will best help students understand and retain information, the team at Allogy took the content provided by Kibble and worked closely with him to determine the proper methods for displaying graphics, administering quizzes and coaching students through their studies.

“We start with development of a mobile application framework, and then add in the content, test it and find ways to improve the application,” Rogers said. “It is a constant cycle.”

Allogy has built apps for hospitals, nonprofit organizations working overseas and even the federal government. They are currently working on a project right now that is a next-generation mobile electronic health record, Rogers said.

As of now, all the apps created by Allogy are geared toward the medical field, but they have the tools and capability to create apps for any program at UCF. If any teacher or department wants to create their own digital textbook, Allogy can help them through the whole process, Rogers said.

“Our goal is to make textbooks more affordable, and that starts with the subject-matter experts,” Rogers said.

The app is now available for $9.99 from the Apple App Store.

According to Forbes, just over 1.6 million Bachelor’s degrees were given out in 2010 — most of which were students entering the work force, and undoubtedly mismanaging their money. The lack of personal finance teaching in universities across the United States is not a small or isolated problem, but in fact contributes to the misfortune of many. The education I am advocating for goes beyond how to write checks and what bank account to open, but rather extends to modern day tips that yield monetary benefits.

There are simple personal finance concepts that result in large savings down the road, concepts that recent graduates would benefit enormously from learning early in school. For example, 401(k) accounts, employer sponsored retirement accounts that many new graduates open when beginning their new job, have great saving advantages. With such accounts, employees are responsible for contributing some of their paycheck before taxes into their fund in order to save for retirement. In addition, most employers offer some sort of match program that will match employee contributions up to a certain threshold, commonly 5 percent of an employee’s gross salary. Because few students ever learn in college about how 401(k) accounts work, let alone the mechanics of match programs, they often don’t contribute up to the match threshold. By just contributing the threshold amount, a new graduate would essentially double their retirement savings at no additional cost. This is an incredible benefit for the future, one that is unfortunately often forgone.

While 401(k) match programs are just one specific example, there are numerous other tips that yield great benefits for the future of new graduates, benefits that are largely missed due to the inadequacy of personal finance education. The impact of learning personal finance tips on students’ financial futures will often outweigh 10 hours worth of class time in any core academic subject. For this reason, I propose that Drexel University begin an important trend and establish a mandatory one credit, 10-week course similar to their co-op 101 class to inform students in their last year of studies about various personal finance issues. This class would spend some time on the basics of personal finance such as the benefits of saving via diversification, how to budget appropriately and how to use debt responsibly. In addition, this new class would also provide ample time for teaching specific tips such as always contributing the employer’s match amount in a 401(k) account, the tax benefits of opening a Roth IRA and how to automate the majority of one’s personal finances. Personal finance is often treated as an unimportant, boring subject, yet its teachings have a profound impact on new graduates’ lives, rivaling any other subject learning while attending university.

Last Fall, the University was awarded more than $12 million in competitive federal grants—from Title VI of the Higher Education Act—to be distributed over four years. Because of the government’s spending reductions for fiscal year 2010-2011, however, Duke’s seven Title VI-funded centers will receive a lesser amount than promised. The exact size of the reductions to Duke’s programs will be confirmed in coming weeks.

The seven affected centers—including the Center for International Studies, the Middle East Studies Center and the Language Resource Center for Slavic and Eurasian Languages—offer a variety of cultural studies programs and less commonly taught foreign languages. These topics are critical to national security and business interests, said Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs and director of international and area studies.

“[The United States] won’t have any capabilities in these languages unless the federal money supports the teaching of those languages,” Merkx said. “Virtually everyone who works in these languages in these strange places has been trained in Title VI [centers].”

Merkx added that military officers are often trained at Title VI centers in universities across the country—including Duke.

Carl Herrin, senior partner at the consulting firm Global Education Solutions, said the government’s total cuts to Title VI funding nationally are expected to reach 40 percent, or approximately $50 million. Herrin added that these cuts were unexpected.

“Given the rhetoric of [the federal] administration, it was very unlikely that there would be significant reductions,” Herrin said. “That they would be on the order of 40 percent was beyond the pale.”

Although expected cuts have yet to be confirmed, some of Duke’s centers have begun to discuss strategies for combatting their anticipated budgetary reductions. Edna Andrews, director of the Title VI Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European studies, said her program will have to reduce its extracurricular spending—used to host guest speakers or hold conferences—in order to focus on graduate studies.

“We’ll have to put most of our efforts into what we believe in most—graduate fellowships and courses,” Andrews said.

Merkx said the Center for International Studies is spending as little as possible this summer in order to save for the Fall because it may have to cut “virtually all” programming in order to maintain core staff members.

He also noted that the centers may have to cut some programs that are required in order to receive Title VI funding—an obstacle that could prevent them from effectively competing in the next grant competition in three years.

Since the federal appropriations bill for fiscal year 2010-2011 was passed in April, Duke has been lobbying to try and maintain its share of the total Title VI funding, said Chris Simmons, associate vice president for federal relations. President Richard Brodhead also sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asking the secretary to consider the importance of international studies programs while assessing potential cuts. Simmons noted, however, Duke’s options for appeal are limited.

Herrin said that though the federal government may support Title VI programs, the cuts originate from pressure to reduce discretionary spending in order to maintain substantial funding for programs such as Pell grants—need-based grants for higher education.

“The longer that the money [for Title VI programs] isn’t there, the harder it is to get it back,” he said. “It’s not a question of whether Title VI is important for education, it’s ‘Is that more important than a Pell grant?’”

Still, Simmons said Duke is hopeful that lobbying efforts and government budget restoration will allow for renewed Title VI funding as soon as fiscal year 2011-2012.

“We’re hoping that this is just a bad gash,” he said.

Hoch said his choice to pursue the relatively small humanities concentration has given him a valuable lens through which to interpret the world.

“Folk and Myth is a dream,” he said.

But for students who may be less sure of their academic paths, a Georgetown University study published Tuesday raises questions about the financial implications of choosing one concentration over another.

The report, entitled “What’s It Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors,” examined the yearly earnings of full-time, full-year American workers ages 25 to 64 based on their college major.

On average, full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree make about $55,000, which is about 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma.

What was most interesting about the study, according to co-author Michelle N. Melton, was that individuals’ choices of undergraduate major mattered in predicting their future income.

“Earning potential between one major and another can [vary] more than 300 percent,” said Melton, a research analyst at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

In fact, the annual financial payoff for those with a counseling-psychology major came in at roughly $29,000. In contrast, those with a degree in petroleum engineering earned $120,000.

The report also considered racial and gender differences in earnings. Among individuals who pursue the same major, men earn more than women in virtually every instance. Furthermore, whites earn more than all other races in 10 of the 15 groups of majors. For example, whites with a degree in electrical engineering earn about $22,000 more per year than African Americans with the same degree.

“The point is not to encourage people to study a more lucrative major, but let them know that what they study affects their career and earning potential,” Melton said.

In response to the report, however, Hoch said he believes college education should not be about future financial gain.

“A better question to ask is not what will make the most money, but what will make me happy,” Hoch said.

Before declaring his concentration, Hoch said he was interested in pursuing a special concentration that focused on a social scientific approach to literature. Then he discovered Folklore and Mythology, which catered to his interest.

Hoch said that Folk and Myth is “an absolutely demanding program” that requires a thesis.

“What’s important about undergraduate education is that you learn to write well, think well, and push yourself to become more intellectually robust,” Hoch added.

Likewise, Daniel I. Lewis ’11, a computer science concentrator with a secondary in mathematics, said he chose his concentration based on his interest in programming, rather than out of a desire for high future earnings.

Lewis is currently in the process of applying for jobs. He said he would ideally like to work at Google for a year or two before doing a Ph.D. program.

On the other hand, another CS concentrator, former Undergraduate Council Vice President Eric N. Hysen ’11, said he did consider job prospects when choosing his concentration.

“Certain jobs are more accessible to people with a CS degree,” he said, adding that he had considered a degree in government before realizing that it “wasn’t for me.”

Still, Hoch said he has found his four years at Harvard to be rewarding on an intellectual level rather than simply on a practical level. After graduation, Hoch plans to move to China to teach.

“Who is the happiest after they graduate?” Hoch asked. “I am a happy guy.”

Now it seems the effects of binge drinking could stretch all the way into the classroom, after a Spanish study found college students who binged had more trouble performing simple word memory tests when sober than those who did not binge drink.

Researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela, led by Maria Parada, provided 122 students — all between the ages of 18 and 20 years old — with trials that tested various types of memory.

Students were first tested in their ability to recall a simple list of words. They were also administered tests that measured the students’ ability to recall a story told to them. Finally, the students’ visual memories were tested by providing four images and asking participants to recall information from the pictures.

Roughly half of the 122 test subjects were self-identified binge drinkers while the remaining subjects self-identified as more casual drinkers.

The difference between the two groups was statistically significant, as those who self-identified as bingers under performed on all word-based tests when compared to their non-binge drinking counterparts.

“[The] results suggest that [binge drinking] subjects need more neural resources to perform the memory task and that they experience greater difficulty in inhibiting interference from the distractors [sic],” the study said.

The study, which will be published in August in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, could not draw a direct cause-and-effect relationship between binge drinking and memory loss. Researchers were able to draw a “clear association” between the two characteristics, however, a result they attributed to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex regions of the brain.

The hippocampus, which is involved in the formation of both short- and long-term memory, organizing and storage as well as learning, is especially susceptible to damage from drinking, the Galicia, Spain-area researchers stated in their report.

“This is an important topic and a multifaceted problem,” told Thomas Hicklin, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences to the Huffington Post. “There’s a lot of peer pressure when it comes to binge drinking, but students need to protect their brains.”

Parada and her team were unable to draw the direct link between binging and the lower performance on the memory tests, despite controlling for possible confounding variables — including differences in intellectual ability, cannabis use, age onset of drinking, family socioeconomic status, family history of alcoholism or psychopathology.

Parada and her team admitted that there could be variables that cause this association that the research did not account for, or that the two characteristics could be related in a slightly different way than what the study suggests. The published report calls for more long-term studies to expound upon the findings of this eye-opening trial.

Still, Parada and her team felt their work was an important first step in protecting students when it comes to their drinking habits.

“It [is] important to determine whether differences in performance between the binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers may have repercussions on academic performance,” the study said.

Several Tufts faculty members conceived of the study abroad program in conjunction with members of the Juan Marinello Cuban Institute for Cultural Research, a postdoctoral research institute focused on the social sciences of culture and culture policy. The institute would serve as the host for the program and local professors would teach courses.

With travel restrictions to Cuba easing since 2001, Tufts students have been able to study in the country for short periods of time under the university’s license for academic travel to Cuba.

Recent U.S. legislation, however, has necessitated that students studying abroad must now demonstrate that classes taken while in Cuba are accepted for credit by their university, according to José Antonio Mazzotti, chair of the Department of Romance Languages. The legislation holds that American students interested in studying abroad in the country are now not allowed to do so unless they can show that they are sponsored by an accredited university to receive academic credit.

Tufts faculty members conceived of the program last year as a fundamentally non-Tufts program after requests to start a Tufts program in Cuba were denied by the administration, according to professor emeritus Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, a former associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages, who was one of the main faculty members involved in the program’s inception.

Under the proposed program, students would take classes through the Juan Marinello Institute, an organization for which there is no equivalent in the U.S. education system, according to Kaiser-Lenoir, who has served as the primary liaison with the institute.

“[It's] a mix between a think tank within a field of expertise and an institution for advanced research within the university,” she said.

Questions regarding the research-oriented nature of the institute, however, have complicated the approval process. Tufts’ policy requires that study abroad programs be offered through accredited degree-granting institutions, according to Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser, and the Cuban institution does not meet this requirement.

The policy ensures the legitimacy of students’ study abroad requests, Glaser said.

“The fact that it’s … an accredited degree-granting [institution] gives us some assurance that certain requirements have been met, and so we don’t have to go into every university and know every detail of how they’re operating,” Glaser said. “The accreditation tells us that this has been looked up by people who are knowledgeable and it’s been given their stamp of approval.”

Kaiser-Lenoir explained that the institute was chosen as the host institution because of its broad research in the social sciences and because professors for the courses offered come from Cuban universities.

“In several trips, we contacted the [Institute] and they were very open to holding meetings with our students … so when we starting thinking about what kind of place we could find to have a program that would offer this kind of very interdisciplinary environment, we thought about [it],” Kaiser-Lenoir said. “There are many others … but the Juan Marinello was the one that had the intellectual range that seemed to fit the students that we would take.”

Since the institute does not grant degrees, discussion is ongoing about changes that would have to be made to the program to align it with university standards and allow Tufts students to attend, according to Glaser.

Thus far, the program’s supporters have worked to demonstrate that the Juan Marinello Institute is comparable to a graduate school under the U.S. higher education system.

If the program is not approved for Tufts students in its proposed form, an alternative would be to seek an affiliation with another institution, according to Mazzotti.

A future possibility would also be to open the program to students from other universities.

Mazzotti emphasized that those involved are receptive to making the necessary alterations to ensure the program’s viability and compliance with university standards.

The International Relations Program, the International Letters and Visual Studies Program, the Latin American Studies Program, the Department of Romance Languages and the Institute for Global Leadership have endorsed the program and are involved in getting administrative support, he added.

Students have also been working to demonstrate interest in this proposal, initiating a petition in mid-April once they learned of the logistical issues that had arisen, according to rising junior Rosario Dominguez, one of those involved.

“What [we're] trying to do is show the administration that there’s a lot of student support for this, there’s a lot of interest,” rising junior Miguel Zamora-Mills, another petition organizer, said. “We’re trying to show that this would be a fantastic opportunity for Tufts, even if it’s not a Tufts program.”

Dominguez considered a Cuba study abroad program beneficial as a way to educate students about the country.

“This would provide a wonderful opportunity for Tufts students to be in Cuba at a very interesting time in Cuba’s history,” Dominguez said. “Most importantly, as active citizens, we should be responsible … and knowledgeable of relations with Cuba, because … we don’t have this past of the Cold War and Fidel [Castro]. It’s turning a new page in U.S.-Cuba relations, which could potentially be very interesting.”

Kaiser-Lenoir noted that if the program is approved for Tufts credit, it would build on a legacy of student involvement in Cuba starting in 2001.

The program’s organizers, however, are committed to ensuring the program’s availability to Tufts students for credit.

“[That's] part of what we do here as faculty,” Mazzotti said. “We open possibilities, a place for Tufts students to learn different ways to approach social, cultural and political issues while, in this specific case, taking a first-hand look at historical experiences on environmental care, public health issues, ethnic diversity — in this case Afro-Cuban — and many other aspects of this particular and unique Latin American country.”

When the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched on its last mission, it contained a small specialized circuit that was designed by BYU students. The circuit, located within a chip, is aimed at improving NASA’s current Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. This technology allows users to program or reconfigure from a remote location. William Howes, who worked on the circuit and recently finished his master’s degree at BYU, said the circuit can be extremely useful in space.

“FPGAs are great for use in space,” Howes said. “If you find a bug in the chip, you can just send a message to reconfigure it rather than go to space and fix it manually.”

The purpose of this circuit is to see how it holds up against radiation in space during long-term data collections.

“For FPGAs, radiation is a problem,” Howes said. “If the FPGA gets hit in the wrong way, it could make the computation come out incorrect.”

The team has been waiting a long time to see its work head into space. Although the circuit was mostly developed in 2009, rigorous testing and shuttle launch delays resulted in the circuit not blasting off until Monday. The circuit won’t become active until it is attached to the International Space Station along with several other experiments. Because space shuttle launches are set to end this summer, the circuit may remain active for several years or even until the space station is decommissioned.

Patrick Ostler, a graduate student who worked on the project, said seeing something he helped work on blast off into space is gratifying.

“To be a part of the space shuttle missions is awesome,” Ostler said. “Thinking that it may be up there until the space station comes down is something else.”

Professor Michael Wirthlin, who led the team that designed the circuit, said the technology could impact not only NASA but many other businesses.

“Lots of companies that use satellites or similar technology use FPGAs,” Wirthlin said. “The experiment could make [FPGAs] more reliable and help lots of businesses.”

By the time of the strike’s termination on May 8, the remaining hunger strikers had not been given any of their demands, which were first stated by the original group of about 12 demonstrators who had sworn themselves to empty stomachs on April 26 to protest the staff consolidations in UC Berkeley’s departments of gender and women’s studies, African American studies and ethnic studies.

The strikers demanded the campus reinstate the full-time staff positions cut in the Ethnic Studies Department as a result of the Operational Excellence organizational simplification initiative, end the current process of Operational Excellence, support a California legislative resolution advocating for ethnics studies in the state and “publicly (acknowledging) the unfulfilled promise of the creation of a Third World College at UC Berkeley.”

But after two groups of five representatives for the hunger strikers met with Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and Dean of the Division of Social Sciences Carla Hesse and failed to have any of the demands met – and only the last two being deemed by the administration to be the “most feasible” to address – hunger strikers eventually tapered off in front of California Hall.

“To agree to symbolic gestures without solid actions to back up your investment in our departments is to make empty promises,” a May 3 letter from the strikers states. “We will continue striking until we see acknowledgement that all four demands which are both well within reach of the UC Berkeley administration and are acted upon in good faith.”

Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said in an email that the campus made itself available for discussion with those involved in the demonstration throughout the duration of the strike.

“We were moved by the concern students have shown for the consequences of the current budget crisis on campus staff and staff in these academic departments in particular,” she said in the email.

Marco Amaral, a student organizer for the strike, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Other protesters that were contacted were not able to comment as of press time.

According to Gilmore, staff reductions and “other efficiency measures” result from cuts in the state’s budget.

“Operational Excellence is designed for our campus to manage the budget challenges in a strategic way that helps us handle these cuts without destroying access, excellence and core services, especially those affecting students,” Gilmore said in the email.

Over the past few years, the campus has faced a deteriorating budget, impacted by severe state cuts to higher education as well as the economic downturn. Though the campus has attempted to combat the budget crises, students have still felt the impacts of the cuts in reduced library hours, reduced class offerings and increases in tuition costs for the UC system.

Most recently on March 24, Gov. Jerry Brown approved a $500 million cut each to both the UC and CSU systems. Brown has warned that more cuts could follow if other measures are not taken to further close the state’s budget deficit.

Gilmore added that so far, only one full-time staff in the ethnic studies department has been laid off and that the individual had been temporarily placed in another position on campus.

Additionally, there has only been one elimination of a part-time staff member, though the person still maintains another part-time job on campus, and there have been some positions that had their working hours reduced, Gilmore said in the email.

Overall, all those affected by the cuts are still employed on campus in other positions, according to Gilmore.

“The (UC) Berkeley campus has one of the earliest and strongest Ethnic Studies departments,” she said in the email. “We value that history and intend to maintain and increase its intellectual stature.”

The University of Iowa junior, who is studying abroad in Seville, Spain, said she streamed Obama’s speech online after she saw the news on Facebook and Twitter.

The next morning, Schoop, 20, began to receive e-mails from the U.S. Embassy about travel warnings for Americans abroad, she said.

“I am definitely nervous now to be traveling back to the States, especially now since I will be by myself,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Schoop is studying with Cultural Experience Abroad, and she said the organization sent an e-mail to students, making sure they don’t participate in any demonstrations. The e-mail also said participants should “try not to ‘appear’ American.”

“I have been keeping up with all of the news and hope that all will be safe as I journey back to America in two weeks,” she said.

Meanwhile, officials emphasized the safety of the more than 300 UI students abroad is their top concern as the world reactions to the death of the Al Qaeda leader.

Even before the latest foreign-policy frenzy, UI Office of Study Abroad had started planning to expand its system for tracking students studying in other countries, said John Rogers, an assistant director of the office. The change comes on the wake of natural disasters in Japan and prolonged political unrest in the Middle East.

The current system keeps record of where students are studying, the dates of their programs, and a photocopy passports, he said.

Rogers said only students participating in UI study-abroad programs have been required to send the information, but now it’s becoming required of UI students traveling through other programs.

The U.S. Department of State travel advisories are always forwarded to students in other countries, Rogers said, and one was sent out Monday after bin Laden’s death.

The message included a note advising UI students to keep a low profile and avoid large crowds, he said. He said the Study Abroad Office has not received any indications of any UI student being in danger or expressing concerns about safety.

Rogers said the joint effort between the Study Abroad Office and UI administration is to ensure officials can contact students overseas in the event of an emergency.

No UI students are in Pakistan or Afghanistan because a United States travel warning prohibits the university from sending students to the area, Rogers said.

Alison Kiss, executive director of Security on Campus, a national organization that works to prevent criminal violence on college campuses, compared the time following bin Laden’s death as the time immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said students should work to be informed about the political state of the country in which they plan to spend time.

“Many times for students, it’s their first time leaving the country,” she said. “Imagine [a high risk] added to that.”

But not all UI students who are studying abroad said they are worried about their safety.

UI junior Joe Moriarty, who’s studying in Cork, Ireland, said he is not concerned about anything bad happening during his travels.

He said he is confident about his safety because of increased safety precautions in the area after bin Laden’s death.

“If anything, I’d say people back home have more to worry about than anyone in Ireland, or Europe for that matter,” the 20-year-old said in a Facebook message.

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa recently published “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” which exposes national issues of higher education and claims that undergraduates are slacking more than ever before.

In today’s society, a college degree is a basic requirement for a job in almost any profession, and some parents start saving for their children’s college expenses when they are very young.

However, research by the Collegiate Learning Assessment illustrates that once in college, many undergraduates do not learn much. The main reason: a lack of motivation.

Academic drifters are students who have no clear idea of what they want to do with their degree and who show little discipline.

Compared to previous decades, “Students as a whole have fewer academic standards and lower work ethic,” Stacey Reycraft, director of Student Disability Services, said.

Economic surveys in “Academically Adrift” show that in the 1920s students averaged 40 hours a week on academic studies. This number has declined over time, and by 2003, the average student spent only 13 hours a week on academics.

The authors also gave a cognitive test to 2,300 students across the country, and 45 percent showed no sign of improvement in cognitive thinking, complex reasoning and creative writing during their first two years.

This decline has very little effect on GPA fluctuation. Rather than learning the substance of their majors, students learn the art of managing college.

According to statistics released by Duke University, students shape their schedules to include classes that require less study time and have professors who are more inclined to grade leniently and choose classes based on student evaluations rather than the class syllabi.

“Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should,” Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, said.

Economists challenge professors to look past the temporary recession and build students up for long-run productivity by finding creative ways to assign more reading and writing course work outside the mandatory curriculum.

Economists like Claudia Goldman argue that investments in higher education lead to profitable economic circumstances, but if these investments produce “scholars” who cannot think abstractly, this “investment” becomes a loss.

The blame of scholastic decline does not rest only on the professors and the students; it also rests on the administration.

Statistics released by universities show that on average, four-year colleges spend more money on athletic endeavors than on academic scholarships and programs.

According to statistics released by the NCAA, athletic spending generates revenue for SEC schools, but Ole Miss was the only university that broke even, with $45,737,904 of operating expenses and revenue.

Regardless of the financial expenses of education, the way students spend their time has a significant impact on cognitive enhancement.

Arum and Ruska also took surveys at Duke University and other four-year colleges, which showed that students who spend more time in Greek life have lower academic rates of return for their college degrees.

“Educational practices associated with academic rigor improved student performance, while collegiate experiences associated with social engagement did not,” Arum said in “Academically Adrift.”

In the book “Academically Adrift,” “The most significant increase in cognitive development, creative writing and complex reasoning is found in the school of liberal arts,” the authors said in their book.

Their economic research illustrated that students whose majors fall in this category graduate with higher levels of cognitive development than those who major in business, communication, education or social work.

Arum said in the book that federal mandates regarding testing on classroom curricula, new editions of textbooks and better classroom technology are not the key to a better education.

“The challenge of getting a college degree is to emerge with the ability to think critically and solve problems as they arise in the world,” Trey Fonde, economic major said.

“In the race to completion, there is this assumption that a credit is a credit is a credit, and when you get to the magic number of credits, you will have learned what you need to learn.

Debra Humphreys, vice president for communications and public affairs of the Association for American Colleges and Universities, said,
“What Arum’s book shows is that you can accumulate an awful lot of credits and not learn anything.”

During a lecture at Duke University, biology professor Zhen Ming Pei encouraged students to study.

“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is balance how much I want to achieve with how much effort I’m willing to put forth,” he said.

The stress of final exams can take a toll on both your mind and body. During the next week, many students will be sleeping less than they normally would and eating protein bars and Monster drinks in substitution of real meals. Between those 15-page papers and two-hour cumulative exams, it can be challenging to find time to squeeze in the work you need to do, much less keep your eyes open to actually take the exam.

But to avoid going into burnout mode before your exams even begin, try to put your health first before getting that “A.” Acing exams are guaranteed to boost your GPA and earn you a desirable grade in your class, but potentially compromising your well being in order to achieve this doesn’t make it worth it.

It may sound redundant, but just because it is finals week, don’t sacrifice what may seem trivial, such as eating healthily or going to the gym. One hour spent at the gym each day, will not cost you 10 points on your final in the long run and your brain functions much better on real meals as opposed to five cups of coffee. Force yourself to take breaks. Take a 10-minute walk outside, flip through a magazine, cook a meal or go grab a drink at Starbucks. Go to the library not just to pour over PowerPoints, but relieve some stress by taking advantage of the therapy dogs. Get an actual full night’s worth of sleep—you owe it to yourself. No matter how difficult you anticipate your final to be, pulling an all-nighter may just end up making you feel more sluggish in the morning. If you stay organized and prioritize the tasks you need to accomplish, forcing your brain to perform while functioning on no sleep probably won’t be necessary.

Approaching your finals in a healthy state of mind is the first step in performing well. Good luck on your finals Huskies and have a great summer!

House Bill 2732, which garnered House approval Monday, requires high school students to show proof of application to college, the U.S. armed forces or into an apprenticeship program in order to be eligible for a diploma.

Rep. Tobias Read (D-Beaverton), the bill’s author, said this piece of legislation could improve the employability of Oregonians by encouraging students to consider the career opportunities available to them at a critical transition point in their education.

“This bill does not intend to tell anyone what the right choice is for them. It merely seeks to prompt consideration of that question,” Read said on the House floor. “Think about the student who intends to work in the family business. Wouldn’t he likely benefit from some accounting or bookkeeping classes at the community college?”

Although the bill passed 33 to 26 with the support of one-third of Republicans and two-thirds of Democrats, many legislators raised concerns over the new requirements.

For Rep. Mike Schaufler (D-Happy Valley), the bill failed to adequately address the issue of Oregon’s unemployment. Schaufler said making an incentive for manual labor and higher education for Oregon’s high school students will instead take actual investment in state infrastructure — building bridges, roads and zoning land for industry.

“Let’s get down to business getting people to work by passing real legislation which puts people to work, which we’re not doing,” Schaufler said.

Additionally, the Schaufler argued against placing any barriers between high school students and the diplomas they should be receiving.

“Why should my daughter have to fill out some application to get a degree she already earned?” Schaufler asked. “This is one more hoop we’re making people jump through to get what they deserve.”

Rep. Julie Parrish (R-Tualatin/West Linn) agreed and added that placing any additional mandates on Oregon’s already cash-strapped high schools was unwise.

“I can’t support this bill,” Parrish said. “I think it provides an unnecessary hardship on a child potentially, as well as on school districts that can’t afford this from us right now.”

In support of the bill, Rep. Peter Buckley (D-Ashland) pointed out that Oregon’s high schools weren’t doing enough to prepare its students for the current job market. He shared a story of his visit to a local high school several years ago, where he surveyed 28 advanced placement students regarding their intentions to enter college.

“25 out of 28 AP students weren’t applying for college … my heart broke at that point,” Buckley said. “This bill is a common sense bill … it will give (students) a push to fill out that application and say ‘What’s next for me?’”

The bill does not apply to modified diplomas, extended diplomas or GEDs. Students would also be allowed to attend an orientation session for a training or apprenticeship program instead of providing proof of application to a postsecondary institution.

Though the bill did not specify a mechanism to track students, individual school districts would be charged with its enforcement.

HB 2732 now moves to the Oregon Senate for consideration and vote.

Adderall is a drug that combines two forms of amphetamine-dextroamphetamine and amphetamine-that helps treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Ritalin is Methylphenidate, another amphetamine that treats ADHD, a learning disorder. Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) is a not-for-profit organization that serves those suffering from ADHD. CHADD says that heredity is the most likely cause of ADHD, noting the strong neurological base of the disorder.

Kevin Frentz, a health educator at Thagard Student Health Center, explained how brain functions can be distributed.

“It’s like a normal distribution curve,” Frentz said. “There are some people that just are always on top of everything. It’s like they’re born that way. There are, of course, other people who have [ADHD] to such an extreme amount that even on medication they’re still all over the place. Majority of people have good days and bad days. ”

Surveys have been done to estimate the number of students using stimulants without a prescription, but these surveys can lack scientific validity due to the lack of incentive for students to honestly answer questions. Less than 5 percent of college students reported to the American College Health Association (ACHA) that they had been professionally diagnosed or treated with ADHD in the last year. Of the 1,796 students that admitted to taking non-prescribed stimulants, 7 percent of men and 5 percent of women took it non-prescribed. Only 834 students said they were prescribed medication to assist with their ADHD. Six percent of students who took the survey-nearly 2,000 students-admitted to taking stimulants that were not prescribed.

Frentz compared psychostimulants to steroids for a student’s brain.

“Some people still want the easy way out,” said Frentz. “They feel, just like people on steroids for sports, you might be gifted or you might be a good athlete, but you’re thinking, ‘Well, I don’t need to take those steroids but that guy who’s really gifted and better than me without steroids is on steroids and I’m going to fall behind-I need to take them.’ The same mentality comes about with people taking Adderall.”

Ilese Weingarten, outreach coordinator for the FSU counseling center, said that many of these students have misconceptions about this drug.

“Students think that, because it’s prescribed to people, it’s a safe drug,” said Weingarten. “Well, it’s a safe drug under a doctor’s supervision prescribed to you because someone has gone through a lot of assessment to say that this is a medicine that can help.”

This medication can definitely help, but it only helps if there is a legitimate need for it. It does not come without some significant risks.

“It can be potentially dangerous,” said Weingarten. “For people who don’t have ADD, it’s an amphetamine.”

Not only does the amphetamine of Adderall have a similar effect to speed, it also gives students a false sense of confidence, according to Frentz.

“For people who need Adderall, it really has a place and it really does help them focus, but when you get a person who doesn’t need it taking it, the drugs show a small effect,” Frentz said. “More often, researchers come up with negative findings, unable to show a clear cut across the board improvement on any of a wide variety of tasks. Adderall, researchers found, makes you think you’re doing better than you actually are.”

Side effects can be serious. An 80 milligram bottle of Strattera (the only non-stimulant ADHD medication on the market) comes with warnings of “serious cardiovascular events (e.g., sudden death stroke, myocardial infarction), serious liver damage and major effects on blood pressure and heart rate.”

“Even a small dose makes you very shaky, and you could end up in the hospital,” Frentz said. “Kids have been hospitalized from taking too much. They think they’re having a heart attack.”

These health risks are not the only risks that come with taking a psychostimulant without a perscription.

“I think the health issue is the primary concern; the secondary concern is getting arrested,” Weingarten said. “It is a felony charge to have amphetamines in your possession not prescribed to you.”

Maj. Jim Russell of FSUPD said that Adderall is not an uncommon drug when it comes to student arrests.

“Ritalin is less common, but Adderall is often used as the ‘study drug,’ ” said Russell. “What we normally find is a student in possession of a single, or a few pills. Dealers do operate on campus, [but] are harder to catch.”

According to the ACHA, the only type of prescription drug more college students took unprescribed were painkillers (e.g., Vicodin, OxyContin).

“Mark” (whose name has been changed to maintain anonymity), an FSU sophomore majoring in marketing, admitted to taking Adderall on occasion during this time of year.

“I take it because I feel as though it helps with concentration-helps you stay up,” Mark said. “It gets me in a zone where I actually enjoy what I’m studying.”

When asked about the risks, Mark said he was not very concerned, because it’s so infrequent that he actually takes the stimulant.

“I only take it maybe once a month for just one class, say financial accounting,” Mark said. “After this class, I probably won’t do Adderall again for school classes unless it’s the equivalent to organic chemistry or something harder. All in moderation, I say.”

“Sarah,” a senior graduating this week with a degree in art history, also admitted to taking Adderall on occasion. She said that she used it to help her finish a paper.

“It helps me stay focused; it doesn’t help me study,” Sarah said. “It helps me stay focused on studying. I’m not really concerned with the risks because I’ve only done it once or twice; I try to avoid it when I can.”

Graduate student Benjamin Purzycki said that he used the profane term during his Anthropology 1000 class, “Other People’s Worlds,” three weeks ago to address racism and ultimately eliminate it. “The argument of the lecture was how insignificant groups of people can be when grouped under a certain category,” he said.

To illustrate this point, Purzycki put a Richard Pryor album cover with the word “Super N*****” and a poster of the Pope saying “N***** Please” in his power point presentation. He then showed a portion of a Chris Rock skit called “N****** vs. Black People.”

“My playing it points to the dynamics of the issue,” Purzycki said.

The rest of Purzycki’s lecture focused on the stereotyping of other ethnicities, such as Native Americans, and classification of in-groups and out-groups based on politics and class. He also delved into the history of the N-word. He said that the Dutch first used it as a way to describe black people. Later, the term evolved to become a racial slur.

Nowadays, we make assumptions about the word, and either abuse it or shy away from it, Purzycki said. For example, when people sing along to rap songs and only leave out the N-word, they contribute to the stereotypical, repulsive nature of the term. But this kind of discrimination cannot be simply explained, Purzycki said – it has to be confronted.

Purzycki said that he was “never motivated by shocking people.”

Therefore, he only said the N-word once in class to quote a friend. He said that the first half of the semester was a disclaimer for all the sensitive issues that the class would be learning about. Furthermore, Purzycki said that he encourages his students to voice their opinions in their discussion sections, and in lecture as well. He also said that he wishes that the student who filed the complaint had talked to him or one of the TAs before going to the associate dean and the newspaper.

Purzycki said that his work is entirely non-racist. As an undergrad at the University of Milwaukee, he put together rallies and other events to support the victims of racist police brutality. He has analyzed changes in Native American culture that have been direct results of U.S. government policies, and has published an article about how humans are constantly subjugating each other.

The teaching assistant said that in the past he has gotten only positive feedback on his presentation.

“Students of all colors have come up to me over the years and thanked me for the lecture,” he said. But Purzycki will consider rethinking his approach to the topic if told so by the anthropology department. Still, he said, “we need to understand racism to do something about it.”

USG Vice President Donald Richards, who also works at the African American Cultural Center, said that he spoke with both Purzycki and the student who filed a complaint against him. After weighing both sides of the issue, he said that he is forced to agree with Purzycki.

Richards said that a “growing concern is that there is a lack of African American history being taught in our educational system and particularly on this campus.” Therefore, he believes that the N-word should be the subject of discussion and debate in UConn classrooms. “If the use of the word ‘n*****’ has not been resolved within the black community for decades, it cannot and will not be resolved on this college campus,” Richards said. “However, it is a very important aspect to the conversation and must be mentioned when discussing race.”

If Gov. Malloy had his way, at the end of this year 17 vocational-technical high schools across the state will have lost the state funding that keeps them operational. At this point, control of the building and property would go to the towns in which they are located. The decision to continue to operate these buildings as specialized regional institutions would be at the discretion of the towns. Malloy’s argument is that these schools are a large expense in the state budget, and in most other states, regional councils fund such programs.

Fortunately, the schools are safe for the moment, pending a 10-month study that will evaluate the performance and needs of the vo-tech school system in Connecticut. The sad truth is that most of the schools are stuck with outdated or derelict equipment, and are in dire need of maintenance. On Jan, 15, 2012, the Education Committee will file a report with the state, according to State Representative Michelle Cook. She also stated that the committee’s goal is to seek measures that would improve the schools rather than eliminate them.

Elimination would be one measure that would push education measures in this state backwards, and further burden students at all levels. The mission of vo-tech schools is to provide the same immersion, learning and academic experience as a traditional high school, but to overlay a hands-on technical experience that will aid students in establishing careers upon graduation, or aid them in higher education goals should they choose to pursue them. In high school, these students are learning to work with innovative and adapting technologies, and graduate highly trained in specialized areas such as hvac, green and environmental technology, and even as licensed practicing nurses – a program in this state with a 100 percent job placement rate. How many other programs can boast that? When measuring against more traditional school systems, the vo-tech program is extremely high-performing in comparison.

Also, thanks to an NSF grant and the GK12 federal program, these students work directly with UConn graduate engineering students, not only expanding the skills they develop in high school, but learning how their skills can be applied in higher education institutions. There is a push to have these students attend UConn for engineering, so that the programs can continue to develop and become more innovative on both sides.

Vo-tech schools fill a large gap in our society for students who may just think outside of the box of the ‘test culture’ that has become the mainstream education process. Public education needs to continue to provide opportunities for those who have different interests and are extremely talented at different things. Just as our society tries to protect fine arts programs and magnet schools, we have to protect the vo-tech school system and make sure that these students’ needs are met. If the alternative is shutting down the schools and reaping the potential consequence of any percentage of 10,600 students falling through the cracks of mainstream education, instead of being given the tools to develop their skills, those are consequences we can not afford.

It is an unfortunate truth that the behaviors of students toward their instructors have moved from being collaborative and constructive to callous and demeaning. Instead of eloquent debates, students demand their opinions be held high and mighty. Instead of learning from mistakes, students argue at the top of their lungs for one extra point on a test. It is gravely disappointing to watch the entitlement generation turn college courses into high school classrooms one would only see on an exaggerated television series. In an attempt to save civility, I would like to use this letter to pay my utmost respect to an instructor who the University is privileged to have.

This is my third term taking the second-year American Sign Language sequence from Peter Quint, and it has truly been an honor. As a member of the deaf community, Quint offers students the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in deaf culture. Students are given the chance to learn firsthand about creating a positive environment for equal language access. If anything, my classes with Mr. Quint have taught me just how much of a struggle members of the deaf community must endure to gain this. In the classrooms of a hearing-dominated world, Quint could not be paid enough for the work that he does.

I believe Quint’s best attribute is his incredible sense of compassion. He is understanding of students and maintains a positive attitude through both highs and lows. His sense of humor is engaging and an amazing asset to helping learn the language. Quint is open to feedback and is continuously looking for ways to improve as an instructor. He is passionate about what he teaches because he understands the greater impact educating has beyond the classroom walls.

I encourage all students to take a stand. Prove to society that we are not dwindling into a mass of barbarians. Show that we have manners and that we understand how to express gratitude. We must stop belittling those who teach us and instead raise them up and acknowledge the immeasurable value they bring to our campus. Be an advocate. Pay respect to an instructor who, most likely, is too often overlooked. These are the people who are opening up the world to us, and they are doing it because it is what they love to do.

Fan Mai, a graduate student in the department of sociology, explained that a hook-up culture involves physical contact as the primary means of interaction.

“‘Introduction to Sociology’ compares hook up culture to dating,” Mai said. “Sex used to be very institutionalized — we had sex only in the confines of marriage — but now it’s acceptable in dating. We’re moving away to a totally individual approach: you make your own decisions because it’s your body.”

As a teaching assistant for “Sociology of the Family” in 2008, Mai assigned her students a project in which they initiated a survey of University students to gauge hook-up behavior and opinions.

“We were looking at intimate relationships and questioned whether the hook-up culture damages the caring culture,” Mai said. “We asked: ‘Is there a detachment of intimate feeling from physical intimacy? Is there less caring or does hooking up mean freedom, expression, and is it just a college thing?’ There’s a big question mark.”

The question mark leads to a greater debate within academia.

“There are people saying hooking up is empowerment of women, and it used to be that only bad girls could express themselves; now, it’s more socially acceptable for anyone to be able to please themselves,” Mai said. “The other side says, ‘Wait a minute: there’s a gender double-standard. Both sexes can hook up, but if girls do it too much it can damage reputations. For girls it’s a walk of shame, but for guys it’s a walk of pride.”

Mai said college is the environment associated with hook-up culture because this behavior depends on surroundings.

“There’s a peer pressure out there, and generally people feel that their peers and friends are doing more hooking up than they do,” she said. “So, people think, ‘I should be more open to this. I’m out of place. Maybe I’m not using all of my college time?’ Everyone thinks college is the perfect time and place for sexual experiment.”

After college, however, Mai said those who embrace the hook-up culture still will move on to more committed relationships.

First-year College student Kristie Jones said she observes this type of hook-up culture at the University, where a skewed female-to-male ratio means “a lot of great catches are really willing to just hook up with boys and not expect a date out of it.” As a result, boys do not have to ask girls on dates because they get what they want regardless, she said.

First-year College student Jon Torre offered a similar assessment and said he feels no pressure to ask girls out.

“Asking girls out on physical dates is more rare here than I thought, and it’s because a lot of people seem centered only on hooking up,” Torre said. “There’s even a thought here that you can have an emotional connection and sexual connection, but never actually have to be in a relationship because there’s an area between just hook up buddies and dating — friends with benefits.”

Fourth-year College student Devin Underhill said he thinks of the hook-up culture as a loud minority.

“You can find a hook-up culture here if you want, and it’s very easy to do so, and I think people emphasize the existence of a hook-up culture because we don’t have a strong singles culture or relationship culture,” Underhill said. “It’s the absence of others that kind of put this emphasis on hooking up, but I think all three groups do exist.”

For Torre and Jones, both first years, this hook-up culture extends throughout the University but thrives in dorms and on fraternity dance floors.

“It’s definitely more convenient that there are 100 girls living in the same building as 100 guys, and it definitely leads to more sexual activity than probably would occur otherwise,” Torre said.
Jones’s personal version of a hook-up is “the dance floor makeout.”

“I can definitely see this being more prevalent in Greek life or just Greek parties in general where you aren’t necessarily Greek,” she said.

Ultimately, however, the results of the Mai’s study, which heavily rely on first-year female respondents, cite the discrepancy between conceptions and reality as the perpetuating force of the hook up culture.

According to the survey, 58 percent of students believe peers had three to six hook-ups last semester, but only 22.5 percent actually demonstrated this behavior. Mai believes these findings reveal the peer pressure that leads students to hook up as an attempt to equal their peers.

The survey also shows that students not only overplay the hook up culture, but also prefer relationships to it. Indeed, about 83 percent of participants prefer serious relationships to random hook-ups.

Jones corroborates this finding, admitting she is disappointed by the University’s dating practices.

“Coming into college I heard all the rumors about ‘sexiling,’ so I did expect that, but I also thought there would be way more relationships going on,” she said. “Now I just see that first and second years are really just hooking up.”

The hook-up culture stunts the actual point of relationships and merely gives an outlet for people where they think there are no consequences, Jones said.

“I was talking to my friend about this the other day, and we realized we’re just not made like that,” she said. “You have so many emotions and when you’re just hooking up with somebody, especially for girls, that’s not really all you’re doing because you do make such an emotional connection.”

Mai contends that this gendered nature of hooking up has dangerous implications.

“Young women can be really manipulated by the belief [that sex is empowerment and way to express themselves], but hook-up culture is actually better for men and mostly not good for women,” Mai said. “Not so many relationships come out of hooking up, even though people think it’s an efficient, low-cost way to meet new people.”

Torre hopes that for this reason, his peers recognize the benefits of serious relationships.

“It’s not necessarily always good to be afraid of legitimate commitment, and once we leave this place it’s going to be considerably more difficult to find your match, so people should at some point begin to take relationships more seriously,” he said.

Underhill is in a relationship and believes students do think more critically about relationships as upperclassmen.

“When I came here I had really high expectations, since both my parents met the first night of college; I thought I was going to find the person I was going to be with for the rest of my life,” Underhill said. “When I realized that wasn’t necessarily going to play out, I decided I’m going to have as much fun as I can until I figure out what I really want.”

Throughout his first year, Underhill still was questioning his sexuality; so, he hooked up with both men and women until he decided he was not getting much out of that behavior. By his second year, Underhill was openly gay.

“The summer before my third year was when I got comfortable with myself, and that’s when I met my current boyfriend,” Underhill said.

While Underhill distanced himself from the hook-up culture after committing to his boyfriend, he observes that the end of third year is a time for decision making: either go the relationship route or realize there is only “a little bit of time left here, and then go more toward crazy hook ups that don’t mean that much,” he said. “The majority of people I know go the relationship route toward the end.”

Overall, Underhill thinks hooking up is only really a problem when people settle for a hook up even though they really want a relationship.

To combat the issue of hook up culture destroying healthy relationships, fourth-year College student Maria Pluta founded a contracted independent organization called Off the Hook.

“Off the Hook’s main purpose is to educate and to foster a community on Grounds, and its main target is to consider the hook-up culture in more ways than just physical safe sex,” Pluta said. “I get a lot of news about how to make sure we are physically safe in our relationships, but there’s not as much attention to emotional safety.”

The main concern Pluta sees is the inherent instability of hook-up-based relationships.

“The average conversation of girls, whether it’s in a Christian girl’s house, or a sorority house, or on a Friday night on the Corner or in a library, generally is that relationships formed through the hook-up culture are not sustainable and are not practiced in a way that is emotionally supportive,” she said. “Part and parcel with this more critical eye toward the hook-up culture is the consideration of a more stable dating culture, especially one deliberately focused toward marriage.”

Pluta attests that the point of Off the Hook is not to promote marrying as soon as possible; rather, the group wants to ensure a community ethos exists that will support, rather than stifle, familial aspirations. Currently, the CIO wants to form a better idea of its chief purpose and decide whether it will be geared toward member education or community outreach.

“The biggest take-away for this group as an educational group is that especially because the hook-up culture is so close to the heart, its message can’t just be one you pass along from the class room or lecture standpoint,” Pluta said. “We’d never put up flyers saying, “Hook-up culture is bad!’ because that’s not going to affect anyone’s heart or engage them in an important way. The group is trying to prepare people to be in one-on-one conversations where they can engage critically.”

Off the Hook collaborates with the Love and Fidelity Network, a group seeking to identify college groups with similar missions, and the two groups co-hosted a conference this semester. Pluta wrote an article featured on the site in which she details her qualms against the hook-up culture.

Writing about Off the Hook, she said, “We have a vision for the future in which all persons’ actions are oriented toward a sustainable and flourishing good life.”

Whether an active participant in the hook up culture or a proponent of emotionally driven relationships, what’s clear is that students and academics alike are discussing hook-up culture frequently and in a variety of settings.

As Underhill put it, “I’ve been in Sustained Dialogue all four years and the hook up culture has come up at least once every year. Every year I learn a different side to it and see how many different communities have different takes on it.”

From the first day of orientation until the last day of graduation, we are coddled with reassurances and showered with compliments from our friends, relatives and professors. Three years ago on the first day of orientation, Cornell’s Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences proudly boasted our school’s sinking acceptance rate, evidence that the Class of 2012 was the most gifted to enter these gates.

And our parents happily drank the Kool-Aid, believing that those plump acceptance packages were official affirmations of their exceptional parenting skills. “What great parents we are,” they must have thought, “Our child is in the Ivy League. The Ivy League!” 

During our time here, our self-delusion continued to be fueled. Our professors and advisors tell us that our courses are the most rigorous, the textbooks most comprehensive and our work ethics unmatched.

And these empty adulations have taken hold: We thoroughly believe that we are the crème de la crème of our generation.

We shamelessly self-promote our fabricated elitism. To the benefit of our school store, sweatshirts and t-shirts boldly printed with our school’s name have become staples of our wardrobe. And it is impossible to walk through a campus parking lot without seeing a Cornell decal. The most egregious example comes from the motto of our dining services: “Towering Above the Rest.”

Our school may promote a philosophy of accepting any student, but once given admittance, he is no longer just “any student.”

And finally at our graduation, we are again told that once we are unleashed from our campuses, we will be the leaders of tomorrow. Usually, graduation speakers share words of wisdom to the senior class, deriving insight from their personal hardships that will help us overcome our own troubles later in our lives.

But not in the Ivy League. Nancy Pelosi, Cornell’s 2010 graduation speaker, took the opportunity to reassure the senior class at the young and naïve age of 22 that they are well-equipped to handle the problems of the world and will eventually become tomorrow’s movers and shakers.

Rest easy, Cornellians, Pelosi told us: The hard part is over. Now that we have this degree, things will come easy and we will be the source of our country’s future prosperity.

Now, an inflated self-confidence isn’t a bad thing. For better or worse, it can produce some our most notable figures — Gates, Napoleon, Zuckerberg, Kim Jong-Il.

The problem comes when this sense of entitlement gives rise to a false belief of superiority. And make no mistake: Ivy Leaguers do believe that we are superior in every sense of the term, as evidenced by The Harvard Crimson’s editorial Monday. What has happened is that the Ivy League has become a brand rather than an education. Even worse, it has become a brand that partially defines our identities.

A recent trend in the past few years has been the prominence of Ivy League social networks. Just recently, invitations to join IvyDate.com flooded our inboxes. The website claims to connect “exceptional singles” who value “intellectual curiosity, love of learning, creativity, drive and determination,” as to imply that Ivy Leaguers and our peers can only mingle, date — and ultimately procreate — within our exclusive social circles. To the creators of IvyDate, everyone else is incapable of satiating our supposedly sophisticated intellectual palates.

But surely, we do not really believe that the 24,000 extremely lucky applications selected out of some 242,000 were the only ones worthy of admission, that the methods used by a hodgepodge team of admission officers were foolproof in deciding which high school senior is “better” than his peers? And we don’t really believe that the poor blokes who weren’t as lucky — and indubitably luck has come to play a larger role — are destined for lives of mediocrity?

Sure, we exhaust ourselves studying for exams and spend an inordinate number of hours in the library, but so does every student who possesses ambition and discipline, regardless of whether he attends Yale or State U.

Here’s a startling fact: According to a study by economists Stacey Dale and Alan Krueger ’83, those students who were rejected by elite schools — whatever that means — and went on to attend state schools earned just as much as their peers. According to the data, success is based on inherent character, not a four-year degree.

But do realize that by simply graduating from college, we join an elite group that comprises only 28 percent of the population in the U.S. and only 6.7 percent of the world’s population. Why Ivy Leaguers still feels a need to elevate ourselves further is a mystery.

Although cheating may be beneficial in the short run for receiving higher grades or quickly gaining answers and reassurance, a recent study by Duke University and Harvard Business School researchers titled “Temporal view of the costs and benefits of self-deception” has shown that cheating gives students false confidence in their abilities.

“The real questions are about what we call self-deception,” said Dan Ariely, co-author of the paper and James B. Duke professor of behavioral economics. “When we lie, how quickly [do we]… convince ourselves that we’re not really lying?”

Subjects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were split into two groups to take a test, with one of the two groups receiving an answer key for the purpose of checking their answers after finishing. As expected by the researchers, the group with access to the answer key got higher scores than the group that did not, said Michael Norton, co-author of the paper and associate professor of business administration at Harvard.

The subjects were then asked to predict how they would do on a second test without an answer key. The group that previously had the answers expected to continue their superior performance, but the two groups’ scores were nearly identical on the second test.

“The [group with the answer key doesn’t] seem to be acknowledging that they’re cheating, although we can show that they are,” said Zoe Chance, a co-author of the paper and a graduate student at Harvard. “So the implications are that it’s pretty dangerous to not realize you’re cheating because then you won’t be able to [correct the behavior].”

The subjects very quickly convinced themselves that their performance on the first test was due to their actual ability rather than cheating, Ariely said. Furthermore, when they were given a certificate of their false accomplishments on the first test, they seemed to think even more highly of themselves and how they would perform on the next test, he added.

This research applies to students who use study aids or practice tests with answers to help them study for tests, Chance said. Even if a student is not actually cheating but just looking for answers in a book studying with a friend, they may not accurately understand how well they comprehend the material.

Even students who do well on homework and usually receive good grades often blame test anxiety for performing poorly on exams, including the SATs and GMATs, Chance said. On practice tests, many of these students will look up a few questions or give themselves the benefit of the doubt when they score. Their poor grades on exams may be due to giving themselves more credit than they really deserved when preparing, Chance said.

The next step in this research is going to evaluate the long-term effects of cheating, Norton said.

“Once you’ve deceived yourself, how much does the world need to tell you you’re wrong before you stop deceiving yourself? That’s what we’re going to do next,” Norton said.

That wasn’t always a focus, said biochemistry professor Paul Siliciano.

“We were leaving untapped the power of the competitive marketplace,” he said, particularly given the school’s size. He said that when publishing company representatives presented new books to professors, their price was rarely mentioned.

“It’s sort of like somebody buying a really loaded car, except they don’t have to pay for it,” he said. “There’s a disconnect there.”

But Siliciano said that has changed in recent years, helped by a trend of some professors who teach large courses, like chemistry, to negotiate multi-year contracts with publishers in exchange for lower costs.

According to University of Minnesota Bookstore manager Bob Crabb, that strategy seems to be working. Despite publishers increasing prices 5 to 6 percent over the last several years, he said, the average price of textbooks in the University’s bookstore has gone down since last year.

“The only way that can happen is if faculty are making a concerted effort to select lower-price books,” he said.

Still, the profit motive of booksellers can frustrate professors.

Professor Tom Holmes said the substance of the textbook for his introductory economics course changes little year to year, but they update the text with different graphics and examples from current events.

“The edition doesn’t change at all,” he said. “They only things they change are the pictures. It’s shocking.”

While Crabb called publishers “relentless in their pursuit” of higher costs despite the scrutiny of those costs, he acknowledged that publishers need to cover production expenses. He said by the third or fourth run of a volume the sales pale in comparison due to used book sales.

Tom Stanton, spokesman for textbook publishing company McGraw-Hill, said publishers’ revenue comes from the first sale of the print textbook only.

“The largest percentages of the wholesale textbook price,” he wrote in an email, “cover author royalties, paper [and] printing,” among others.

Crabb said the business used and rental books take from new books forces publishers to raise prices, which in turn drives students to purchase more used and rental books.

“It’s kind of a vicious circle,” he said.

Despite the appeal of alternatives, Crabb said cheaper e-books haven’t caught on. “It’s got the whole industry baffled.”

He said part of the reason might be because many e-books don’t add any value, despite the potential of their electronic platform.

“Currently they’re pretty much PDFs of paper books,” he said, adding that publishers are developing interactive features on books.

Until then, he said, “They just don’t stand up to a paper book you can flip back and forth in and mark up.”

“We don’t see e-books as a game changer,” Stanton wrote.

Textbook rentals have proven more popular with students. They accounted for 7 percent of the bookstore’s sales in the last year, but among textbooks available in all forms, that rate jumps to more than a third.

The federal government has also become a force in changing the textbook market. Last summer, regulations requiring publishers to detail information about prices, revision histories and alternate formats went into law, according to a McClatchy report. The law also required publishers to sell multimedia supplements to textbooks separately from the book.

Siliciano said he was pleased with the bookstore’s attempts to keep book prices close to cost. He also said he thinks there should be a “renewed, concerted effort” to bring prices down across the University.

“We haven’t come as far as we’d like to,” he said, citing the difficulty of lowering prices for courses that use multimedia software, website keys and other supplements.

“It’s frustrating because we can’t do anything about tuition,” he said. “But the faculty feels very strongly for the students.

“If we can [help] control textbook costs, it’s a good thing.”

But our test scores are not the only thing in need of improvement – student attitudes can also use a tune up.

In a commentary piece written for The Chronicle of Higher Education, New England college professor Elayne Clift calls for an attitude adjustment among students. Clift has taught at Ivy League institutions and community colleges. She remembers her “semester from hell,” when a group of graduate students lamented the syllabus on the first night of class, complaining that it called for too much work. The professor said she felt disrespected for their passive-aggressive behavior and shocked that at the graduate level, they could not write in coherent sentences. She was “accosted” with “hostile emails” after critiquing papers – even when she discovered evidence of plagiarism. Her observations led her to the following conclusion: students have a sense of entitlement, evidenced by rude behavior and a lack of academic motivation.

Clift makes an important point. All too often, students show up to class having not bothered to even do the reading, write papers riddled with questionable sources like Wikipedia. Many students are only willing to do enough work to pass classes and move on. If we earn a poor grade on an essay or fail an exam, it’s not our fault; rather, the professor is to blame. Not only is there a lack of accountability concerning our academic performances, but also for our education at large.

As Clift insinuates in her piece, the first step in education reform begins with us. We as students voluntarily attend college because we want to challenge ourselves and to achieve the highest standard of education that we can. In accepting that, we also need to accept that professors do not owe us anything beyond quality instruction. From the assignments listed on the syllabus to the grades that we earn, we are not entitled to pass classes for less than mediocre work, or entitled to dictate the way a class should be taught, even if we disagree. A degree isn’t just a diploma that’s given to you when you cross the stage at graduation—it should be something that is earned.

Franco mentioned the news in an email to WSN, responding to a question on why he hasn’t been very vocal about his time at NYU.

“I love NYU,” Franco wrote. “My fellow NYU film students are some of my closest friends. I mentioned NYU at the Oscars and on David Letterman; I don’t know how to be more vocal about it. I will be teaching NYU graduate students next year.”

Franco will teach a section of third-year directing in the fall, according to John Tintori, the chair of the graduate division of the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. Each of the 10 to 12 students in the class will adapt a Louise Gluck poem; Tintori said Franco has met with Gluck and has secured permission to adapt her work.

Franco said his class will develop a book of poems into a feature film, and that he will teach at NYU “probably for a year.”

“The book of poems has not been decided upon,” he said. “I love the idea of working with students, especially NYU students.”

“James’ own film work has been based on poems, or about poets, so this is a nice fit for him,” Tintori wrote in an email. “James has an amazing mind. And limitless energy. Our students will be fortunate to learn from him.”

Christine Nguyen, a second-year graduate student in the Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program, said she hopes Franco wasn’t hired only because of his name.

“Hopefully they’re basing this decision on the fact that he’s qualified to do it, not because he’s James Franco,” she said. “It’s not such a bad idea for NYU [to have] a celebrity or an actor teach at the school. It’s a smart move for NYU.”

Andrew Scott, a Tisch freshman studying film, thinks Franco is a valuable addition to the faculty, despite the actor’s quirks.

“He’s a crazy guy,” he said. “He does what he wants.”

O’Conchubhair is an associate professor of Irish in the Department of Irish Language and Literature and a faculty fellow in the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.

“Irish is currently undergoing a resurgence in comparison to what was happening in the nineteenth century,” O’Conchubhair said. “Before the Irish Potato Famine, there were approximately 6 [or] 7 million speakers of Irish in Ireland. Irish was a dominant language.”

O’Conchubhair said Notre Dame students played a role in the effort to revive the language.

“Irish was being taught here as a subject in the 1860s and 1870s before it was taught in the Irish universities,” he said. “That had to do with the fact that there were so many Irish immigrants at Notre Dame. [Students] were calling for an endowed chair of Irish.”

The University further embraced its Irish tradition when it established an interdisciplinary Irish Studies program eighteen years ago and when it created a minor in Irish Language and Literature in 2004.

This spring, the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies offered 24 courses from a number of departments across the University, according to the department website. Fifteen of those courses could be applied to a minor in Irish Language and Literature. The institute also offers internship and study abroad programs in Dublin.

Irish history shed light on the decline in the number of Irish speakers.

O’Conchubhair said the mass deaths during the Famine and the subsequent patterns of immigration contributed to a rapid decline in the number of Irish speakers.

“The countries people are immigrating to are English-language countries. Therefore, English becomes an essential feature in survival,” O’Conchubhair said. “English becomes the language of commerce … [and] national politics.”

O’Conchubhair said Ireland’s newspapers, books and religious texts were printed only in English. The educational system taught only English and a Catholic seminary that opened in 1795 taught clerics to minister solely in English as well.

“The language of modernity [and] the language of social and cultural advancement is English,” O’Conchubhair said. “Irish is the language associated with poverty, backwardness, corruption, despair [and] destitution. If you want to progress, [you] need to speak English. The outlook for Irish at the end of the nineteenth century is very bleak.”

Several organizations attempted to restore the Irish language in the 1880s and 1890s, O’Conchubhair said. The Irish language received the support of the Irish Free State’s native government when the State was founded in 1922.

O’Conchubhair also said during the American Civil War the 69th Infantry Regiment used a flag that contains an Irish phrase meaning, “They never retreated from a sword.” Notre Dame possesses the original flag.

O’Conchubhair said the resurgence of Irish is due largely to the foundation of an Irish language television station in 1996, the Irish Free State’s acquisition of European status in 2007 and the recent proliferation of Irish newspapers, writers and filmmakers.

“Popularity manifests itself in people’s attitudes towards Irish,” he said. “It’s no longer seen as a subject only learned in school. It’s now seen as a hip language, as a language of TV personalities, as a language of sports stars. It’s now almost countercultural.”

O’Conchubhair said the revival is about the use of the Irish language outside academia.

“The revival will be successful if some form of vernacular Irish survives as an urban, communal language,” he said. “[It's] important because it shows that … every generation has a choice to make, whether to embrace their cultural heritage or discard it, and this generation has made their choice. The sense of shame appears to have been dispelled.”

During a summit in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden introduced a “College Completion Tool Kit,” a program that will offer governors ideas on how to enhance college graduation rates through strategies that are “low-cost” or “no-cost” to the state.

“Right now, we’ve got an education system that works like a funnel when we need it to work like a pipeline,” Biden said in a press release. “We have to make the same commitment to getting folks across the graduation stage that we did to getting them into the registrar’s office. The dreams and skills of our college graduates will pave the way to a bright economic future for our nation.”

The plan has seven key strategies including aligning high school standards with college entrance and placement standards, making it easier for students to transfer and targeting adults with some college completion but no degree.

In order for the U.S. to increase the number of college graduates by the goal of 50 percent, the Department of Education claims each state will need to have a 60 percent completion rate by 2020. Currently, about 42 percent of U.S. citizens ages 25-34 have college degrees, according to information at the summit. The state of Texas falls below this target percentage, with an approximately 45.8-percent completion rate.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research also released a study which ranked UT’s 78 percent as the 11th-highest among U.S. state universities. Ranked first was the University of Virginia at 93 percent, and second was University of California, Los Angeles at
90 percent.

Thomas Palaima, a classics professor, said the problem with the country’s graduation rate is the structure of higher education itself, and that unless the core structure is fixed, the Obama and Biden remedies will not ultimately fix this problem.

“It’s a good goal to have the highest graduation rate in the world, but unless you address the underlying structural problems, this is not going to improve life very much for the people who are going to be literally tricked by this system,” Palaima said.

America once led the world in the number of college graduates it produces, but the country has fallen to ninth, said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who delivered opening remarks at the Summit on Monday evening.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Korea currently holds the No. 1 college graduation rate, with 58 percent of its population finishing college.

“While our educational advancement stalled, other countries have passed us by. We need to educate our way to a better economy, and governors must help lead the way,” Duncan said.

To meet the 2020 goal of regaining the No. 1 spot, the U.S. will have to turn out at least 8 million additional graduates by the end of the decade.

Many university students and parents petitioned for student governments to review Nevada System of Higher Education code and draft legislation that would publicize the evaluations, prompting the graduate and undergraduate governments to explore the idea. But the Graduate Student Association decided against it.

The faculty evaluations students complete each semester are considered part of an instructor’s personnel file, which contractual agreements between professors and NSHE prohibit from being published.

GSA President Matt Smith said there were better ways to improve teaching on campus, such as peer reviews and programs that honor professors for exemplary performance.

Smith also said the initiative would be unwise to pursue during the state’s financial crisis, which is adding pressure to many university professors.

“It just wasn’t the right time,” Smith said. “We all need to be standing together rather than putting (instructors) on the defense.”

One parent disgruntled with the policy, Sheryle Lengdorfer, took her grievances online. She created a website for students to evaluate their professors and have their comments displayed publicly.

Students can also evaluate departments of the university such as the UNR Police Deparmtent.

Lengdorfer, who orchestrated a petition that amassed hundreds of student signatures in support of the survey’s release, said she was unhappy with the group’s decision.

“A lot of their constituents would have liked to receive their backing,” said Lengdorfer, who has two children enrolled at the university.

Although she considered seeking legal counsel earlier this year, Lengdorfer said she is waiting to see what the Associated Students of the University of Nevada does before looking further into the matter.

But ASUN Speaker Brandon Bishop said the group is not looking for new means to evaluate professors, although the Committee on Academics plans to give a report on the idea to the next session.

However, Bishop agreed that pursuing the initiative would send a poor message to instructors.

“While I believe this issue is important right now, students and professors should be together in this tough time,” Bishop said. “However, this issue should continue to be addressed to find a mutually beneficial system.”

Bishop said ASUN has contacted a few students about the issue, but the group’s primary focus has been on maintaining the university’s budget.

The GSA Council will revisit suggestions to pursue alternatives to publishing faculty evaluations once the next council convenes in April, Smith said.

This includes the ledgers of the IU Student Association or any other student organization, so it is not clear if IUSA executives have given money to their own companies this year.

Last year, however, the Indiana Daily Student obtained a non-redacted 2009-10 IUSA ledger, which revealed that two companies owned by members of the executive branch received IUSA funds.

LiveArrive LLC, owned by then-Transportation Chief Ilya Rekhter, received $15,000 and Neil Kelty’s Thrive44 Strategy Group received two checks totaling more than $700.

The document was used in an impeachment petition against Kelty, IUSA’s chief of staff, that recently went before the IUSA Congress and the Supreme Court.

In October, when the IDS requested the ledger for the first time, Assistant Dean of Students Steve Veldkamp said, “All student government records are open to the public.”

But when the IDS requested the 2010-11 ledger last month, IUSA Treasurer Sierra Hsieh said she must work with IU Legal, which concluded that some parts of the documents couldn’t be disclosed due to restrictions in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

FERPA is a federal law that sets requirements and guidelines for releasing student records and information. If a university is found to have routinely violated FERPA, it could lose federal funding.

The full ledgers list recipients of money, how it’s distributed, its amount and when it’s mailed.

The 2010-11 ledger did not list which students were reimbursed, nor which companies received checks. IUSA budgets show what category of money is being spent, but not where the money ends up.

Beth Cate, IU’s associate general counsel, said IU can’t release records it believes could be used to identify a student.

According to the state’s Access to Public Records Act, documents like these should be open record, but the statute also states releases can’t violate federal law such as FERPA.

The IUSA documents not being released include some related to the GPS bus tracking debate, such as disclosures of conflict of interest or commitment.

This means any student organization, including IUSA, could be using money without disclosing the details to the public.

Mark Salisbury, director of Institutional Research and Assessment at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., is the head author of a paper published this month that pertains to the growing gap between white and minority students studying abroad.

According to Salisbury, the paper is part of ongoing research in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, a group that checks on higher education promises to students.

“Higher education diversity is increasing, but the diversity in study abroad programs is at a dramatically slower rate,” Salisbury said.

Harald Leder, LSU director of Academic Programs Abroad, said he does see a difference in the number of white students who study abroad compared to minority students.

“It depends on how you define minorities. African-American students are very few [in the program]. Different minorities constitute a larger amount,” Leder said.

Leder said some of the more common minorities in study abroad programs are Asians and Hispanics.

Salisbury found the dominant marketing technique of study abroad programs nationally is stressing the importance of gaining a deep cross-cultural experience.

“White students who think that obtaining a cross-cultural experience in college is important are highly likely to study abroad. African-American students who think the same thing are not any more or less likely to study abroad,” Salisbury said.

The data gathered by Salisbury and his team revealed studying abroad appeals to white students more because of the emphasis on acquiring a cross-cultural experience outside the national borders.

“Telling an African-American student you have to go across the planet to get a cross-cultural experience is like telling a native of Louisiana to go to New York City to get a good gumbo,” Salisbury said.

Salisbury’s conclusions from the research suggest adjusting the marketing techniques to reach the minority audience.

Leder said research shows minorities are in programs that are not conducive to studying abroad, like science and engineering majors.

“The rarest of all [students studying abroad] is a male African-American engineering student,” Leder said.

Katrice Albert, LSU vice provost of Equity, Diversity and Community Outreach, acknowledged in an e-mail that minority participation in the University’s study abroad programs is low compared to their white counterparts, but she encourages all students to participate as a critical part of student development.

“Many students of color may be discouraged from studying abroad because of the costs associated with tuition, program fees and living expenses. Similarly, there may be fear and anxiety related to studying abroad,” Albert said in an e-mail.

Jonathan Daisy, an African-American business junior, said he would not feel comfortable studying abroad.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving home and my family,” Daisy said. “I would feel out of place as a minority.”

Mike Wilson, an African-American anthropology alumnus, studied abroad in Sweden in 2003 and 2004 and is now affiliated with the Peercorps Network as an international project coordinator. Wilson said a possible reason why minority students do not study abroad is because of fear.

“There is a fear among some minority students, especially African-American students, that they will be met with racism that they cannot handle. They feel they are diving into a sea of whiteness, and they will stick out, and people will talk about them,” Wilson said.

Wilson said his study abroad experience benefitted him greatly.

“I thought that with a study abroad experience, I could potentially be a global citizen,” Wilson said. “It increased my confidence and my ability to interact with people of different backgrounds.”

Leder said he sees the importance of encouraging more minority students to study abroad, and he visits the African American Cultural Center to promote study abroad programs.

“We are aware that we need to reach out to those who are underrepresented,” Leder said.

Union leaders addressed a crowd filled with protest signs and umbrellas to support public education and voice opposition to many of the education bills that have been proposed in the Indiana General Assembly.

The bills the crowd gathered to protest are the same bills that drove many Democrats to leave the state recently, including a bill that would limit teachers’ collective bargaining abilities, a bill that would create scholarships for students to attend private schools and a bill that would change the way teachers are evaluated.

One of the speakers, National Education Association Secretary and Treasurer Becky Pringle, asked the educators in the crowd to prepare themselves to fight for the future of public education.

“Of all of the civil rights for which we are entitled to, the right to learn is the most fundamental,” Pringle said. “Public education is at risk, and this is the fight of
our lives.”

Pringle said the educators in Indiana and across the country could not be silenced by legislatures. The demonstrators agreed by clapping and cheering, making their voices heard from many blocks away.

Scott Bauserman, an IU graduate and a social studies teacher at Decatur Central High School, said he drove for more than two hours to show his opposition to Gov. Mitch Daniels’ education reform agenda.

“We need all the opportunities we can get to improve our practice,” Bauserman said. “But the way to help us reform is to work with us rather than against us.”

Bauserman said he feels disrespected by the bills proposed in the Indiana General Assembly.

He said he encourages everyone to call their legislature and recognize that there is a difference between national and state politics.

Another demonstrator, Jon Beck, wore a Superman costume to represent a recent education documentary, ‘Waiting for ‘Superman.’”

Beck said he agrees that schools are always in need of reform, but he does not think
legislatures are giving teachers enough say in how to go about it.

“These politicians have this misconception that unions are only interested in money and budget issues, but that’s just not the case,” Beck said. “Unions are there for the teachers and for the kids.”

Beck said the way teachers are evaluated is also a cause for concern.

Pete and Susan Holtz, both teachers and the parents of seven children, said they agreed with Beck and that teachers should not be evaluated based on standardized test scores.

“We can document two years of math growth in one year’s time,” Susan Holtz said. “But if the student doesn’t peak on the day of an exam, that’s all down the drain.”

The couple’s voices were drowned out as people driving by the Statehouse honked their horns in support.

“Teachers like to work collaboratively, and many of these bills will put teachers against teachers in a competitive way,” Susan Holtz said. “What kind of environment is that for these kids to be learning in?”

GW has no plans to launch its own Cuban study abroad program, but students can petition to study with programs offered by other universities such as American University, Central Michigan University and Northern Michigan University.

Adam Frankel, freshman representative for the Organization of Latino American Students, said about 2,100 U.S. students studied in Cuba annually before restrictions were put in place by former President George W. Bush in 2003.

“It’s important that as we see, presumably within our lifetime and in the near future, a transition toward democracy in Cuba that Americans be informed and be in touch with Cuban culture so that we can engage and be supportive of whatever direction they may take,” Frankel said.

Professor Cynthia McClintock, director of Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, went on a 2-week seminar with GW and American University students to Cuba over 30 years ago and said she sees Obama’s announcement as “good news.”

“I don’t think there’s really more risk [in Cuba] than any other country,” McClintock said. “In fact, Cuba tends to be a pretty safe country.”

Rudy Mayor, a senior and the founder of Students for Free Cuba, said the looser restrictions will not change the human rights abuses in Cuba and that the U.S. must do more to stop such abuses.

“It’s not something that would really create any positive change in Cuba because the change has to come from those in power,” Mayor said.

Dean of Social Sciences Dalton Conley, who was a part of the decision to put the courses online, said that while “NYU students are welcome to use lectures for review or to sample courses,” the general purpose of the lectures being online is they can serve as a “public service to the wider community.”

“There are benefits to NYU.” he said. “In terms of highlighting what’s going on here and the great professors we have, there is a sort of public relations aspect. That’s good for the school and good for the students. It enhances the reputation of the school, which in turn enhances the reputation of their degree.”

Daniel Walkowitz, professor of New York City: A Social History, was approached last spring to have his class recorded for a podcast.

“I presume that the university thinks that it’s advantageous for them to get some of their professors out into the public as a way of attracting people to the University,” Walkowitz said.

“They expect, and I hope as well, that it will be a teaser, that it will excite people to want to know more about these kinds of things.”

There are some limitations to the online lecture series, which Conley made note of, saying the courses cannot be “a perfect substitute for going to college.”

Walkowitz agreed.

“There’s more engagement in the class [when students are present],” Walkowitz said. “I’m more animated in the class. There’s an opportunity to suddenly stop me, and talk about things. I would be unhappy if that were lost by students being satisfied simply with what’s online.”

Still, having classes recorded from semester to semester allows professors to rework material, which makes classes stronger, Walkowitz said.

Gallatin freshman Alison Driscoll said that she would never participate in the open courses program.

“I feel like if I had an online lecture I would just end up on Facebook or some other website,” she said.

Conley said that professors who do put their lectures online have the ability to “[use] them as a springboard… [to expand] face to face pedagogy, by putting them online and allowing more faculty-student interaction in the classroom.”

The class is called Journalism 580: Multimedia Storytelling.

Smith also intends to take the students to New York, so they can get some behind-the-scenes experience at the Fox News studio. The class will mainly consist of reporting assignments.

“The students will be trying to do local stories related to the Oxford area,” Deb Wenger, assistant professor at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, said.

“(Students will be) potentially doing stories out of New York with Oxford or Mississippi connections.”

Wenger and Smith have remained in contact since the inception of the class, and she said Smith is really looking forward to the opportunity to teach at Ole Miss.

“He doesn’t want to just stand there and lecture,” Wenger said.

“He hopes to go out with the crews and help them do some reporting and really help the students understand how journalism works in the ‘real world’ that we talk so much about.”

Smith came up with the idea to teach a class while talking with Will Norton, dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

Norton said Smith wanted remain connected to the University, and he is looking forward to having Smith back at Ole Miss.

“We intend to bring graduates of journalism at Ole Miss back to campus as often as possible,” Norton said.

“To bring back someone with Shepard’s national profile is significant. He once worked in the Student Media Center and took virtually the same classes our students are now taking. I am hoping that, long after I am gone, many who are in this class will be back to teach students 20 and 30 years from now.”

Smith, who is considered one of the most trusted news anchors in the United States, was once an Ole Miss student, though he left for a job at WJHG-TV in Panama City Beach, Fla., just two credits shy of graduation.

He later received an honorary degree from the University. The Fox Report with Shepard Smith is the top rated newscast in cable news, according to U.S. Cable News.

Students interested in taking the class must have taken journalism 375 or 376 and have maintained a minimum 3.0 GPA. Students must also fill out an application, located in the front of Farley Hall.

Applicants will have to send their transcript along with what they consider their best piece of work and an essay explaining how they see this course fitting into their overall academic plan.

According to Wenger, they are aiming for 15 students for the class.

MU and other state schools that receive federal funding are, under the Returning Heroes Act, required to cap undergraduate tuition to $50 per credit hour for veterans who served after Sept. 11, 2001, in a designated combat zone. In-state undergraduate students typically pay $245.60 per credit hour.

Controversy surrounding the statute has arose due to the question of whether the federal aid should be distributed before or after the addition of non-tuition fees, such as room and board rates. MU does not include costs besides tuition when applying the aid granted veterans from the Returning Heroes Act.

“Our campuses use the methodology recommended by the Department of Higher Education, which is to apply other financial aid first, then the Returning Heroes,” UM System spokeswoman Jennifer Hollingshead said in an e-mail.

Simon Law Firm in St. Louis will represent a group of veterans comprised of MU students, as well as students from other federally-funded Missouri higher education institutions.

Attorney John Campbell said the suit rests on the belief the federal aid should cover not only tuition, which comprises on 40 percent of most college costs, but the costs of attending college as well.

“The primary problem is that right now is that if someone receives aid from the federal government the schools are applying it all to tuition even though that aid is also for room and board, etc.,” Campbell said. “The result is that the school is often paid its full tuition, the same tuition you or I or anyone who is not a combat veteran would pay. Often the aid is completely depleted paying the tuition and the combat veterans’ federal aid is gone.”

MU General Counsel Phillip Hoskins and Vice Provost for Admissions Ann Korschgen did not comment on the situation, as MU’s legal policy does not permit discussion on pending litigation.

The veterans’ charge against MU will focus on the clear intent of the Returning Heroes Act to reduce tuition for combat veterans, Campbell said.

“In the way it’s being applied right, we do not believe (the Returning Heroes Act) is reducing tuition in most cases and even the cases in which tuition reduction occurs the reduction is less than it should be under the law,” Campbell said. “We believe the statute requires that the tuition for combat veterans be reduced in a significant way.”

Campbell said the lawsuit became necessary after conversations involving the law firm and the university yielded no result. In addition, the law firm hopes the decision, whether made by a judge or a court of appeals, will impact Missouri on a statewide level, rather than just MU.

“Once a court of appeals speaks with some authority or we reach an agreement as to what the law means and how it should be applied, all schools should follow suit, and we’ll see uniformity in application,” Campbell said.

Campbell said he considers representing the veterans an honor to himself and his law firm.

“I don’t know if it is necessarily an advantage, but it is a privilege to represent combat veterans,” Campbell said. “To an extent right now the statute helps them less than it should. We argue that it should help them more, and I don’t know who would disagree with that.”

“Skype in the Classroom” will afford educators the opportunity to collaborate across great distances and also will create opportunities for invited guest speakers to join schoolchildren and college students in far-away classrooms and lecture halls via Webcams. While Skyping opens the classroom’s door to connecting with experts and educators, the new technology also enables students to attend class remotely. Inevitably, educators and academic institutions will be faced with a perplexing question: should students be allowed to attend traditional classes via Webcam?

Sut Jhally, a professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts, said he believes linking distant thinkers to local classes is a wonderful tool, but cautioned that where there is a loophole, students may have a tendency to exploit it.

“The ability to bring [guest speakers] in from the outside is fantastic,” he said. However, he said he does not encourage student attendance via Webcam, calling the idea “strange” and warning that this will “encourage absence.” Jhally also predicted that student comprehension of Skyped-in speakers will be difficult to gauge.

“Speakers need to see someone to be able to see a reaction,” he said.

Similarly, Kalidas Shetty, a professor of food science, expressed his belief that being face-to-face is at the root of learning.

“Personal interactions are critical for the learning experience,” he said.

Shetty said there is a high satisfaction rate for students within his department. He attributed this to the effort he and his colleagues make to get to know their students personally and faculty efforts to create what he called a supportive, interactive learning environment. Though he would not encourage students to attend class solely via Webcam for fear of losing the connection within the classroom, he supports “tools that enhance the learning experience, and anything to benefit a positive outcome.” He expressed the belief that as new tools are made available, students should have the freedom to decide how to use them.

Students, perhaps predictably enough, said they welcome the opportunity to attend class in their pajamas, if they so choose.

Olivia Johnson, a sophomore biology major, admitted to occasionally skipping class, but attributed cutting out sometimes to mother nature.

“The thought of trekking across campus in these arctic temperatures is daunting,” she quipped.

Other students agreed that having the ability to access class remotely, as opposed to missing presentations, would be beneficial.

While being able to attend via Webcam appealed to some students, others pointed out that limitations would need to be established. Eliza Patteson, a sophomore sports management major, felt Skype should be used only when there is a “reasonable excuse for not physically attending class,” such as an illness, injury or a serious need to be elsewhere.

Sophomore Wilson Carroll, a social thought and political economy major, shared the idea of establishing regulations, such as a limited number of times students could attend each course via Skype.

While Caroll said he would occasionally attend via Skype, he seemed more interested in how the technology could be used to interact with guest speakers. He identified benefits of direct interaction with experts in a group dynamic, rather than just reading or watching videos about them. He said he saw the potential in creating a more “personal” educational experience by integrating this technology to connect students with subject-based experts.

Jhally agreed that Skype technology could best be used to enable real-time discussions between guest speakers and students. However, Jhally also pointed out the challenges of setting up such scenarios. While Skype in the Classroom was ideally designed to make it easier for educators to incorporate guest speakers into their curriculum, Jhally said professors would need to have a personal connection with such experts, who, in turn, would need to be willing to devote time to participate in such discussions.

Most importantly, Jhally said he sees limitations on the technology’s capabilities. He pointed out that “a technology is only as good as how it is used.” Using this technology could enhance learning through guest speakers, he said, but professors would have to be committed to solving potential logistical problems.

If a professor relied on using a Webcam for class, and there was a glitch in the technology, the content for that class would be lost, Jhally added.

In addition, he mentioned that some professors have less than IT-level skills when it comes to being technical savvy. A professor not only needs to be committed to learning how to use Skype, but also how to solve potential technical issues related to signals, software, and video projection, he furthered.

Since mastering such a system would take time, effort, and serious commitment, Jhally said he does not envision many professors using it in the immediate future.

The report was funded by the College Board, a nonprofit organization that creates standardized tests including the SAT and AP tests. Other significant factors contributing to student withdrawal found in the report include recruitment by another job or institution, an unexpected bad grade, roommate conflicts and a raise in tuition or living expenses.

“Identifying these specific events can help universities decide what type of services to provide,” said Jessica Keeney, a psychology doctoral student at Michigan State University and co-author of the report.

About 20 percent of entering UT freshmen in 2004 did not complete their degree within six years, compared with the national average of 43 percent, according to data from the UT Office of Information Management and Analysis and the National Center for Education Statistics, respectively.

By knowing what causes students to drop out, universities can improve their policies, said Tim Pleskac, an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University and lead researcher for the report. For example, to avoid a student being shocked by a bad course grade, making grades available online can help that student track their progress, he said.

“We have a better sense of what factors get people thinking about quitting,” Pleskac said.

The study, which was released last month, surveyed 1,200 enrolled students from 10 universities and was based on previous research on the influence of precipitating events or shocks that influence withdrawal, Pleskac said.
UT Student Financial Services director Tom Melecki said OSFS tries to reduce unexpected financial pressures on students.

“We try to make a commitment to a student for the full school year,” Melecki said.

Students may lose financial aid from one year to the next as a result of a poor GPA or failure to adhere to rules of the program. These students have the option of appealing if they experienced a hardship that affected their academic performance, Melecki said.

Jane Morgan Bost, associate director of the Counseling and Mental Health Center, said counselors help students decide the best plan for their situation and that may include dropping out when their academic work is negatively impacting their mental health.

“We [work] with the student collaboratively to come up with a plan of action,” Bost said.

It has nothing to do with an absence of academic discipline and much to do with funding at the federal and state level, which may terminate university education for too many prospective students.

“We have seen a decrease in money supplied from the state government for the past two decades,” said Larry Sparks, vice chancellor of administration and finance. “All 50 states now require some level of education funding from the federal government.”

Ole Miss has created alternatives to help students achieve and excel through education.

Larry Ridgeway, vice chancellor of student affairs, said the last freshman class increased by eight percent and is expecting to see another increase this fall.

“The University of Mississippi has seen a continual increase in enrollment,” Ridgeway said. “Last fall, the freshman class increased by eight percent and we expect another increase this fall.”

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, universities nationwide are seeing a drop in graduation rates.

However, the U.S. is now ninth in the world for citizens who actually hold a college degree, President Barack Obama said in the State of the Union address on Jan. 25.

The government has made budget cuts in order to reduce the national deficit and pull the states out of the recession.

In the process, Obama’s budget plan for 2011 causes education to suffer in order to fund entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

State governments have seen budget shortfalls and have responded with cuts in higher education. The University has a total revenue budget of $423.3 million for the 2010 fiscal year, according to its released statistics.

Only 18 percent of that requirement is covered by state tax dollars, according to those statistics.

Tuition and fees are expected to rise even as state funding decreases, Ridgeway said.

“State money now comes in the form of direct payments to students as financial aid,” he said. “The burden has been moved from the taxpayers to the users, from appropriations to tuition fees,”

Tuition payment is the largest source of funding for Ole Miss, making up 33 percent of the University’s revenue according to the information released by the University.

For its part, the federal government has stepped up in offering Pell Grants to students whose family income is less than $30,000 a year.

“Although Pell Grants do not cover all the tuition, they help lower the cost for families at the lower end of the economic spectrum who are still struggling,” Ridgeway said.

According to Sparks, as the national economy suffers and tuition costs increase, Ole Miss, like other universities across the country, is seeing an increase in students looking for financial aid while less assistance is being supplied from the government.

“A few years ago, Pell Grants were available to students who wanted to enroll in summer sessions, but not anymore,” Ridgeway said. “Now they are only available to students during the fall and spring terms.”

For some students unable to afford major universities, community colleges have become more appealing.

Northwest Community College in Southaven has partnered with Ole Miss and is involved in helping students finance their education at a lower cost.

“I chose to attend a community college because they offered less expensive courses and I could still technically graduate from Ole Miss,” Sarah Nahhas, a junior business major at Northwest Community College, said.

The University created a partnership and they share the campus, but funding is separate and unique, Sparks said.

Students can acquire an associate’s degree by taking courses below the 300 level at the community college for lower costs, then finish their education through Ole Miss at the Southhaven campus.

“Chancellor Sparks has created the Ole Miss Opportunity Program that is available this year for the first time,” Ridgeway said. “It bridges the gap for tuition and housing that is not already covered by the Pell Grant,”

In addition to the Pell Grant and other federal funding, Ole Miss has offered other forms of scholarships such as the Mississippi Tuition Grants Program and the Scholars Program since 1995.

“The economy is growing but progress is measured by the success of our own people by the jobs they can find and the quality of life they acquire,” Obama said in the 2011 State of the Union address.

Clarke, a junior majoring in Middle East studies and linguistics, arrived in Egypt on Jan. 19 to study abroad at the American University in Cairo. He had planned to study in Cairo for four months and had enrolled in Egyptian history, anthropology and Arabic language classes before evacuating the country Jan. 31 because of the protests and political unrest in Egypt.

The Egyptian revolution began Jan. 25, just six days after Clarke landed in Egypt. There were street demonstrations, marches, riots and labor strikes in Cairo and throughout the country. The protestors wanted to remove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office to bring an end to corruption, repression and reforms of the political system. Mubarak resigned Feb. 11.

Clarke was looking forward to experiencing Egyptian culture, but he is now taking the semester off before returning to USC in the fall.

“As a Middle East studies major, I was obviously looking for an overseas program in that area,” Clarke said. “The one located in Egypt seemed the most appealing to me because the history of that country is so interesting. Plus, Egypt is one of the more influential countries in the Arab region, both politically and culturally.”

Clarke was the only student from USC to attend the American University in Cairo for the spring 2011 semester, but was placed in a dormitory with other college students from universities across the United States. Clarke arrived Jan. 19 for orientation week, but did not understand the extent of the civil unrest in Egypt.

“Our orientation leaders and other people at the dorms were keeping us apprised of what was going around us,” he said. “We did have a television, so we were able to watch CNN and Al Jazeera. But even with that sort of access, we still did not know the full extent of the protests.”

Because the dorms were located on an island in the neighborhood of Zamalek in Cairo, away from the center of the riots, Clarke said he and his fellow students were never truly fearful for their safety. The private security in the dorms made them even less afraid.

“None of us really felt the full effect of the demonstrations because we were so isolated,” Clarke said. “I didn’t witness anything violent firsthand, but it was definitely a unique experience to be in the middle of such an historical event, especially when I got back to the States and saw how bad it really was.”

On Jan. 25, the orientation leaders informed the students of the government-imposed curfew, and also urged them not to go anywhere near Tahrir Square, where the largest protests were being held. For the first night of the curfew, the students had to be in their dorms from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m., but by the next day their curfew began at 4 p.m.

Lisa Anderson, the president of the American University in Cairo, came to speak to the students in the dorms to let them know they had the option of leaving the country on one of several flights chartered bythe U.S. State Department. Clarke boarded a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, flew through Europe and finally reached his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota Jan. 31.

Students also had the option to remain in Cairo and wait for any improvement in the situation, but the vast majority chose to leave the dorms.

Clarke decided leaving Egypt would be in his best interest because it was unclear whether the situation would improve. Unbeknownst to Clarke at the time, USC had issued a recommendation to evacuate the area as well.

“We didn’t have any cell phones or internet access, but I was able to talk to my parents on a landline through calling cards they had provided us with,” Clarke said. “I talked it over with them, and we all agreed it was the best thing for me to leave Cairo.”

Clarke said the Egyptian students who were attending orientation week were both concerned and hopeful about the demonstrations.

“Most of them were pretty anxious about what was going on,” Clarke said. “They were all definitely hoping that this would lead to a change in Egyptian politics, but I don’t think any of them expected Mubarak to resign from office. They just wanted a step toward democracy.”

Clarke said watching the events unfold before him added a new perspective to what he had learned about in classes he took at USC.

“I was enrolled in a course last semester that was about the politics of the Middle East,” he said. “We learned about the persistence of the authoritarianism in the region, so it was really interesting to see the people around us rise up on their own.”

Clarke now plans to take the rest of the spring semester off, and hopes to get a job in either Sioux Falls or in the Los Angeles area. Nevertheless, Clarke said that leaving Egypt was extremely bittersweet for him because he had so been looking forward to spending four months in Cairo.

“At the time it was kind of disappointing, but we were also just so hopeful that this would be bring about some kind of change for the people of Egypt,” Clarke said.

Professor Aaron Striegel currently teaches a course in which students create software designed for the Nintendo Wii. The program, “WiiHab,” is intended to assist stroke victims in the rehabilitation process.

Striegel said the use of video games in the classroom is an aim to generate an innovative learning experience.

“The idea for this course came about from a freshman engineering class,” he said. “Wanting to make the class more interesting, the class decided they wanted to use the WiiMote, a nickname given to the remote used with the Wii, to come up with creative exercises for engineering labs.”

Striegel’s idea to make class more interesting swiftly developed into a full-scale course. He said originally, stroke rehabilitation was a side project of the class, but the class decided to become more involved with the subject.

“After putting our heads together, we decided to work with South Bend’s Memorial Hospital’s stroke rehab patients on their balance,” Striegel said.

Graduate student Anne Martin, who was involved in the creation of WiiHab, said the program is helpful for stroke patients in the rehabilitation process.

“I used a computer program to design a computer screen of where the center of balance was for the Wii Balance Board,” she said. “The patient can then stand on the board, and the Wii will be able to inform them instantly of their balance percentage.”

Martin said the instantaneous results are beneficial for stroke rehabilitation patients.

“WiiHab gives more information to stroke therapists than ever before,” she said. “Having an objective piece of technology like WiiHab allows the therapist to give live information to their patient to tell them how much progress they are making.”

Striegel said developing WiiHab is an ongoing process.

“We are continuing to research the impact the software has on its patients,” he said.

Striegel said this continued research involves a wide variety of academic interests.

“We are always looking for students who would be interested in helping with the research,” Striegel said. “Whether they are pre-med, computer science or engineering majors, we would love to have you on board.”

“The D.R.E.A.M. Act would benefit our campus by allowing accessibility and affordability in the UC system and by allowing students to apply for the financial aid they’re already contributing to,” Sixth College Senator Kristian Castro said.

Castro is involved in the UCSA campaign through a resolution that would educate and garner support for the D.R.E.A.M. Act.

Authored by State Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), the D.R.E.A.M. Act would go into effect July 1 this year, if passed. The bill would allow undocumented students to apply for financial aid from a private pool of money while they apply for or attend college.

To be eligible, applicants must have entered the U.S. before age 16, must have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and must have a high school diploma. Applicants must also be between the ages of 12 and 35 when applying.

Administered by state colleges and universities, Return to Aid is a fund that provides institutional and university grants that undocumented students pay into through student fees, but from which they cannot receive aid. While these students are currently eligible for in-state tuition under AB540, they are not allowed access to institutional financial aid or state grants.

During the Jan. 18-20 UC Board of Regents meeting, UCSA President and UC Santa Cruz junior Claudia Magaña requested that the regents sign a letter to Brown in support of the D.R.E.A.M. Act. Nine of the 26 board members signed it at the meeting.

“We need the regents’ support today for the D.R.E.A.M. Act,” Magaña said in a press statement on Jan. 24. “While President [Mark G.] Yudof has supported the D.R.E.A.M. Act publicly, he is not the only member of the board. Students want to see more than sympathy from the regents; they want to see leadership.”

Magaña also expressed concern over the $500 million cut to the UC system under Brown’s proposed budget.

“Every campus leader, every department, every auxiliary and service must face the challenges that lie ahead while protecting affordability and the services that retain and support our students,” she said.

UCSA has called for all undergraduate campuses to participate in the campaign by collecting postcards addressed to Brown in support of the D.R.E.A.M. Act. The postcards collected from these UC campuses will be delivered to the governor’s office at the annual UCSA Lobby Day on Feb. 28.

A resolution in favor of the act was presented to and passed by A.S. Council on Feb. 8. The resolution, authored by Vice President of External Affairs Michael Lam, Campus Organizing Director Chevelle Newell and Castro, establishes the council’s full support of the California D.R.E.A.M. Act.

The resolution presented to council said that AB540 individuals at UCSD are part of the student community and emphasized UCSA’s belief in affordable and accessible education.

AB540 individuals are exempt from paying out-of-state tuition under Assembly Bill 540, legislation passed in 2001 that allows undocumented students to pay in-state fees at a California community college, state university or UC campus, provided they attend high school in California for three or more years and graduate or obtain equivalency.

The motion also encourages the six college councils to collect 200 signed postcards from their constituents by Feb. 24. The campus-wide goal of collecting 1,500 postcards will also be assisted by student volunteers.

“We wrote the resolution to let the student council know about the UCSA’s statewide campaign,” Castro said. “[Our campus] is a part of the UCSA, and the UCSA works as a coalition. The postcard campaign would allow students to recognize that there are students on campus who need the financial aid because [not everyone has] the privilege to apply for financial or institutional aid.”

Castro said that the resolution passed through council with no objections and many councilmembers plan to attend a Feb. 28 lobby conference in support of the act.

“The Office is assisting the UCSA because it is a UC-wide campaign,” Lam said. “Last week, we tabled on Library Walk and this week, we will be going in and out of classrooms to talk to students about what we’re doing. We e-mail the professors ahead of time, and we only go into classrooms [where] we feel like the professors understand what the issues are.”

After considering going back to her home country, Pan says she has ultimately decided to stay in the U.S. because of the better job opportunities in the States.

“Obviously, the Boston, New York, Philadelphia area is just rife with biotech start-up and pharmaceutical companies, and therefore rife with healthcare consulting companies,” says Pan, who will be working for Massachusetts-based healthcare consulting firm Putnam Associates. “That’s not really an opportunity I found too readily available in Canada.”

Yet a larger job pool does not necessarily translate into an easier job search. As an international student, Pan needed to find a company that not only appreciated her talent, but also was willing to sponsor H-1B visas, a temporary work permit for those with non-immigrant status.

“There were definitely a few firms that I was planning to pursue, but they specifically said they don’t sponsor visas,” Pan says.

In fact, one “big firm” Pan applied to, the name of which she prefers not to reveal, first accepted her application, but then declined it after they found out that she needed a H-1B visa.

According to the Harvard International Office, international students can be at a disadvantage during the job search process because many employers are reluctant to sponsor visas for international students—a hurdle which many of the 695 international students at Harvard may have to face if they choose to pursue employment in the U.S.

THE COST OF H-1B

A. Cansu Aydede ’11 is lucky to be among those international students who have secured H-1B visa sponsorship. She will be working next year at Bridgewater Associates, a large investment firm which manages a $75 billion global investment fund. But Aydede acknowledges that visa sponsorship is frequently a headache for international students.

Students on F-1 student visas can remain in the U.S. for a 12-month period—known as Optional Practical Training—without acquiring a work visa.

Yet the Optional Practical Training period does not curb the difficulty of obtaining H-1B visas, according to Aydede. Only the large and resourceful firms can afford to sponsor H-1B, as the process is both time consuming and costly.

“Nobody hires you for [just 12] months, unless [the companies] are big enough, [or] they know that you are staying with them and are worth all the trouble of them going through the process [of getting the visa],” Aydede says.

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service website, companies petitioning for H-1B must file a series of documents and pay a fee ranging from $825 to nearly $4,000.

In addition, the U.S. government currently caps the number of H-1B petitions at 65,000 per fiscal year. As of Jan. 26, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it has already received the maximum number of petitions and will no longer accept H-1B applications until next year.

“Not all firms that are willing to take on American students are willing to sponsor the H-1B, because they don’t have the resources,” says Anusha Tomar ’11, who will be working with McKinsey & Company. Although Tomar is sponsored by McKinsey, she says some of her international friends have encountered problems obtaining H-1B visa sponsorship.

When it comes to fields other than finance and consulting, the issue of H-1B sponsorship becomes even more salient. Students say that companies in the public sector and non-governmental organizations generally tend to be even less willing to invest money in sponsoring H-1B visa.

According to Aydede, many students with interests other than finance or consulting “don’t even apply” to jobs in the U.S. in their fields of interest.

“My impression is, if you are international, and you don’t want to go into finance or consulting, you are in trouble,” Aydede says.

BRIDGING THE GAP

L. Daphne Durham, a Harvard International Office advisor, suggests that students take advantage of Optional Practical Training when searching for post-graduation employment and H-1B sponsorship. Durham points out that students do not need to have a job offer in order to apply for the OPT, which can help them transition into the workforce after graduation.

“[OPT] gives students the chance to try out careers, and also companies the time to apply for H-1B,” Durham says. “It will help you feel more confident about yourself, because you can sell [OPT] to the company.”

Yet the Harvard International Office can only provide limited support when it comes to company sponsorship of the H-1B visa itself.

“We do sponsor outside attorneys who can provide information and give presentation on H-1B and green cards,” says Sharon Ladd, director of HIO, “But there’s not too much we can do because H-1B and green cards are all employer based.”

Students have to take a lot of initiative when it comes to securing a visa, says Robin Mount, director of the Office of Career Services.

“It is important to educate yourself about what options there are, to do research about the companies, to talk to them, and to know in what countries they have offices,” Mount says. “These things are difficult … this is a tough economic time. Not every opportunity is open to everyone.”

EDUCATING STUDENTS

Some international students say it would be helpful if the College provided more information about the difficulties of securing visa sponsorship.

“The HIO tries as much as possible to provide as much information for international students, but they don’t have enough talks,” Rumbidzai C. Mushavi ’12 says.

“They need to start talking about the issues that international students might run into a lot earlier than they choose to do right now,” she says. “You need to know what options are available to you.”

Mushavi suggests January term as a good time to host visa or OPT workshops, as a number of international students stay on campus during winter break.

Pan adds that it would be beneficial to hear more fellow international students’ experiences.

“OCS has so many info sessions, but from what I know, never ones with international students talking about their experience in finance or consulting. It would be helpful to have someone who has gone through the difficulties and struggles, and gotten their visa,” Pan says. “That would quell the fears of some people.”

In addition to peer information sharing, international students say they wish firms could make their policies on international recruitment more transparent.

“[The On-Campus Interview Program] is actually a good screening mechanism for companies who are willing to sponsor international students,” Aydede says. “If they are big enough to sponsor H-1B, they are big enough to go through the ‘trouble’ of OCI.”

Yet complete transparency may prove to be difficult, as companies looking for particular skill sets may make decisions about H-1B visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis.

“Even as a Canadian, [where] culturally there isn’t a huge difference … the visa is definitely an issue,” Pan says. “In fact, if you were from further away, it would almost seem more worth it. We are so close, but we still need to spend so much on sponsorship.”

Since Tufts does not have an abroad program in Egypt, Tufts students studying there are typically enrolled in non-Tufts programs such as the one run by Middlebury College through the C.V. Starr School in the Middle East in Alexandria.

Middlebury cancelled this semester’s program in the early hours of Jan. 30, evacuating its students from Alexandria by plane through Europe to the United States.

Tik Root, a Middlebury junior, witnessed the first days of the protests in Alexandria before the school decided to cancel the program.

“We knew we were going to be evacuated, and I had a feeling we weren’t coming back,” Root told the Daily. He said he instead plans to study this semester at Damascus University in Syria.

While four Tufts students studied in Egypt during the fall, no one went there for the spring semester this year, according to Associate Dean of Programs Abroad Sheila Bayne.

“It just so happened that there weren’t any [students] this spring,” Bayne said. “It was lucky.”

The decision to cancel a program rests in the hands of the directors in question, Bayne added. “Student safety is very important, and we try to give students the information that they need to make good decisions,” she said. “But it’s up to the programs that are running there to decide whether they’ll run in a given semester.”

Middlebury Program Director Nehad Heliel, who has remained in Egypt after the end of the protests, said student safety was the top factor in the decision to cancel the program. Heliel’s comments were provided to the Daily by Middlebury junior Otis Pitney, who has remained in contact with the program director.

“As the director of the Middlebury program, number-one in terms of my duty, my job description, is I have to look out for [students'] security,” Heliel said. She said the decision to cancel the semester was taken after discussions between Middlebury administrators both in Egypt and in the United States.

Several Tufts sophomores considering study-abroad programs in Egypt next year said despite the political uncertainty, Egypt remains an attractive destination because of the benefits of language immersion.

Sophomore Mark Rafferty submitted his application to the Middlebury program for fall 2011, but is still undecided where he will end up.

He said the likelihood that he will study in Egypt next year depends on the political situation.

“I was very optimistic about it until I read a few days ago that they’re postponing elections for six months,” Rafferty said. “If it’s going to be uncertain until that point, [the program] probably won’t want to risk it.”

Heliel said she was confident about the future of the Alexandria program, predicting that interest in the program would only increase.

“It’s not going to make students run away from Egypt — it’s going to actually make Egypt a more interesting location in terms of study abroad,” Heliel said.

Sophomore Caitlyn Doucette is in the process of applying to the Middlebury program and said she was confident in the university’s decision.

“I would feel comfortable if they felt comfortable still having the program,” Doucette said.

Paul Wulfsberg, a former Tufts professor who also served as an associate director of Middlebury’s Alexandria program until August, told the Daily that safety concerns from parents are sometimes incongruous with the situation on the ground.

“In terms of State Department travel advisories and all the press, perceived instability is important for students’ parents,” Wulfsberg said.

He cited Syria as an example. “A lot of students are hesitant to think about Syria because their parents are worried about them going there when it actually has been a pretty stable place.”

Doucette is unsure whether her parents would be comfortable with a decision to study in Egypt, but said she would make the final call.

“I’m kind of at the point in my life where they trust me to decide whether a place is safe enough. Ultimately, it’s my decision — I just don’t like unnecessarily scaring them,” Doucette said.

Wulfsberg said even in the event of the creation of an anti-Western government in Egypt, the continuation of study-abroad programs next year is not impossible.

“If it’s a government that’s opposed to American policies, it will probably be more difficult, but not impossible to have American study-abroad programs there,” Wulfsberg said. “I doubt that the government there would place significant obstacles to study abroad. Egypt is dependent on having a regular in-flow of foreigners and tourists so that would not be in their best interest.”

Heliel said that she believes things will be back to normal by September.

“I think people are going to act very civilized, and things are going to calm down,” she said. “I do think that by September things will be better.”

Led by Steven Brint, sociology professor and associate dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the study looked at the number and type of institutions which offered European language degrees and later discontinued them.

The study found only 59 percent of American four-year colleges offered Romance-language majors in 2006, compared to almost 76 percent in the 1970-71 academic year, though Spanish programs have not been affected in the same way. For German language majors, the rate declined from about 44 to nearly 27 percent during the same period.

Timothy Reagan, professor of foreign language education at Central Connecticut State University, discussed reasons for the decline. He suggested the trend toward removing language requirements in universities may play a large role.

“There is a general sense in the U.S. that English is sufficient,” Reagan said. “People tend to be monolingual and assume that that is normal.”

Brint said another factor of the decline is the economic recession and its impact on higher education funds.

“It is possible and likely that universities are cutting back on programs [because of the economy],” he said.

The type of institution also plays a large role in decisions to continue or abandon foreign language programs.

“Most large and higher-status institutions tend to not drop these fields in arts and science,” Brint said. “There is a very strong relationship between size and status in maintaining these fields. [The schools in which] they are being dropped are smaller and less prestigious.”

He added that institutions being established now are less likely to offer foreign language degrees.

Foreign language programs have not seen any decline in students or support at the University, however, French department Chair Cheryl Krueger said. With regard to French in particular, Kreuger said in an e-mail that there have been “no signs of declining interest in French language, literature and culture. Every semester we have to increase class sizes on several 3000- and 4000-level courses to accommodate the number of students who wish to take courses taught in French, dealing with France and the French-speaking world.”

As long as foreign language departments continue to receive support, Romance languages will continue to thrive at the University, French Assoc. Prof. Janet Horne said in an e-mail. The Spanish department did cut its minor in September 2009, however, noting that “minors compete for courses with majors who need the courses to graduate,” according to the department website.

Spanish is the one language that has seen significant growth in student interest and study prevalence in the United States, Brint said.

Reagan speculated American students continue to pursue Spanish because “[it] is arguably the most useful language.”

Brint said he believes the prevalence of language programs is greatly beneficial for both students and universities because it promotes a more cosmopolitan student population.

“We often talk about globalization, and being prepared for a global world, yet we find the courses that prepare students for that are being cut,” Brint said.

Horne said she believes students at the University recognize the need to maintain foreign language studies, however.

“Our students understand that an English-only approach to the world is very limited,” Horne said. “Universities need to be places where the leaders of tomorrow can become more deeply engaged with other peoples and cultures through the study of world languages, literatures, and cultures.

The report challenges the presumed need for all young people to go to a four-year college and calls for the development of vocational training for young adults and an increase in career counseling.

“The reason we are failing to prepare so many young people is because we are taking an overly narrow approach to education and youth development,” said William Symonds, project director and primary author of the “Pathways to Prosperity” report.

“While we put a lot of emphasis on sending kids to college, many of them are not successfully completing,” Symonds said.

About 80 percent of freshmen that entered UT in 2004 completed a bachelor’s degree within six years, according to data from the Office of Information Management and Analysis at UT. That number is higher than the national average of 56 percent.

The report challenges the idea that the path to success for young people means attaining a four-year degree, Symonds said.

“We need to offer students multiple pathways to success,” Symonds said. “For some students that would be vocational or career education. We’re suggesting we need to raise the quality.”

Symonds said because of the increasing failure to prepare young people for future success, both high schools and colleges need to put more emphasis on career counseling, helping students decide what they want to do and how to best achieve it.

According to the study, positions that were once suitable for people with a high school diploma or less in 1973 made up 72 percent of the job pool. By 2007, that number had shrunk to 41 percent, with a rising need for workers who have some college experience but not necessarily a degree.

Almost 30 percent of workers with licenses or certificates, which require less education than an associate’s degree, were earning more than people with bachelor’s degrees, according to the report.

Mike Midgley, vice president of instruction at Austin Community College, said many jobs once available directly from high school now have more advanced technical requirements and additional training is required to prepare students.

“What’s driving that shift is this evolving level of technology,” Midgley said. “You are getting into the zone when you simply can’t do these jobs anymore without an ability to work with technology.”

In the past when schools did not participate, they would not be listed in the report. Instead, U.S. News and World Report Editor Brian Kelly made the decision to list the non-participating schools with an “estimated” rating.

In a letter to the U.S. News and World Report, college of education deans called the change a diversion from the ethical standards of the organization which will cast doubt on the results on the entire evaluation.

“This is contrary to U.S. News practices with every other professional evaluation that it has conducted,” the deans wrote, “We are concerned that such a practice is also inconsistent with professional journalistic practices and will call into question the legitimacy of U.S. News’ reports.”

The letter was signed by 37 different education officials from 36 education institutions including Iowa State University, The University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Many of the schools have mentioned boycotting the rankings all together; MU is not one of them. Jay Scribner, MU Department Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, said he didn’t know why MU hadn’t signed on with the other schools.

Scribner said the College of Education is going to participate in the rankings at this time and the rankings will have an impact on prospective students who are looking to attend MU.

“We live in an era of lists and polls, some students would look to polls and lists to get information and decide schools,” Scribner said. “If one school is ranked higher they might consider that school more than another school.”

The deans also called into question the methodology of the rankings. The rankings are given on the basis of several factors, including selectivity of admissions, how well teachers are trained to teach certain subjects, syllabuses of courses and the quality of classroom management skills.

The NCTQ was quick to respond to the criticisms.

NCTQ President Kate Walsh said in a letter to the education deans that programs are certainly free to reserve the right to not participate in the rankings, but should be prepared to still be included in the rankings.

“Programs are certainly free to refuse to cooperate, but doing so frees us to render our judgment about programs that produce teachers for our country’s children,” Walsh said in the letter. “We feel that the review will suffer if we allow those education schools that fear our review to avoid it, as the public would be left with the ratings of a self-selected group of schools that are not afraid of what our report may say.”

Scribner said he thought that because the U.S. News and World Report is a private institution, they were not accountable to make a change.

“I think that they can do whatever they want,” Scribner said. “They are a private institution, the rankings have never been complete.”

Obama’s budget would scale back the program’s spending, which had grown rapidly over the past years to $35 billion as more people returned to college during the recession and aid levels were increased.

The Pell program targets low-income students, who can receive two grants per year worth up to $5,500 – one for the normal academic year and one for summer term. The proposed changes would eliminate the summer grant and also cut subsidies on loans for graduate students in an attempt to save $10 billion annually.

Nearly 7,500 students on the University’s Twin Cities campus  receive a total of about $28 million in aid from the Pell, , and Office of Student Finance director Kris Wright called it the “granddaddy of all the financial aid programs.”

The importance of a course should never be judged purely on the basis of the number of attending students. Many courses are unpopular with students because it is comparatively harder to get a good grade in those, or because they may be research-oriented with a laboratory component, which may not appeal to students seeking a career in the industry rather than the academia. That does not imply that their value or significance is any less. Students who wish to opt for such courses deserve to have them available.

It all boils down to the point that students must be given a fair chance to plan their degree requirements and be provided with a fair chance to graduate as early as they deserve. Hence, reducing the frequency at which these courses are offered, such as offering them every alternate spring rather than every spring, for instance, is not a feasible option either. It may force a student to choose a course that he or she is less interested in just so that he or she may graduate on time.

Students’ ability to choose courses they find value in is a matter of paramount importance as they must enjoy what they do in order to be able to do their best work. So, denying them this right is a valid example of compromising the quality of education, the fear which had been “put to rest.” This could have far-reaching repercussions, including hurting the image of the University as a whole.

It is important for the University to stick to its word and make certain that budgetary constraints do not come in the way of the high-standard learning that our University has come to be famous for over the past century. A high standard of education attracts a larger number of students, not just from other parts of the United States, but from around the world.  This will return as profit to the University in the form of an enhanced generated revenue, which would counter the budget problems N.C. State is faced with much more efficiently than a reduction in the number of courses being offered.

The cost structures in the colleges are very different, Provost Tom Sullivan said, and “if you have the same tuition for all undergraduates, then you run into a real problem of ‘How do we pay for extra costs associated with different colleges?’”

The University is considering a new fee that would make students in colleges with higher expenses shoulder some of the costs.

“It’s a policy question,”  Budget Director Julie Tonneson said. “Should those costs be built into tuition and everyone pay for those costs or should they be more refined?”

Schools that run more intensive advising programs or have more expensive faculty tend to have higher costs, Sullivan said.  He pointed to the Carlson School of Management as an example of market forces driving faculty salaries and the school’s costs higher than the University average.

The new fee would be charged on a college-by-college basis and would be added to technology or course fees students already pay.

A new “differential” pricing plan could be in place by the start of the next academic year, Sullivan said at the Board of Regents finance committee meeting Thursday. It’s still in early stages of discussion, as the administration waits on likely state funding cuts.

“Part of the discussion [is] what year does it get started if we were to make a change,” he said.

Student board representative Chantal Wilson said she’s supportive of the idea because it will keep students from paying for things they don’t benefit from.

But the Carlson junior said she’s worried that if fees get too out of hand, they could prevent students from pursuing the majors they’re interested in.

“I worry about this deterring students from choosing some majors that can be fairly expensive simply because the fees are so large,” said Wilson, who’s a marketing and international business major.

Simplifying fees

Students can be charged with more than 2,000 possible fees. The University is working to simplify the system so students know what they’re paying for.

“We had a lot of fees and a lot of structures in place, so it was time to look at them,” Tonneson said.

Fees are charged from the University-wide level all the way down to the course level.  Some, like the $1,300 University fee, are similar to tuition and help cover the cost of education. Other fees cover resources like printing, computer labs and course materials.

Not all colleges charge the same fees, and some have different names for fees that serve similar purposes.

Tonneson said the goal is to standardize what students can be charged by a college and what those fees pay for.  Administrators began reviewing student fees last year, and will present initial policy changes to the regents by the end of the school year.

Students pay thousands of dollars in fees annually, but many gloss over them when keeping track of their finances.

Tonneson said the University is working to provide more information on student’s bills, so they can see exactly what each fee goes to.

Natalie Sokol said she checks what fees she’s paying when she gets her bill each semester, but she doesn’t often budget for them.

“It’s something I usually forget about until my tuition bill is due,” she said. “And then it’s ‘Oh, fees, I forgot about those.’”

The study shows that two years in college, 45 percent of students showed no significant gains in learning and after four years, while 36 percent showed little change. The study found that students also spend 50 percent less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.

The book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska, released these findings based off of transcripts and surveys of more than 3,000 full-time traditional-age students on 29 campuses nationwide, along with their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that gauges students’ critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills.

These studies are an insult to every university in the United States.

Is the book trying to infer our parents are wasting their money on our education? What about Ivy League colleges? Are those students wasting their time too, just going to the university merely for its name?

With the economy being the way it is, students have to work especially hard to compete in today’s workforce. So many people are being laid off and looking for jobs, making it even more difficult for us to compete with those who have more work experience.

Graduate colleges are becoming more difficult to enroll in by increasing their admission criteria and this study’s results makes it seem as though college is a waste of time and that we are not learning anything useful. But we beg to differ.

College teaches us how to develop our time-management skills, enhance our ability to interact with different types of individuals, facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and perhaps most importantly, discover who we are. Earning a college diploma may not seem like much of an achievement to some individuals, but it’s a feat many individuals are proud to say they’ve accomplished.

Another Wildcat, Fulbright Scholar Lauren Bohn (Medill ’10), told Northwestern Magazine last week she has only begun to feel unsafe recently and has had difficulty balancing being a journalist and keeping herself safe.

Carlstrom and Bohn, who each received master’s degrees from Medill, have been in Cairo reporting on the protests that call for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak . Carlstrom is reporting for Al Jazeera English, and Bohn is reporting on the people behind the protests while studying at the American University in Cairo on a Fulbright.

Pro-democracy protests reportedly began on “The Day of Anger,” Jan. 25, in Tahrir Square. More than 300 people have been killed since the protests began, according to Human Rights Watch.

The protests transformed a relatively safe and quiet place into a dangerous one, according to media reports. Protests in Tahrir Square have been especially violent. Protesters reportedly threw Molotov cocktails, and the Egyptian military reportedly violently attacked peaceful protesters.

“The atmosphere turned into a lynch mob,” Carlstrom said of Tahrir Square. The Internet played a major role in the initial coordination of the protests, said Wendy Pearlman, a professor of Middle East Studies at NU. The government has since restricted Internet access, but Egyptians are still using social media to spread news of Egypt’s state of affairs.

“Tech-savvy people are figuring out ways around the Internet block,” Pearlman said, including an Egyptian blogger she heard about who was dictating his entries to a colleague in Chicago.

Both Carlstrom and Bohn said the lack of Internet access has made reporting more difficult.

Phone lines have been mostly reliable, but Egyptian cell phones have been blocked from dialing internationally, making communicating with family and friends difficult, Carlstrom said.

The economy, repressive government and Egypt’s close relationship with the United States and Israel are the major issues of contention for protesters, Carlstrom said.

One encounter with a protester as he was leaving a mosque was “stunning” for Bohn, she said.

“He looked into my eyes with a straight face and raised his fist in the air discreetly but purposefully,” she said. “I still get goose bumps thinking about it.”

Bohn is studying Arabic and Middle East studies at the American University in Cairo. She said she chose to study there because she wants to change misconceptions and miscommunication about the Middle East.

“I want my journalism to challenge the stereotypes and one-dimensional caricatures that have become all too prevalent in the modern media landscape,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Bohn wrote in the e-mail that her time in Medill has prepared her to cover this “historic time in every medium possible.”

This revolution has been 30 years in the making, Bohn said. “So to see this change, to see people mobilizing, which they’ve really never done before, it’s really touching to see,” she told Northwestern Magazine. “I’ve been absolutely inspired.”

These big corporations were the main topic of Wednesday night’s discussion between best-selling authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, held at Bovard Auditorium moderated by KCRW’s Good Food radio host Evan Kleiman.

“The power of big corporations like ConAgra, Monsanto and Walmart is incredible,” Schlosser said. “They are the ones pulling all the strings behind the government and the food we eat.”

Both Schlosser and Pollan are active figures in issues pertaining to food sustainability and industries. They did years of investigative work on food politics and production, exposing the government’s role in unsanitary and discriminatory farm practices through detailed, no-holds-barred books that shocked the country.

Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto won the James Beard Award and Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation stayed at the New York Times’s best-sellers list for two years.

Meanwhile, Kleiman is founder of the Slow Food Chapter in Los Angeles and also serves in the Stewardship Council of Roots of Change, both which are organizations promoting a sustainable food system.

Debating Walmart’s recent five-year plan to repackage its food to include lower amounts of unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, both Schlosser and Pollan were hopeful, but critical.

“Walmart is the biggest grocery store that feeds 40 percent of America,” Pollan said. “I think if they figure out how to [offer healthier products] profitably, there can be significant changes.”

Scholosser offered a more cynical view.

“The real problem, however, is still that there shouldn’t be any companies that powerful,” Schlosser said. “Ultimately it’s about unchecked power, and how corruptive it is.”

According to Pollan and Schlosser, the idyllic days of local farmers and happy cow pastures are over. The food industry has changed drastically. Farms are getting bigger and producing more, but according to Schlosser and Pollan, these “specialty crops” subsidized by the government never actually enter the consumer’s mouth.

“Over 75 percent that [the farmers] produce is fed to livestock,” Pollan said. “The remainder is turned into ethanol to feed our cars. Even so, 50 percent of food grown for humans is thrown away, uneaten.”

Because of America’s deeply complicated food politics, Pollan and Schlosser said the public is often misinformed about what they eat.

Pollan’s deceivingly simple food motto, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” trails into more intense debates from the inaccessibility of expensive organic and health products for the vast majority of America to the obscure yet prominent lobbying and power food farming corporations have over politics.

Parisa Rezvani, a graduate student studying visual anthropology, said she found the discussion to be interesting.

“I hope this talk can accurately inform students because food politics is often confusing and there’s a lot of misinformation,” Rezvani said.

Meanwhile, Michael Zarky, 64,  who has been vegetarian for 44 years, said he thinks people need to be more wise with their spending.

“The food movement is mostly for the upper-middle class only,” Zarky said. “People need to stop spending money on stupid things and support local farmers.”

At St. Thomas, the American culture and difference minor provides students with a new perspective when viewing pop culture.

“The minor allows me to critically examine the culture around me,” senior Breanna Alston, an ACD minor, said. “I am conscious of the messages that society bombards me with and because I am aware, I can make my own decisions about what I believe and don’t believe.”

Program director Kanishka Chowdhury said popular culture, often considered low culture, is just as important to study as high culture, which includes art and opera.

“All forms of culture are legitimate forms of study because they tell us something about how people live their lives,” Chowdhury said.

Chowdhury also pointed out that “not all popular culture is Lady Gaga,” citing music from Appalachia or little-known local practices as other forms of pop culture.

Because of its interdisciplinary nature, Chowdhury said, studying pop culture can enhance students’ understanding in other fields of study.

“It makes us as students really understand the complexity of people’s different identities, different social positions, and it really is a window into understanding the connections between the larger society and people’s lives,” she said.

Communication and journalism professor Wendy Wyatt and criminal justice professor Peter Parilla taught an Aquinas Scholars honors seminar last spring that focused on the popular television show, “The Wire.”

“Media literacy really argues that pop culture matters, that all media matters. It is an important part of our lives,” Wyatt said. “Many of us spend far more time with pop culture than we do in a classroom. We can’t just say, ‘Oh it’s just entertainment,’ and put it off to the side.”

Students watched one season of the show for class assignments and discussion. The class focused on how media portrayals can influence how viewers experience the world, particularly with stereotypes.

“As a professor, you have a connection with students right away,” Wyatt said. “If students love watching ‘The Wire’ or any other TV show and know it well and you can connect that in a meaningful way, then it can be a great tool.”

The “Harry Potter” series has also become a popular topic of study at colleges, such as St. Kate’s. English professor Cecilia Konchar Farr and two students, Evan Gaydos and Rachel Armstrong, developed a 200-level course called “Six Degrees of Harry Potter.”

For the course, students read all seven books in the series and also read theory books about six different areas of study, such as adolescent literature and science fiction. They then applied the different disciplines to the popular wizarding series.

“Each group had to read a book of theory and become an expert on an approach to Harry Potter,” Farr said. “We wanted to make sure we read with depth and insight and just didn’t say, ‘Oh, I love Hermione!’ We wanted to make sure we got some really challenging, college-level reading.”

The class filled quickly both semesters it was offered and already has a waiting list for spring 2012, when it will be offered next.

“I went into the classroom and the students already knew more about the books than I did,” Farr said. “They were already completely sold on the books and dying to talk about them. They were their books. They did exceptional work without even being told to do exceptional work.”

Farr is putting together a collection of the best essays written in the class along with others gathered from around the country. She’s calling it, “A Wizard of their Age.”

Alston said pop culture is important in education because it’s everywhere.

“We can’t deny its impact on the way we live and think,” he said. “We need to be aware of that.”

Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer, political science professors at Pennsylvania State University, anonymously surveyed biology teachers at more than 900 public high schools across the nation in order to compile the information.

“We were curious about what was going on in the classrooms,” Berkman said. “We knew that court decisions had regularly said that creationism could not be taught, but we didn’t know how that was translating into classroom behavior.”

The survey found that 13 percent of high school teachers — about 117 out of the 900 surveyed — spend much of their class periods strictly emphasizing creationism. In 2005, a federal judge ruled that teaching intelligent design, or creationism, violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The distribution of these particular teachers is relatively even throughout the nation, Berkman said.

About 28 percent actually follow the curriculum that teaches evolution, while 60 percent remain neutral and avoid advocating either perspective. Those who chose to remain neutral tend to either encourage students to make up their own mind about each theory or stress that they are only teaching evolution because it is mandated by their curricula.

Berkman and Plutzer found that in most cases, teachers who took courses on evolution in college were more likely to teach it rigorously to their students.

“We think this is because they have much more confidence in their abilities to take on a subject that can be troublesome and controversial,” Berkman said.

Berkman and Plutzer said they would like to increase the percentage of teachers who teach evolution-based biology because it is based on facts. The professors suggested screening out creationist teachers who would be averse to teaching evolution.

At UT, many professors focus more on evolution.

“Evolution is a general theme that really underlies and connects every other thing in biology,” said biology lecturer John Batterton. “What I try to convey to the students is that they don’t have to believe what I’m presenting to them, but they certainly have to understand what I’m presenting to them.”

Several UT students said they have not encountered creationist theories in their classes.
“I’ve taken all the introductory biology and genetics courses,” said biology sophomore Kylee Walter. “I haven’t even heard a mention of creationism at all. It’s evolution. That’s the way it is.”

Prior to attending UT, students had varied instruction in biology. Human biology junior Chad Whitley learned biology on a molecular level, while public health sophomore Veronica Perry learned both creationist and evolutionary theories.

“I understand why there is an equal balance in school where you have to teach both, but I feel like it’s outdated,” Perry said. “If students in high school want to learn about things that have to do with religion, that’s what church is there for.”

In a Jan. 31 “President’s Weekly Address” video, University President Michael Ortiz said Cal Poly Pomona would have to cut $25 million from its budget if Brown’s proposed state budget is approved by the state legislature.

Ortiz said such a cut to the CSU could cause Cal Poly Pomona officials to “redefine” various aspects of the university.

“The hard facts are these,” said Ortiz in the video, “the governor’s proposed budget cut to the California State University system, coupled by the real potential for additional cuts, could ultimately force us to redefine our educational model, affecting the number of students we serve and the quantity of courses we offer.”

Marten denBoer, Cal Poly Pomona university provost, said that despite all CSU campuses facing cuts, Cal Poly Pomona officials will attempt to decrease negative impacts to the university.

“We are all going to experience some budget cuts,” said denBoer. “We don’t know how large they are going to be, but we are going to make every effort to make it possible for students to get the classes that they need and the quality education they need.”

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed has called upon every CSU campus to develop and submit a “first-phase” emergency budget by March 1.

Should the $500 million cut occur, each campus’ revised budget – which will take into account how that campus will bear its share of the system-wide cut – will be adopted.

Although the severity of the proposed system-wide cut is being put into perspective, nothing is definitive yet.

A June referendum, called for by Brown, will allow California voters to decide whether to extend state sales and income taxes that could pick up the cost left in Brown’s state budget and may lessen the blow to the California’s education budget.

California faces a $25 billion shortcoming, which could be halved to $12.5 billion with the tax extensions.

The other $12.5 billion has already been accounted for in Brown’s overall budget.

denBoer said if voters reject the taxes’ extension, the effects would be detrimental.

“If the voters do not vote for those tax extensions, then the governor will have to find another  $12.5 billion in cuts, so things could get worse if that doesn’t happen,” said denBoer.

In an effort to reach a wider audience and potential voters, Ortiz attempted to address not just students and faculty, but also alumni and members of the local community.

“You may be one of our alumni or friends in the community who does not normally receive my weekly video address to the faculty, staff and students of Cal Poly Pomona,” said Ortiz in the video.  “I appreciate the fact that you are taking the time to watch so you can be best informed about our financial realities.”

David Speak, chair of the Political Science Department, said it is not the most popular opinion to support Brown’s budget cuts, but it is time to be realistic about the situation as a whole.

“I believe the only way back to sound financial dealings in California is to try to strip away the smoke and mirrors, and that’s what [Brown] is trying to do,” said Speak.

In the midst of talk regarding budget cuts and taxes has emerged a discussion about which universities are the most cost-efficient.

In his address, Ortiz highlighted statistics that showed Cal Poly Pomona spends only $13,159 on each full-time student and is ranked 14th in the nation of the most cost-efficient universities in the United States.

While spending less on students means achieving a “cost-efficient” status, it can also translate to larger class sizes, reduced course offerings, faculty layoffs and a reduction in resources available to students.

Gwen Urey, Cal Poly Pomona chapter president of the California Faculty Association, said students have been “bearing the burden” of budget cuts and fee increases for the past decade.

“I think it’s so clear from a student perspective that the main thing students must be seeing is, ‘I’m paying more and getting less,’” said Urey.

As the talks of deep cuts progress, denBoer said one thing is clear.

“From the student’s perspective, this is a lousy deal,” said denBoer.

The research from “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” by sociologists Richard Arum from New York University and Josipa Roksa from the University of Virginia, involved more than 2,300 undergraduates and found that 36 percent of college students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the time they graduate.

Matt Melvin, the assistant vice provost for student success, doesn’t see this as a problem for the University of Kansas.

“On average, the curricular and co-curricular experience provided to an engaged student provides them with an opportunity to develop skills necessary to succeed in the new work environment,” Melvin said.

Cody Alley, a junior from Lawrence, is in the UKanTeach programand helped teach a class at Central Jr. High his first year at the University. He said that while his experience teaching was only a glimpse into the real world, the hands on experience provided him with the basic skills he would need in the work place.

While some students may still be lacking a few skills, employers in the area are usually impressed with KU graduates. Kristin Gibbar, the Global staffing manager at Black and Veatch in Overland Park, said that of all the schools they recruit from in the Kansas City area, on average they see the best results from the University.

“KU students are good at the technical side as far as their specific discipline,” Gibbar said.

Phyllis Stevens, the human resources manager at Bernstein-Rein, a large advertising company in Kansas City, Mo., has similar views of KU graduates. She said overall the quality of applicants she received from KU was pretty high. The one problem Stevens encounters, not specifically from the University but recent graduates across the board, was that student lacked skills in attention to the small details such as spelling and professionalism, or the soft skills.

While the ‘Limited Learning’ study paints an unflattering image of college students, it is not critical thinking and writing skills that seem to be the main problem for KU students. Kathryn Nemeth Tuttle, assistant vice provost for student success, said that in order to help distinguish oneself, students should take academically challenging courses and stay engaged.

According to a 2009 study in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 32.7 percent of the students surveyed admitted to cheating in online classes, usually on a test or a quiz.  Less than three percent were caught.

So how do instructors catch online cheaters? The best way is to know their students. If a student struggles with essays all semester long, then her online paper is a hit, that’s a give-away.

Sometimes, students will take information from an online source or even a friend, and copy it directly onto an online assignment.

Spanish instructor Carole Seror said past students have used Spanish translation websites and the results were often funny.  Either the site completely mistranslated the assignment, or the vocabulary was too advanced for the student to have written themselves.

Instructor of history Blaine Davies said plagiarism is a big problem with his online classes. Students don’t study for the test, so they look up information online during a timed test.

“They will paste in a section and include all the links. So all I have to do is click on the link that they’ve put into a test answer and it shows me the site they got it from,” Davies said.

According to Allan Heaps, the interim director of academic technologies, many instructors just use the online testing center. The OTC runs a software called SecurExam to lock down the system so only the test appears on the screen. No cheating allowed.

Instructors who teach online are given extra training through Boise State’s eQIP program that Heaps said gives faculty methods that sidestep the opportunities for cheating.

For example, they can use writing assignments that require multiple drafts instead of one final product. That would prevent a student from purchasing a term paper or taking responses directly offline. Blackboard also contains software that allows teachers to check for plagiarism.

Davies said students who cheat fail to learn and waste time and money.

“More importantly, for the rest of their lives, they will know they cheated. I wonder how difficult it will be someday to look your own children in the eye and try to teach them good values knowing that you failed to adhere to those values yourself.”

Duke, and universities across the country, is monitoring what could happen to study abroad and summer program opportunities in Egypt if pro-democracy protests escalate despite Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement Tuesday that he will not seek re-election.

Students across the world are drawn to Cairo—the political center of more than a week of protests against Mubarak’s authoritarian regime—and its cultural and intellectual opportunities. One Duke graduate student has been evacuated from the region, and although no undergraduates are currently studying abroad in Egypt, the University is watching the protests closely because their outcome will likely determine the fate of future study abroad opportunities.

Sophomore Amir Abdu, whose father is from Egypt, said he hopes Mubarak lives up to his promise to not run for re-election.

“My hope is that the Egyptian youth will get what they want—a democratic government that promotes freedom,” he said.

In the meantime, administrators at Duke are monitoring the situation’s developments. Margaret Riley, director of the Global Education Office for Undergraduates, wrote in an e-mail that the only program the University currently offers in Egypt is a non-Duke administered program based in Cairo at the American University in Cairo. If a government with radical Islamists at the helm replaces Mubarak’s—or, worse, if the protests escalate into factional warfare—then the University may be forced to halt its study abroad opportunities in Egypt even if it does not wish to do so, she added.

“If the International Travel Oversight Committee determines to add Egypt to the ‘Restricted Regions List,’ then undergraduates would no longer be permitted to study there,” she wrote.

Even without an official warning, some undergraduates are already reconsidering their desire to study in Egypt due to lingering political uncertainty in the country. Some students fear that all study abroad programs in Egypt in the Fall could be canceled if the unrest continues.

“There are three Duke students who have active applications with American University in Cairo for the fall,” Riley wrote. “They are seriously considering other options at this time.”

Study abroad programs for graduate students are also being affected. The lone Duke graduate student studying in Egypt this semester has already been evacuated, as have the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s graduate students, according to The Herald-Sun.

“International SOS arranged for the evacuation of the one current Duke student who was in Egypt this week,” Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations wrote in an e-mail. “[It] also assisted several recent graduates who were in the country on study and research tours.”

Schoenfeld said it is premature for Duke to make any official decision at this time. Any action on Egypt’s status as a study abroad destination should be well-thought out, he noted, because of the nation’s immense archaeological, historical and cultural opportunities. Few countries can match Egypt’s diverse educational opportunities, he added.

“We look at each program and country on a case-by-case basis to balance the risks with the educational value,” he wrote. “It is important not to make general assumptions or decisions based on the events in one particular country.”

The University also has a DukeEngage program based in Cairo, which last year sent about 10 students to work with refugees, disabled youths and community development projects. This will be the program’s fourth summer, and it is set to take place from May 30 to July 29. Representatives for DukeEngage did not respond immediately to requests for comment on whether the program could be canceled if the unrest continues.

The possibility that study abroad opportunities in Cairo will be canceled is particularly striking considering the popularity and success of past programs there. Two Duke students studied in Cairo last semester at AUC. Junior Ross Taggart, one of the students, said he enjoyed his experience.

“I absolutely loved my experience in Egypt,” he wrote in an e-mail, citing the beautiful historical sites and the “wonderful people” he met.

Although Taggart experienced a relatively peaceful and informative stay in Egypt, he said some political tensions were noticeable even last semester.

“Some of my professors [at AUC] talked at length in class about the rampant corruption in the Egyptian government and Mubarak’s blatant manipulation of the electoral process,” he wrote. “Still, elections were held and Mubarak was re-elected while I was there with absolutely no incident that I was aware of.”

Even a complete change of government would not necessarily spell doom for study abroad opportunities in Egypt. The protests are pro-democratic in nature and are led mostly by liberal reformers under the age of 30, despite the attempts of religious organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood to gain a foothold in the movement. If the government is wholly replaced, the transition could be not only peaceful, but also beneficial if democratic reformers lead the government rather than religious groups, Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of Islamic studies, wrote in an e-mail.

“[The protests in Egypt] will only affect us in the immediate short term since safety and security concerns would be foremost in dispatching students to the region,” he wrote. “Depending on how long these protests drag on, Americans would be welcome once things go back to normal, but as of now we do not know what ‘normal’ means.”

Moosa added that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood is not as ominous a presence as the United States, Israel, some members of the media and Mubarak himself have made it out to be.

“Using the Muslim Brotherhood as a scarecrow has been a red herring used by the Mubarak regime and also sections of our political establishment and media to support the status quo,” he wrote. “If the Egyptian people choose a political party they prefer but one that is not to our liking, we might be able to lament their choice, but we have no right to subvert and block their right to choose freely.”

Moosa added that the United States and Israel should support democracy in Egypt, rather than continue to support Mubarak.

The Egyptian protests are larger than Duke or any one institution. Whatever the outcome, it has the potential to affect millions, for better or worse. The protests have already helped start or sustain similar protests in Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon and—most recently—Jordan. The “domino effect of change” that Moosa cited could very well cause further protests throughout the notoriously volatile region.

Egyptian students at Duke are watching the events closely.

Abdu said he believes radical groups have neither the influence nor the means to seize power once Mubarak steps down.

“Although it is a concern, I have doubts that the Muslim Brotherhood has the popularity or the influence to take control,” he said. “Although they support the demonstrations, the Islamic fundamentalists don’t seem to have an active presence at all.”

Abdu added that he believes a peaceful result is likely.

“Egypt seems to be on the verge of real change, and I have faith that it will achieve a positive result,” he said. “I truly believe that after all the dust has finally settled, my family will be able to enjoy freedom, stability and peace.”

Of the approximately 11,100 seniors tested in the National Assessment of Economic Progress in early 2009, 21 percent reached proficiency level or above in science. This percentage was smaller than for any other subject tested since 2005 except for U.S. history. Stephaan Harris, spokesman for the National Assessment Governing Board, said the lack of proficiency among students could reduce their opportunities.

“Many members of the board have a general concern about the lack of science proficiency because it’s connected to so many careers,” he said.

Harris said multiple factors may have caused the lack of scientific knowledge and he could not predict if science proficiency would increase or decrease in coming years. Because the Department of Education changed the test since it was last administered in 2005, the latest results don’t show how science proficiency has changed in recent years.

Harris said science proficiency would improve if students engaged in more science activities in and out of school and took more science classes.

“Students who took several years of science in high school tended to score better than students who took fewer science classes,” he said.

Jerry Brand, a U. Texas molecular cell and developmental biology professor, said high school teachers should remind students of what they should know when teaching concepts that depend upon previous knowledge.

“It’s impossible for anyone to go abruptly from one step to the other without disruption,” he said.

Brand said the separation of scientific discipline requires students taking standardized tests to remember information they learned years ago. He said integrating disciplines when discussing topics such as photosynthesis could improve the range of student knowledge, but this is not feasible under the current system.

In the report, 32 percent of American fourth grade students were proficient in science. Brand said it is difficult for students who weren’t proficient in earlier grades to become proficient later.

“Facts and principles build,” Brand said. “Students who get behind stay behind.”

UT biology senior Landon Cunningham said the regular biology and chemistry classes he took in high school did not prepare him for college-level science.

“It was just a lot different the way the material was taught and how much more was expected from you — to read in-depth to the topic versus having an outline given to you,” Cunningham said.

Imagine being assigned a palm-sized, wireless clicker for your classes. Not only would the device clock you in as present when you would walk into class, but you would be required to use numbered buttons on the clicker to answer multiple-choice quizzes.

Preliminary studies at institutions such as Harvard and Ohio State suggest that “engaging students in class through a device as familiar to them as a cellphone – there are even applications that convert iPads and Blackberrys into class-ready clickers – increases their understanding of material that may otherwise be conveyed in traditional lectures.”

Although these new clickers may engage students by preventing them from falling asleep, texting and Web surfing during class, there are several disadvantages to it.

Technology is constantly evolving and shaping our lives, and yes, the classroom is one of the areas where these changes will occur. However, as college students, we sure know how to outsmart technology and work our way around things. And, if we don’t know how, we’ll figure out a way.

What happens when students skip class, but their clickers make it? Meaning, one student can ask another to bring their clicker to class so he or she will not be counted absent. Or, how about when there is a quiz taking place and students just push the same button as their neighbor? These two scenarios demonstrate that using this new device can make cheating simpler and can push students away from attending class knowing that their presence relies on something as silly as a television remote.

With all this in mind, paying 30 to 70 dollars for a clicker on top of how much we pay for books and the use of these clickers does not seem to be the best method for teaching students. However, if teachers require their students to use them and believe they are truly effective, then they should use them knowing the risks that go along with them.

The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education on Friday, APSCU said in a statement.

APSCU filed the suit in order to block portions of regulations that would take effect on Jul. 1 and “impose unlawful and unfair limitation on access to higher education,” the statement said.

The regulations would harm students, slow innovation, limit the amount of information schools share with current and prospective students and have other unintended consequences APSCU spokesperson Bob Cohen said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.

“We disagree that private sector colleges and universities should be singled out for special regulatory treatment,” Cohen said. “We do a great job educating at-risk students — students underrepresented in other sectors of higher education — and this fact should be recognized by the department and elsewhere.”

Cohen said the rules fall into three different categories.

State authorization changes would make it harder for schools to offer distance learning programs, Cohen said, adding the misrepresentation regulation, imposed to prevent student from being misled upon recruitment, would make schools susceptible to harsh punishments for inadvertent mistakes in the recruitment process.

He added the incentive compensation rule, which could prevent colleges from compensating their admission and recruitment personnel, will leave colleges completely in the dark as to how to compensate individuals in the job functions.

Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Post-Secondary Education, said the rules the Department of Education has developed are necessary.

“I think they are moderate regulations that deal with severe problems that we’re having,” Radomski said.

Radomski said many states, including Wisconsin, have legislation that already regulates for-profit colleges.

He added not all for-profit colleges are problematic, but the outliers — called degree mills — make regulation necessary.

Businesses are beginning to suffer because they are hiring people who have degrees from unaccredited institutions but do not have the skills to perform their jobs well, Radomski said.

“For the United States and Wisconsin, the implications are concerning for our businesses,” Radomski said.

This finding is the basis of the soon-to-be-released book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. The book is a compilation of the findings of researchers who followed 2,300 undergraduates through four years of college at 24 unidentified higher education institutions to measure the progress of the undergraduates’ critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills.

Dr. Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University and director of the Education Research Program of the Social Science Research Council, and Dr. Josipa Roksa, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, are both authors of the book set to be published by the University of Chicago Press this month.

A portion of the experts’ book was published on the Chronicle of Higher Education website, in which the two discuss the book, the data and why college students aren’t improving.

The debate on the costs of higher education and how the system can be improved has been a heated topic for years. From students too focused on their social lives to professors focused on individual research, the authors have found that the very people within the higher education system aren’t focused on a remedy to the problems. Even worse, Arum and Roksa say that some may not even notice the problems, writing that college students “define and
understand their college experiences as being focused more on social than on academic development.”

But a developed social aptitude certainly has its perks and should not be considered the sole reason students are not learning.

Students leave college with strong friendships and lasting memories. They have learned to depend on others, to value friendship and to live independently.

However, when they leave college they don’t entertain the thought that their cognitive skills may have never developed.

It is far easier for self-reflective people to view their social progress. A person’s intellectual progress, however, is a much more difficult aspect to examine.

It is ridiculous to say that all students only come to college for the social growth. Perhaps students believe they have intellectually grown from college when in fact, because of the ease of college courses, they have not.

The workload of college courses has a dramatic effect on the amount a student improves. The study proves that students whose classes reflect high expectations (more than 40 pages of reading a week and more than 20 pages of writing a semester) developed their cognitive skills more than other students. Therefore, those teachers who underestimate the work ethic of the current student population may be helping the final grades of their course but they are in no way improving the overall education of students.

It is clear that several factors are contributing to the stunted academic growth in higher education. However, it all boils down to the truth that there isn’t enough people who care to work toward a solution.

“Students in general seek to enjoy the benefits of a full collegiate experience that is focused as much on social life as on academic pursuits, while earning high marks in their courses with relatively little investment of effort. Professors are eager to find time to concentrate on their scholarship and professional interests. Administrators have been asked to focus largely on external institutional rankings and the financial bottom line. Government funding agencies are primarily interested in the development of new scientific knowledge. In short, the system works. No actors in the system are primarily interested in undergraduates’ academic growth, although many are interested in student retention and persistence.”

The problem lies here: No one is focusing directly on the quality of our education — not students, professors, administrators or faculty. How can we, as a nation that once stood as the archetype of higher education success, continue to allow money and politics to steal from future generations’ well being? This research has pinpointed the glaring flaws of higher education and is sure to spark much discussion and hopefully change. However, many aspects of the current academic realm go untouched in this study, such as the major role digital technology has played on our generation’s development. Despite our simultaneous growth with the digital world, numerous professors refuse to incorporate any form of technology into their courses. It is absurd to think that teaching styles should never change. In fact, the easiest way to attempt to remedy this problem of “no-growth learning” is to ask those who have committed their lives to educating collegiate scholars to tap into their classes and discover what is and is not working. It seems as if some professors expect all students to conform to their generation’s methods rather than discerning the appropriate way to teach for the new generations.

As we become more dependent on technology, courses should not continue to refuse the integration of technology. However, simply accommodating for technology will not solve our problems either. If digital textbooks are supposed to offset the cost of high education, then will an increased reading load truly benefit? Therefore, colleges should focus on the ability to fully teach a course rather than the ability to offer the course at a lower cost. Until the realm of higher education has decided to embrace technology, this balancing of pros and cons will drone on.

The collegiate balance is severely off-kilter. There are so many problems to fix and several theoretical remedies. What’s missing is action. What was once a highly efficient system that churned out bright young minds and innovative ideas is now nearing mass chaos. However, as Arum and Raksa say in their book, we can’t classify this problem as a “crisis” because no one seems to be treating it as such. That is, many people are sitting idle. Administrators are still bringing in money, students are enjoying their college years and professors are still focusing on personal research. Until the higher education constituency bans together and resolves to fix our broken system, we may be headed downhill to a fate that is, at best, mediocre and, at worst, a failure. It shouldn’t take failure to get us motivated.

It should take the fact that some students are leaving institutions that proclaim a mission of education without showing any improvement. That is failure. And it should be unacceptable. We need passion. We need drive. We need a new mindset.

But just how much are students actually learning? According to sociologists Dr. Richard Arum and Dr. Josipa Roksa, students are not learning very much.

Their study, published in their recent book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” followed more than 2,300 college students from 24 different American universities through their first two years of college.

In the fall of 2005, the students in Roksa and Arum’s study – then entering college as freshmen – were given the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test measuring critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. The students were given the test again in the spring of 2007, at the end of their sophomore year, and in the spring of 2009, at the end of their senior year.

The results may surprise some students and professors. Forty-five percent of all students participating showed no significant improvement at the end of their sophomore year of college. In 2009, at the end of their senior year of college, the results had improved very little. Thirty-six percent of students still showed no significant gains above their original freshman year test scores.

At U. Louisville, many students feel like this study hits home for them.

“I actually feel like I took classes just to meet requirements in my first two years,” said Robert Shobe, a junior finance major. “I didn’t really learn much that I hadn’t already learned in high school.”

But is this true for all students at U of L?

According to Kathleen Mandlehr, director of U of L’s transfer office, it isn’t.

“U of L is really pushing to go beyond this standard,” said Mandlehr. “We’ve really addressed writing, critical thinking and other important subjects head on, especially lately.”

In 2005, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools changed the requirements for reaccreditation for U of L and other universities.

“In addition to maintaining the same rigorous and solid curriculum, we had to show that we were working to improve the university,” said Dr. Patricia Payette, executive director of the U of L Delphi Center for Teaching & Learning. The Delphi Center aims to improve educational excellence at U of L, for both students and professors.

To meet the requirements of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, U of L instituted the new Ideas to Action program, which focuses on changing the way students are taught at the university level. According to Payette, obsolete teaching methods may be one reason for students’ dissatisfaction with their education.

“We heard from a lot of students that they felt like they were just memorizing facts,” said Payette, who also serves as the executive director of Ideas to Action. “And that’s not really how you learn. They want to connect the dots. They crave meaning.”

The Ideas to Action program has worked to initialize new teaching methods, such as increasing hands-on learning, incorporating technology, and stepping up critical thinking requirements in classes.

“We really want [students] to see that critical thinking isn’t just for the classroom,” said Dr. Edna Ross, associate professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences. “We want it to be a mold for inquiry in life. We want it to become a habit.”

While the Ideas to Action program seeks to improve U of L’s standing in critical thinking and complex reasoning, student writing skills may still need some improvement.

Currently, students are required to complete two writing-intensive courses as part of their general education program. However, some students have found ways to avoid additional college reading and writing.

Websites like ratemyprofessors.com offer student opinions of university faculty, often pinpointing professors whose classes require extensive reading and writing, advising others to avoid them. U of L students have taken full advantage of the site, posting ratings for over 1,000 professors.

“I’ve used that site,” said Shobe. “It’s pretty useful for finding the easier, more interesting professors.”

On a national level, this is not uncommon. The study conducted by Arum and Roksa found that, during the previous semester, half of their subjects had avoided courses requiring 20 pages of writing or more and that one-third had not taken even one course requiring 40 pages of reading per week.

Some suggest that students may avoid college reading and writing because they feel intimidated by it.

“Academic writing is different on the university level,” said Adam Robinson, associate director of the Writing Center, U of L’s writing resources office. “The expectations are higher and it’s not fair to assume that high school skills will always translate. We try to help them brainstorm and really evolve as a writer.”

U of L has programs in place to help students with their critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing, but students must share part of the burden.

“When it comes down to it, students only get as much out of college as they are willing to put into it,” said Mandlehr. “We’re working to make sure as many opportunities and programs are there. And it’s up to students to take advantage of them.”

While the blame for the findings of Arum and Roksa cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of any one party, students and university administration must work together to ensure that U of L students rise above them.

“We’ve definitely got to work together,” said Shobe. “That’s the only way anything will get done.”

This statement shouldn’t come as a surprise to most, as it’s  a fact discussed often in recent times. There’s even a movie about it, “Waiting for Superman.” Clearly, the U.S. education system is broken. The question is how do we fix it? Do we even need to fix it?

Students in America go to school 180 days a year. Meanwhile, students in Japan have a 243-day school year. It’s no surprise, then, that so many successful young people come out of Japan. It doesn’t matter how rigorous our school systems are, we can’t keep pace with Japan if our students go to school some 60 days less per year. And Japan isn’t the only country with 200-plus school days a year.

Unfortunately, the length of the school year is not the only problem with the U.S. education system. From kindergarten through high school at least, students aren’t challenged enough to maximize their potential. Courses move only as fast as the slowest student can learn. Therefore, almost every other learner is breezing through the class without challenging his or her brain. Imagine a weight-lifting class where everyone lifts the same amount of weight. The weakest student, Little Timmy, can only bench the bar, but everyone else can lift the bar one-handed. While Little Timmy will increase his strength, no one else will develop any muscle. That’s America’s education system in a nutshell.

By this logic, students should be placed in separate classrooms based on their abilities. Many schools try to do this to an extent by offering advanced placement (AP) classes, but it’s mainly voluntary. On the other hand, obligating students to be in AP classes also presents problems. It would obviously require more teachers and more money. Then there would be the inevitable complaints from parents whose children are at a different level than they believe their kids should be. But the bigger problem for underachieving students is that they would be in an environment where they’re expected to underachieve without any overachieving students to give them an example of how to excel academically. Therefore, low-achieving students would continue to be low-achievers.

So, how does the problem of underachieving students affect Americans in general? Who cares about all the students who don’t have what it takes to go to college? Everyone has different abilities; the ones with less brains can take those jobs at Wal-Mart, while college students get the higher-paying jobs more suited to their abilities. Their failure doesn’t prevent our success, does it?

Unfortunately, it does. The failure of the American education system contributed to the economic meltdown and may prevent the U.S. from continuing to be the world’s top economy. Not that the unemployment rate wouldn’t be high right now if every American went to college — lots of people with college degrees are out of jobs, too — but many industries are being sent to Japan and China because they have smarter people and more of them. It’s not nearly that simple, but education is definitely a factor. We need to send more kids to college while restoring the economy, so that the U.S. can get back to being the most innovative country in the world with the most opportunity. Again, there are many other reasons for the poor economy, but having more smart people surely won’t hurt. And there’s a bonus — more students means more professors, more staff, more of whoever it is that makes this place run smoothly. More jobs.

Forty percent of young Americans have college degrees. That is the same number as Americans over sixty. Meanwhile, 56 percent of young adults in Canada graduate from college. It’s not that we’ve slowed down, we just haven’t kept up with other developed countries.

The point is that young people aren’t getting the education they need in order to live up to their potential. If America is to continue to be the “Land of Opportunity,” the greatest country in the world, it needs to have the best education system in the world. Education reform should be one of the top priorities for President Obama and the 112th Congress. Teachers, as well as parents, need to consistently challenge kids throughout their education. A stronger education system would help fix many of America’s problems.

The Richardson-based Foundation of Thought and Ethics seeks to expand children’s education, specifically on creationism, or the belief that God created the world. Although public schools cannot legally teach creationism, the latest Texas curriculum requires students to learn the weaknesses of evolution when studying the origin of man, said Don McLeroy, former State Board of Education member. The board will vote on the proposed material in April.

“The standards are what the publishers look at when they write their textbooks,” board spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.

The State Board of Education changed its science curriculum in 2009, and publishers are creating new books to comply with the new standards, which specifically require students to “critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence,” she said.

Books are considered to conform to the standards when they cover all of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test objectives for that subject area, Culbertson said. The new standards cover strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary scientific studies in order to examine all areas of scientific theory, she said.

McLeroy said the board is restoring scientific integrity to the teaching of evolution by requiring students to think critically and to challenge the theory

“Everyone accepts real science,” said McLeroy, who has studied evolution for more than 30 years. “Genetics has empirical science behind it. Evolution does not, despite what they say. What we have shown in Texas will restore the luster of science because we are being honest.”

McLeroy said he looks forward to seeing how the textbooks will incorporate the new curriculum. The board released the list of potential contributors Thursday.

Students will study challenges to evolution’s weaknesses, including gaps in the fossil record in which sudden species appear, he said.

Integrative biology professor Edward Theriot said he completely rejects gaps in the fossil record as a valid challenge to the theory of evolution.

“You can’t expect to find every single kind of organism,” Theriot said. “It only means the entire history of life did not get preserved.”

Theriot said the problem lies in the public’s misconception of the definition of a scientific theory. He said scientific theories are tools scientists use to make predictions about the natural world.

“That is what science is,” he said. “That is what needs to be taught in schools. We need to do a better job explaining what science is and what it is for.”

Theriot said scientists used the theory of evolution to predict the course of influenza viruses and to help capture criminals using forensic analysis.

“If evolution is just a theory, gravity is just a theory,” Theriot said. “We can predict some things better with evolution than we can with the theory of gravity.”

That’s the principle behind Ultrinsic.com, a recently formed website that allows students to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to academic achievement.

Wagers on class grades between friends or rewards from parents may be fairly common, but Ultrinsic is formalizing the process and upping the stakes by allowing students to predict their grades for individual classes over a period of a semester or throughout their entire college career. The website then provides “incentives” for hitting a target grade, either in a single course, multiple courses, a complete semester or an entire college career. For example, a student who bets $20 as a freshman that he’ll graduate with a 4.0 average will receive $2,000 at the end of senior year.

Previously operating via pilot programs at New York U. and U. Pennsylvania (UPenn), the website now offers its services at 36 colleges, including Harvard and Boston U., as of last August. According to CEO Steven Wolf, the idea was sprung from a simple bet he made with a friend while both were undergraduate students at UPenn.

“My partner Jeremy [Gelbert] and I were hanging out one Sunday,” Wolf told the Daily. “He had a test to take and he really didn’t want to study, so I was like, ‘Listen, would you study for $100? How about if you study and do well, you get $100, but if you don’t study and you don’t do well, you give me $20.’ He agreed to do it. So he did that, got an A and ended up getting money from me.”

Ultrinsic operates under the same notion, Wolf said.

“Basically if a student says that he is going to get an A, and if he’s a B student, he has to put in his GPA so we know how much he’s pushing himself in order to do better,” Wolf said. “If he says he will put in $20, we’ll give him $60 if he gets the A. If at the end of this semester he confirms it, he gets his winnings.”

According to Wolf, each member starts the process by uploading his or her class schedule and giving the company access to previous transcripts. After doing so, Ultrinsic will gauge the performance of the student based on previous grades and upcoming courses, as well as research the difficulty of the courses based on school statistics and from websites like RateMyProfessors.com. Finally, the student will be able to wager a first−time bet maximum of $25 for the grade he or she will receive.

While it may sound complex, Wolf insists that the process is relatively simple, which he says is proven by the site’s current popularity. An estimated 8,000 users have signed up to date, Wolf said, a number that he anticipates will increase as the site expands.

The current roster of schools for which Ultrinsic is available is dictated by several factors, according to Wolf.

“A lot of it is logistics,” Wolf said. “We look to see how it can do in certain kinds of places, [with] student body size, religious affiliations, sports teams, etc. We put all these factors together and come up with this list of schools.”

Wolf attributes the speed of expansion to the fact that he doesn’t liaise with school officials prior to giving a student body access to Ultrinsic.

“We’re not affiliated with the schools, [so] we don’t have to deal with them. We just follow whatever the market dictates,” Wolf said.

Tufts students currently cannot become Ultrinsic users, but Wolf believes that his creation could be hitting the Hill by as early as the fall.

“I think the next expansions will be in the hundreds, and maybe the whole country,” he said. “I definitely see it going international.”

Bypassing administrative approval for the website, however, could cross legal boundaries, according to Tufts Lecturer of Economics Peter Kronberg, who teaches a course on business law.

“[Administrators] are entrusted in caring for students in certain ways,” Kronberg said. “Universities can be seen as helping illegal activity by releasing private information, so they have every right to be cautious about releasing this information.”

Another source of controversy is whether or not Ultrinsic’s practices should be considered online gambling, which is illegal under federal law.

“Everyone asks about [the gambling issue],” Wolf said. “We’re not the first guys to take advantage of [the law] — it’s legal. Our thing is to say that your grades are a skill, and people pretty much agree to that.”

Kronberg does not think that the legality of gambling is the Ultrinsic’s primary issue; instead, he is more concerned with the website’s mode of acquiring funds.

“Insurance companies have actuaries to determine what the odds of anyone’s death or property loss might be,” Kronberg said. “If they price the insurance so that it brings in more than they have to pay out, the insurance company makes money. They also provide a service by spreading the cost of a loss [or a] death among many people.”

Kronberg added that Ultrinsic’s policy of gauging students’ past grades and determining the odds for individuals obtaining their anticipated grades is a major factor in this process.

“Once they have enough data, they can make successful bets, [and] they have a cushion to hedge against bad bets because they also receive the registration fee and can earn money on the student’s bets that are on deposit with them and that they hold, interest−free, until the end of the semester,” he said.

Issues aside, Kronberg feels that the service may not become as widely popular as Wolf anticipates.

“I think after a while — college students are smart —they’re going to see it and drop it,” Kronberg said. “What’s the real upside? If you get a 4.0 GPA in college — which is statistically very difficult to achieve — then big deal if you get $2000. You’re going to get more money in job offers. Tufts students are pretty darn smart, but I don’t think it’s going to be terrifically popular.”

Many college students choose to take an online class at some point during their higher education, but students at 54 high schools in Florida’s Miami-Dade County are being put in a virtual classroom whether they like it or not.

In an effort to surpass the Florida Class Size Reduction Amendment, some schools in the Miami area have created virtual classrooms for students.

The amendment limits the class size to 25 students in core subjects such as English or math, but the ruling does not apply to virtual labs.

The students spend their class period in a room filled entirely with computers where they sit and do their work. There is no teacher present, only a “facilitator” to keep the students on task and address any technical problems.

The content is provided by Florida Virtual School, which is generally used by high schools students who wish to pick up an extra course or need to do credit recovery.

The students log on to a website for their lessons that are graphic and text based.

Online learning can be extremely effective for some, but many of the Miami high schoolers had no chance to voice their opinion or preference.

Several students interviewed in a recent article in The New York Times stated that they were not informed that they would be taking a class in a virtual lab and that if they were given a choice they would have declined.

Taking an online class requires a lot of determination and eagerness and for those who don’t exhibit such characteristics, online learning can be detrimental.

For other students, learning is simply too difficult without face-to-face instruction, particularly in tricky subjects.

The courses in these online labs have teachers that can be contacted through phone call, text message or e-mail, but some of the best learning comes from sitting down one-on-one and working through a difficult problem or equation.

By the time a student reaches college, they’ve determined how they learn best and what subjects they excel in.

High school students, on the other hand, are for the most part still developing themselves intellectually and need to focus more time and effort into deciding what works best for them.

Not to mention high school students don’t have much choice as to what classes they can take.

We can only imagine that forcing a student to take a class in a virtual lab when they already have difficulties in the subject could only exacerbate their reluctance in said subject.

We’re not the only ones skeptical about this idea, several teachers and students spoke out against the school’s new virtual venture, but one interesting opinion came from Michael Moore, a professor of education at Penn State University and an editor at The American Journal of Education.

Moore mentioned in The New York Times article a new way of combining virtual and face-to-face learning in what is called the “blended learning concept.”

“There is no doubt that blended learning can be as effective and often more effective than a classroom,” Moore said.

For this concept to work the students must be mature and willing, and the instructors involved must obtain proper training on how to effectively teach in a virtual environment.

Moore noted that the students in Miami-Dade are not receiving blended learning.

To us, this whole situation is just messy. Students and parents were not properly informed and many students are resentful of the whole situation, but officials say they will not budge on their decision because it’s their only way to get past class size restrictions.

Computers and technology can be a great classroom tool for some students and subjects, but requiring that all students take a class that may not suit their learning style or preference seems a bit ridiculous.

The idea has potential, but it definitely needs some major revisions. Supplemental technology is fine. Technology as a complete replacement for proven learning methods is not fine.

But our specializations are different, right? After three years and a few 300-level classes, you’d think you would be close to proficiency in a subject, if not close to an amateur expert.

Wrong.

After spending a little more than a week in Santiago de Chile, I can tell you with absolute certainty that despite years of studying Spanish, the three-year-old cousin who spends a lot of time at my host family’s house speaks this language better than me.

Don’t get me wrong, I never thought I’d be able to just jump into this place without some language issues. But I didn’t think that I would require amazing patience from Chileans to get anything more complicated than the simplest pieces of information.

My host family and people at the university seem sympathetic and are used to foreigners, so they speak slow and tell me to just relax. Add that to the fact that Chile has one of the roughest accents in the Spanish-speaking world and I have a lot to learn here.

My point is, classroom work doesn’t cut it for truly learning these things. Even if I were a Spanish expert, I’d still get weird stares because about half the words I was taught aren’t used by anyone outside of Spain or Mexico.

You think carro or coche means car? Not here. Stick with auto. Aguacate? You must mean palta. Trying to tell your family about your novio or novia back home in the States? You’d better either be engaged or looking for the word amiguito(a).

I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. I love this place so much that if I decided to cancel my ticket home and stay forever, nobody should be surprised. But the transition to Chilean Spanish isn’t easy by any means.

Anyone who has studied a language and then gone abroad likely knows what I’m talking about here, as do people who’ve worked jobs or internships in their fields of study.
School can teach you a lot, but it doesn’t hold a candle to real-world experience. So get out there and learn a little, in addition to the mandatory experience many majors require.

Volunteer in schools if you’re an education major. Watch French movies without the subtitles if you’re a French minor. Go cut some people open if you’re a medical student — wait, actually, scratch that last one.

Step outside of campus to round out your education. You will be surprised to see how little you actually know, but it will motivate you to learn a lot more than those questions you need to answer at the end of capítulo cinco will.

The project — which includes districts ranging from Denver to New York City — is monitoring 3,000 third through twelfth grade teachers over a period of two years to create an improved system for judging teachers’ performances in schools, according to the its website.

Early findings indicate that student perceptions of teacher effectiveness are strong predictors of student success and must be considered when evaluating best teaching practices, according to Staiger.

“If you look at teachers with good ratings on classroom management, their students do much better on end-of-year tests,” he said. “Many people haven’t yet focused on student perception as a useful dimension.”

The project combines a variety of teacher evaluation methods in order to discover what classroom practices are associated with high student achievement, according to Staiger.

Both teachers and their unions nationwide have been cooperative with the project, which relies on volunteers to allow classroom observation, Staiger said. Various districts have received letters from unions praising the project and urging teachers to participate, he said.

“It will lead to meaningful teacher evaluation, meaningful for everyone.” Staiger said. “Teachers will learn more about what works. In large districts teachers often get little meaningful feedback.”

Unlike previous studies of teacher effectiveness, which emphasized student test scores, the project combines quantitative student achievement measures with data from classroom observations and detailed student surveys, Staiger said.

“People certainly have used value-added measures before and people have certainly used classroom observation before, but this project is unique in that it brings together these approaches,” New York U. education professor Sean Corcoran said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

In its second year, the study will also address the problem of equitable class distribution by randomly assigning students to participating teachers, Staiger said.

“There’s a big concern that all of these measures of teacher effectiveness have this bias in them, that they’re not measuring how good teachers are, but the quality of the kids they’re getting,” he said.

Interest in designing a standard for teacher evaluation has risen along with a “push for higher student achievement” and the difficulty of removing poor-quality teachers, education professor Michael Harris said. Harris previously served as superintendent of the Lebanon, N.H., school district for 11 years, from 1999 through 2010.

The impending reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act has also left districts seeking improved teacher evaluation methods, according to a College press release. Currently, much of the information available about teacher performance comes from subjective observation by school principals, Harris said.

The project, which began in the fall of 2009, will continue until fall of this year, according to Staiger. Full first-year results will be released in spring 2011.

The project has not reached any definitive conclusions, due to the ongoing process of compiling data, according to the preliminary finding policy brief released in December.

Staiger said that the early findings are “very exciting,” but cautioned readers against jumping to conclusions.

“This is a very preliminary report,” he said. “We have other data we haven’t even started to look at yet.”

Online note-sharing websites, such as ShareNotes, FlashNotes and GradeGuru, allow students to share their class notes with other students who are willing to purchase them. For the website to have success, students need to upload and buy each other’s class notes so the host company can acquire fees from the transactions.

Specific numbers vary by company, but revenue from note sales goes mostly to the students. A smaller percentage of the revenue goes to the companies who run the website.

FlashNotes spokeswoman Katie Greenwald said students receive 80 percent of their notes’ revenue, while FlashNotes takes the remaining 20 percent. Students who upload their notes set the price, with a minimum of $1.99.

Other note-sharing websites boast appealing bonuses for signing up and uploading notes. ShareNotes offers a rewards program that hands out free gifts, such as an iPod or Flip camera, for referring friends and uploading class notes.

GradeGuru, a start-up company run by education materials company McGraw-Hill, has an advantage because it prints many of the textbooks the class notes are written from.

An increased use of online note-sharing sites might cause students to attend fewer classes, but FlashNotes CEO Mike Matousek said the effects of a possible rise in absenteeism would be minimal.

“Students who abuse (note-sharing websites) are the same type of kids who sit in the back of class with their headphones on,” Matousek said. “They are not learning in class anyway.”

Robert S. Coleman, chair of Ohio State’s Committee on Academic Misconduct, said the process of buying and selling notes is fair, according to the student handbook.

“When you take a class, your course materials are your property,” Coleman said. “We can’t lend knowledge and ask for it back.”

Coleman emphasized that even though note sharing is acceptable, other rules regarding academic misconduct still apply.

“Copying the work of another and presenting it as your own is never acceptable,” Coleman said. “You’re doing something to try to get out of work.”

Jake Miller, a second-year in sports and leisure studies and FlashNotes user, said online note-sharing sites can be a good resource. Miller said he understands how some professors find the note-sharing marketplace detrimental to academic success.

“Some professors say it’s fine,” Miller said. “But other professors feel like you should go to class and pay your dues.”

Miller said he made about $150 in two weeks uploading his class notes last spring, He has not, however, uploaded his class notes since.

“Some classes, like (introductory-level), are better for uploading than others,” Miller said.

The process of transferring his handwritten notes to computer files took hours, Miller said. Uploading the files to the site and readying them for sale, Miller said, did not take more than a few minutes.

“It’s a new and different way to get information across,” Matousek said. “We’re trying to find out what students need to succeed.”

The evidence against for-profit colleges has been piling up for months, and it is disheartening that all the federal government has offered in response is pontification and paper. The schools have seen a surge in popularity, and the General Accounting Office estimates their enrollment rose from 365,000 to 1.8 million in the last several years. Unfortunately, these colleges promise their students outsize returns but instead deliver them mounds of debt. As such, it is high time for the government and accreditation boards to regulate the practices of these institutions more strictly.

A November report by the Education Trust found that for-profit colleges offer “little more than crippling debt” to their students. Only 22 percent of students at for-profit colleges graduate in six years, as opposed to 55 percent of students at public institutions and 65 percent at private, nonprofit colleges. Moreover, from 2007-2008, the median debt of those who did receive bachelor’s degrees at these colleges was $31,190, nearly double the median debt of similar students at non-profit private colleges—$17,040—and three-and-a-half times that of similar students at public institutions—$7,960.

Even more gallingly, those whom for-profit colleges enroll and sink into debt are often already the least well off in our society. Low-income students make up 50 percent of the population at for-profits; while for-profit colleges account for 12 percent of all college students, they account for 24 percent of Pell Grant recipients. The debt accrued by students at for-profit colleges, many of whom are not even graduating, is simply unacceptable.

Additionally, for-profit colleges often misstate their benefits and manipulate students into enrolling. A 2010 GAO report documented meetings between representatives of 15 for-profit colleges and undercover applicants. All 15 “made deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to GAO’s undercover applicants,” and four engaged in actual fraudulent practices. For example, at a Washington certificate program, an applicant was told that barbers make from $150,000 to $250,000 a year, when most receive salaries of less than $50,000 annually. One fictitious student who registered interest in several colleges received more than 180 phone calls in one month, encouraging him/her to apply. At special risk from these colleges are our nation’s servicemen and servicewomen, who are the targets of special advertising campaigns by for-profit colleges; 36 percent of tuition payments under the 2008 G.I. Bill for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan went to for-profit colleges in the program’s first year.

For their services, for-profit colleges receive considerable amounts of federal government support. A September report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions stated that 85 percent of the revenue of for-profit colleges comes from federal student aid, and taxpayers provide the schools $24 billion per year.

In response, we suggest that for-profit colleges with graduation rates below a certain percentage be put on accreditation probation and federal financial aid be unavailable to students. Federal aid should not go to an endeavor that will put students in a worse financial situation than when they started without receiving a diploma.

Until this happens, students should be cautious regarding advertising that emanates from these colleges. The schools are interested in sustaining their business and not necessarily in providing the best education to their clients. Given these colleges’ special targeting of vulnerable groups such as low-income students and returning soldiers, there should be a follow-up investigation to the GAO report, surveying a range of for-profit colleges across the nation to see how truthful the advertisements’ claims are.

Potential students should also consider attending community colleges in lieu of for-profit institutions. Although they may not offer the same prestige as four-year degrees, many community colleges offer the same skills for better prices. The GAO report noted that one fictitious student interested in massage therapy was encouraged to take a $14,000 certificate course, even though the same course cost $520 at the local community college. Because of community colleges’ value, we applaud Obama’s focus on bolstering them with more funds and governmental support. In 2009, Obama announced a $12 billion community-college initiative, and this October, Obama held a Community College Summit bringing together major donors to think about this cause—two worthy attempts to increase awareness and quality of community colleges.

Regardless of all the problems with the current system, in theory, for-profit colleges provide a valuable service. For people serving abroad in the armed forces, or for those who are stuck at home for another reason, for-profit colleges’ flexibility in course timing and type make them viable in a way that community colleges often are not. However, at present, for-profit colleges are performing far below this ideal, and the government has a responsibility to make sure it is not funding institutions that seem to be manifestly harming their students.

The rep made her pitch to the students and caught the 19-year-old’s attention right away.

Austin knew school was going to be expensive — more than $30,000 a year at AI.

Now, after a semester at the college, Austin, along with other students from the school, are worried the credits they have paid for won’t transfer and that their time in school won’t lead to a job.

Enrollment in for-profit colleges has grown exponentially in the last several years, from 199,584 in 1998 to almost 1.8 million students nationwide, according to a study done by the U.S. Senate.

As enrollment has increased, so has scrutiny of the schools’ practices. Lawsuits have been filed and requests for information on business practices have been submitted.

Government inquiry

Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and a Senate committee have looked into the for-profit schools.

The GAO conducted an undercover investigation of for-profit colleges in six states (though none in Minnesota), finding aggressive recruitment tactics at many.

The report showed schools bombarded potential students with numerous calls in recruiting attempts. Some of the undercover students began receiving calls within five minutes of submitting their contact information online — with one receiving more than 180 calls in a month.

Upon the release of the GAO report, stocks of publicly traded for-profit colleges took a hit — Minneapolis-based Capella University fell 13 percent.

In the last three years, the Better Business Bureau has lodged 82 complaints against Capella University. Forty of the complaints were for alleged billing errors, unauthorized charges or questionable collection practices. Eleven were for service issues, including failure to provide promised services or inferior quality of provided services. Sixty-two of the complaints were resolved, BBB spokesman Dan Hendrickson said.

Capella University is currently facing a class action lawsuit in Minnesota for irresponsible business practices and deceptive marketing.

“We believe it has no merit,” said Mike Buttry, spokesman for Capella University. “We are going to fight very vigorously.”

A study by the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee indicated that for-profit colleges are also becoming increasingly profitable — the average profit in 2005 for a for-profit was $127 million. That number has increased 80 percent to almost $230 million today.

“To satisfy shareholders, publicly traded schools must generate higher revenues, while keeping down costs, including teaching costs,” the HELP study reported.

U. Minnesota is the largest school by enrollment in the state. But right behind it are two for-profit colleges — Walden University and Capella University — both of which are under investigation by the Senate.

“They were spamming me bad.”

The lowering of teaching costs is apparent to some AI students.

Dustin McIntyre first heard of AI from his older sister, who attended the school for a year. His curiosity led him online, where he shared his contact information with several local for-profit schools.

“They were spamming me; they were spamming me bad,” said McIntyre, a film student. “They will telemarket your phone, text it, call it.”

McIntyre started receiving multiple calls from local for-profit colleges Brown College and AI at all times during the day.

“They are on your back,” said AI dropout Pat DeRose. “They’re really trying to get you to go, when really they’re trying to get your money — that’s what it felt like.”

AI responded only with a statement that “any individual who has concerns about their education at the Arts Institute International Minnesota may address them directly with Dean [Susan] Tarnowski.”

From early September to mid-October, an adviser from the art school called DeRose every day.

“It was so annoying,” said DeRose, who began screening calls.

Still undecided about school this fall, DeRose gave in and agreed to meet with a counselor.

“I let the [counselor] convince me to go into digital effects when I was trying to study film,” he said.

The counselor told DeRose to try out a semester at the school before making up a decision to stay, he said.

“He’s pretty much saying, ‘Pay for a whole semester and try it out first,’” DeRose said. “The minute he said that, I thought it was sketchy.”

“Sketchy” practices

McIntyre and Austin agree that there have been “sketchy” situations at the school.

The two are roommates in apartments the school provided in Stadium View apartments.

“The first paper we turned in, everybody got a 99 [out of a 100,] said Austin. He questions whether his professor had actually read anyone’s paper.

“My computer applications class is right before [McIntyre’s] class, and his teacher would sit in on our class to learn the curriculum for the day and then teach his class,” said Austin.

With more than 2,000 students, fall enrollment at the Arts Institutes International was the largest in its history, leaving the school to resort to temporary housing for a number of students.

“I think they accept everyone, to be honest,” DeRose said. He dropped out of the college in three weeks and hopes to go to a Division I school.

A return on investment

Justin Breiland was choosing between the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Arts Institute when an AI counselor convinced him to enroll in the for-profit.

Breiland, who is studying interactive media, also lives in Stadium View apartments.

The 19-year-old was offered a $2,700-a-quarter loan by the school to pay for rent and food.

“I thought we were supposed to get it right away,” he said.

For more than a month and a half, Breiland had very little money for food and was not able to pay his rent.

He met with the school a few times to voice his concerns about the stipend money, but was told his loan hadn’t gone through yet.

Breiland finally got the money mid-way through the school quarter.

“The school is so expensive,” he said. “Yet there are not enough resources or equipment in the classrooms.”

Breiland is not looking to stay much longer and hopes to go to school in California in the near future but also has fears that his credits won’t transfer.

“Over the years, I’ve definitely heard from students who have went to some place like Rasmussen or Brown College,” said Renye Branchaud-Linsk, who worked at a homeless shelter next to Rasmussen for more than 20 years. “The outcome of their education wasn’t what they had thought they were getting … it had them feeling like they hadn’t spent their money wisely.

“I felt badly that you’ve invested this money into your education thinking that the outcome will be there but it’s not,” she said.

But with looming budget problems crippling public universities across the country, lawmakers are looking at cutting sabbaticals as a way to balance the books.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal cut the state’s higher education budget in November, explicitly including sabbaticals.

In November, Jindal told reporters it will “force professors to actually spend more time in the classrooms teaching and interacting with students.”

Since 2008, U. Iowa cut its number of sabbaticals in half and their newly Republican-controlled legislature is proposing to cancel them altogether for a year. Truman State U. in Missouri has already done this for the next fiscal year, according to the Associated Press.

“Do we compare notes and are we aware of what’s going on in other states? Of course,” Minnesota Sen. Charles Wiger, DFL-Maplewood, said. “But, I think if we were to chip away at sabbaticals, it would be foolish.”

Wiger serves on the Higher Education Committee and is the outgoing deputy chairman of the Education Committee in the Senate.

“I view sabbaticals as very beneficial and it’s in our state’s best interest to have highly qualified faculty,” he said.

At U. Minnesota, tenured faculty apply for sabbatical or semester leave after seven years of teaching.

“Sabbaticals allow for faculty to be renewed and explore new areas,” Vice Provost of Student and Academic Affairs Arlene Carney said. “It’s an intense period of time to focus and produce something extraordinary.”

Sabbaticals grant half-pay and full benefits, while semester leave allows both full pay and benefits.

The number of faculty members determines the number of leaves allotted to each college. Four percent of all faculty within the University system can be on some sort of leave at one time.

“Occasionally, colleges don’t fill the quota they’re given, so if another college asks if it’s possible to grant them another one — and we haven’t reached that 4 percent — then I allow them to have it,” Carney said. “First we want to make sure it’s fair across all the faculty population.” She said this number has been consistent for about 10 years.

Carney said tangible results of sabbaticals and semester leaves include writing books, developing new courses, furthering research and collaborating with colleagues from around the world.

The College of Biological Sciences has about four faculty members currently on leave.

“Typically we want them to develop new courses or really change existing ones,” CBS Associate Dean Robin Wright said. “That’s always been the case.”

More CBS faculty opt to stay on campus, take a semester off from their regular teaching duties and develop new courses and curriculum.

Regardless, some lawmakers view sabbaticals primarily as paid vacations during a time of furloughs and lay-offs.

“Why should the taxpayers … be paying to basically give these folks a year off from teaching?” Iowa House Speaker-designate Kraig Paulsen said at a November press conference.

Carney said opinions like this are a “lack of understanding. Sabbaticals are certainly not vacations and we make sure of that.”

“These things really come back to helping the teaching of our students,” she said. “Faculty becomes inspired and full of new ideas that can be directly passed on.”

Wiger said that intervening and suggesting sabbaticals be cut has never been brought up in either committee he serves on, but “nothing is off the table when we have a $6.2-billion deficit.”

“I would not be surprised if it did come up,” Carney said. “But I think we have a very strong case as to why this helps the University move forward.”

1. Teach yourself how to Dougie

Stop pretending you know the dance every time the song comes on and do Cali Swag District the favor of teaching yourself. For every hour worth of studying, grant yourself thirty minutes of “Dougie Time.” Why? Knowing how to Dougie, (I mean really Dougie) is still cool and you too can be awesome. I admit I’m still learning, but I’m using finals week to perfect it. Dougie-ing is an easy way to unwind, get some exercise and hopefully boosts your confidence the next time you’re trying to land some dime piece (dime pieces can be boys, too).

2. Schedule stalking

You know it’s true. One hour into studying and you’ve stumbled upon that random friend from high school’s Facebook page you thought you completely forgot about. Twenty minutes later and you know exactly what they’ve done the past three years, who they’ve hooked up with, and why you stopped talking to them in the first place. Rather than feel guilty for creeping instead of studying, think of this as a reward for being such a studious student. Facing the facts and allotting yourself special stalking moments is bound to recharge your batteries.

3. Watch “We Speak No Americano ft. Cleary and Harding”

Now, you don’t have to watch this hilariously mesmerizing video, but watching something mindless is a simple way to decompress. However, I recommend this video. A good friend of mine showed this to me about three weeks ago and I’m embarrassed to reveal how many times I’ve watched it since. If you can learn this hand dance and how to Dougie by your last final, I’ll definitely pay your cover at huskies for the first three weeks of the spring semester.

4. Buy a coloring book

Coloring is therapeutic and I wouldn’t suggest this elementary activity to college students if I hadn’t experienced the benefits myself. Coloring has a calming effect and I can promise you thirty minutes of coloring will help you see straight again. In between flipping flashcards and highlighting, just color a little. You’ll find yourself completely immersed in your picture and impressed with how well you’ve stayed within the lines. It’s an easy way to remind yourself how awesome you are when you’re feeling guilty for skipping Wednesday night class to sing Third Eye Blind at karaoke.

5. Make your New Year’s resolution

A new year is a new you, and by the end of finals you should know exactly what you’re going to change during 2011. When the lighting in Homer Babbage has brought you to your breaking point, and you realize the coffee at BookWorms really is just water, take some time to map out this coming year’s goals. Even if you just commit yourself to quit eating Cheese Doodles, it’s still a resolution. Never lose sight of your real aspirations during finals, as creating a concrete plan for the New Year is a fantastic way to spend a study break.

I wish you all the best during finals. Take my study tips to heart and realize it is possible to take all 12 finals in four days and still do well. Be the boss you know you are and learn how to Dougie or even figure out how Cleary and Harding choreographed their hand dance. It’s truly been a great semester.

Saying we are too busy, jaded or apathetic are all pathetic excuses for not having a basic knowledge of what’s going on in the world today. But perhaps our lack of world knowledge isn’t completely our own fault — mainstream media is fluffed up and sugarcoated to keep viewers’ attention, and our education system doesn’t actively engage the majority of us in deep political conversations. The slightest addition to our long-term educational careers could help cure the epidemic of ignorance we face today.

Requiring civics classes that teach the rights and duties of citizens would help motivate students to understand and care about the political environment that they are a part of. We should require classes, starting in grade school, that keep people involved in their country from a young age. In addition, colleges should require a similar course geared toward current events every semester or quarter. Even a one-unit class that meets once a week would help keep our students informed about the true-life drama that is our American democracy.

Every generation is faced with its own political issues. Yet, when we become isolated from the histories experienced by the generations before us, we often fail to recognize the links between the news today and the events of the past. Although we are now mentally trapped in a history time bubble, we are still expected to have convicted stances on current events while only having a narrow idea of what is really going on.

For instance, how many people do you think take the time to investigate U.S. and British involvement in the Middle East during the 1950s? I’m not here to give you a history lesson, but some serious political and military intervention went down just to ensure that Americans could fill up their Cadillac and Ford gas tanks with a low price tag. Our existing involvement in the Middle East isn’t some isolated incident and neither is any other current event. They all have a rich backstory that give hints as to why and how things came to be how they are today. A civics program would help keep students informed not only about the history that created individual political events, but also about the key figures and moments that have shaped our current political climate.

You don’t need to be a political genius to keep yourself informed and have strong views about the world. If we don’t take the time to inform ourselves, we will idly sit by as our civil liberties and dollars turn to dust. Whichever side of the political debate you’re on, civic education is key to a strong democracy in the U.S. Nobody enjoys the company of a blind, ignorant conservative more than a fellow blind, ignorant conservative, and no one appreciates the rants of an uneducated, idealistic liberal more than another uneducated, idealistic liberal. If people continue to exist in their political bubbles, they will neither change anything nor live as anything more than a vat-full of ignorant political opinion. A comprehensive civics education would lift the burden of remaining informed off of the student and would keep our citizens engaged in our society’s dramatic development from a young age.

Psychology professor Deborah Tindell said 92 percent of students surveyed admitted to occasionally texting during class, and 30 percent said they text in class every day.

She noted that 50 percent of students find it easy to text in class without the professor noticing. A majority of these students also thought they could send text messages unnoticed in a class as small as 12 students.

“In general, students are good at texting without being detected by their instructors. The survey showed that about one fourth of students found sitting near a classmate who is texting to be most distracting,” Tindell said.

According to a statement from the university, Tindell began conducting the survey after she noticed an abundance of students texting in her own lectures.

The study consisted of a 32 question survey that was completed by 269 anonymous students on the Wilkes campus. The survey included students from all class levels and more than 21 different majors, the statement said.

The Wilkes U. survey also showed 10 percent of students have sent or received a text message during an exam and 3 percent of students admitted to transferring exam information through a text during an exam.

Director of U. Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Communication Research Joanne Cantor said students who actively text message while in class are not effectively processing lecture information.

“Research shows that your brain can’t divide its attention, so while you’re texting or even just reading a text you are not able to process the information presented,” Cantor said.

Cantor added the bits and pieces students may pick up on is processed at a much lower level of the brain than if the student were paying full attention.

A study conducted by U. Wisconsin in the Spring of 2009 showed similar texting trends among students on this campus, said Brian Rust, the Communications Director for UW’s Division of Information Technology.

He said 72 percent of students surveyed admitted to using their cell phone to text message on a regular basis.

“I do text in class, but fairly infrequently. I personally think it’s rude to text in class because it’s wasting both your time and the professor’s when you’re not paying attention. However, sending a quick text to a friend may keep me awake in a boring lecture,” UW freshman Kristen Bond said.

UW freshman Mitch Vanden Brook agreed that while seeing other students’ text in class is distracting, it doesn’t stop him from sending text messages during lectures.

“It’s easy for me to send a quick text without getting distracted and missing a lot of lecture information,” Vanden Brook said.

While few complaints have been filed from UW professors regarding text messaging in class, some professors have expressed interest in removing Internet routers from classrooms to ensure students are using their computers for note-taking only, Rust said.

Tindell added that Internet usage in class is also a distraction for students, but texting seems to be more prevalent in the classroom.

On Nov. 11, a YouTube video uploaded by an anonymous student in the class added more elements of confusion.

Some students feel as if Richard Quinn, who teaches the Strategic Management capstone course this semester, did not follow his original plan for the class, which included his creating questions for both the midterm and final exams, according to his first lecture of the semester.

Some felt that if Quinn were creating his own questions, then the information in the test bank would not be the actual exam.

“I was unaware of what I had stumbled into when I received the test bank, as were most students,” said one student, who asked to remain anonymous. “This wasn’t a case of a really bad class, just a very unfortunate and ignorant group forwarding the e-mail around. The scary thought is that it easily could have been more students.”

When a test bank — which includes questions and answers to an exam — was leaked to the class through an unknown source, it was quickly spread via e-mail, according to Taylor Ellis, the associate dean of the UCF testing center.

Test banks include the questions and answers for exams that are premade by publishers. In this case, Pearson was the publisher involved with the senior-level course.

Quinn and the College of Business believe that students maliciously used the test bank to cheat on the midterm examination.

Students who have come forward say that Quinn, in his first lecture, said he would be personally creating the exams, which assuaged any concerns they had about the test bank.

When contacted, Quinn did not comment on the concerns raised by students.

The College of Business has taken steps to absolve students of the cheating allegations.

If a student could prove they received the test bank after they took the exam, they could forward that e-mail, with the time stamp of the e-mail, to the College of Business, clearing the student’s name.

Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, was in the class but did not use the test bank.

“I work two jobs. I am a very busy person, and the thought of having to retake a test was just crazy,” the student said. “As people in my other classes started talking, it became clear: [Quinn] really doesn’t know who actually cheated.”

“I have a 40-something year-old lady in my class and she said, ‘I did see the test bank that was labeled as a study guide and thought it was just that, a study guide,’ ” the student said.

Grant Heston, the assistant vice president of UCF News & Information, said the college was not budging on its view of students receiving and using the test key.

“Just as it would be inappropriate to use test questions found on a professor’s desk, it is inappropriate to use test questions found or purchased online,” Heston said.

Heston also emphasized the statistics behind the testing lab, saying UCF has seen a decrease in the number of violators since monitoring began.

During the spring 2010 semester, he said, only 14 suspected cheating incidents took place out of a total of 64,000 exams that were taken.

“UCF’s provost and vice president for Academic Affairs has created a group to review what the university can learn from the incident,” Heston said. “This is not an investigation of anyone involved in the incident.”

According to the 2007 National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University, in high school, low socioeconomic status, early parenthood and low education level of parents play a role in whether a child will dropout.

At least 40 percent of Alabama’s students currently fail to graduate high school, according to the Southern Education Foundation’s report on high school dropouts, “Alabama’s Number One Education and Economic Problem.”

These students, therefore, are unable to attend colleges and universities, because a high school diploma is a requirement for admission.

“UA recruits qualified students from high schools across Alabama and out-of-state,” spokeswoman Cathy Andreen said.  “A high school diploma or its equivalent is required to attend any two-year or four-year college. High school students must meet UA’s admissions requirements to be admitted.”

Alabama’s high school graduation rate has shown greater improvement in recent years than the rates for most states, but it remains among the lowest nationwide, ranked at 44, according to a report from Johns Hopkins University which analyzed graduation rates from 2002 to 2006.

“The young person without an adequate education is less likely to vote or participate in civil life,” Southern Education Foundation states.

There are many organizations on the University’s campus and in the state that work to mentor students and help them to stay or to get back in school.

For example, a mentoring program at Central High School called Blueprint that gives students a look at college life operates with aid from the University’s Student Government Association and Honors College Assembly.

There are also other mentoring programs on campus that focus on children in elementary and middle school with the Honors College mentoring program. Students travel to Holt Elementary and Matthews Elementary schools to tutor the students in reading and math.

“For the year 2009-10, Central’s graduation rate climbed to 66 percent, a 14 percent increase over the previous year, Bryant’s went up by seven percent to 82 percent and Northridge’s graduation rate went up by 1 percent, to 80 percent,” according to reports from The Tuscaloosa News.

Hispanic and black students make up a lower percentage of the population on campus, and they also are among the races that have higher dropout rates.

Although this is evident on campus, there has been substantial improvement in the diversity and graduation of black students on this campus.

“UA has been successful in recruiting and graduating African-American students,” Andreen said. “The University is the number two public flagship university in the nation in the enrollment of African-American students, with African-Americans representing more than 12 percent of the student body this fall.”

She said UA ranks number three among 50 flagship institutions for the percentage of total degrees conferred to black students.

Little did he know that through deciphering these readings, he would formulate an idea for his thesis that would ultimately be written about in The Economist, featured on BBC News and published in the psychology journal Cognition.

“When I began reading the poorly copied passages, I was surprised to notice that I was concentrating and retaining the material better than usual,” the former USG president explained in an e-mail.

The experience sparked his interest in disfluency, or the subjective feeling of difficulty associated with cognitive tasks — an experience which has been shown to allow for deeper mental processing. In his thesis, Diemand-Yauman manipulated a different variable that contributes to disfluency: font style. He ultimately found, through laboratory and classroom trials, that hard-to-read fonts allowed students to retain more information than easy-to-read fonts did.

Diemand-Yauman’s interest in disfluency coincided with those of his thesis adviser, psychology professor Daniel Oppenheimer, who worked with Diemand-Yauman to mold his personal experience into a rigorous study.

“Connor and I brainstormed possible thesis topics together for months,” Oppenheimer said. “The eventual thesis topic he worked on bore only a cursory resemblance to what he had initially thought of.”

Diemand-Yauman joined Oppenheimer’s research lab, and the two “met nearly every week — sometimes multiple times a week — and exchanged countless e-mails,” Oppenheimer said. He added that Diemand-Yauman also got feedback from other researchers after presenting at lab meetings.

The study had two phases.

In the first, researchers gave two groups of students 90 seconds to memorize information about fictional aliens that was presented in three different fonts: an easy-to-read font, Arial, and two difficult-to-read fonts, Comic Sans MS and Bodoni MT. In a quiz administered 15 minutes later, the group of students reading from a handout printed in a difficult-to-read font outperformed those reading from the easy-to-read handout by 14 percent.

The second phase looked at whether the results applied in the classroom. Students aged 15–18 in six different classes at an Ohio public school were given handouts that had been previously manipulated by University researchers, who formatted the handouts in different fonts. As in the first experiment, students learning from handouts in difficult-to-read fonts performed better on tests.

Despite the statistical significance of the results, the researchers acknowledged the study’s limitations, including that classroom subjects came from a high-performing school with well-trained teachers.

Diemand-Yauman also cautioned against making things too disfluent, as this “could potentially cause students to give up all together. Subtlety is the key.”

He added that he has been floored by the attention his research has received.

“I feel very honored to have worked so closely with Professor Oppenheimer on this project, and I am very happy about the publicity because I feel that this is a finding that educators need to know about,” he said.

While many educators believe that quality teaching depends on instinct and experience, Diemand-Yauman said that counterintuitive findings like his show that this is not the whole story.

Addressing the larger implications of this study on education, Oppenheimer explained, “Sometimes small interventions can have big effects on learning. The key take-home message of Connor’s work is that the research in cognitive psychology can be used to develop cost-effective ways of improving education.”

Playboy recognized the course for its combination of humor and intellectual rigor.

Playboy is not the only publication to have taken notice of the unique course. The class, created by Michael Burgett, honeybee expert and professor emeritus of horticulture at OSU, has also received attention from NPR and Online Collegest.

While the class has been recognized across the country over the years, Burgett believes that the recent recognition of the course by Playboy has created the biggest stir.

“I was flattered by the recognition from Playboy,” Burgett said.

Burgett stated that he learned the course was honored in the magazine from an e-mail from a former student who is now serving in the United States military in Afghanistan.

“I guess Playboy gets read cover to cover by GIs,” Burgett said.

According to students, the class could not have been nearly as successful without Burgett’s contribution. Many students believe his extensive history and research in the world of entomology is a large part of what has made the class so popular.

“I really like professor Burgett,” said OSU freshman Kevin McElhaney. “He doesn’t tell us what to create, we create what we want.”

Burgett’s tour of entomology allows students to learn while incorporating Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comics. The unique class has been part of the course catalogue for University Honors College students since the late 1980s. Burgett attributes the course’s success to the 20 honor students who take the class each year.

“The class is very successful because it is in the Honors College,” Burgett said. “These people are very driven.”

The course also allows students to teach one another. The class is divided into 10 student teams who give presentations each class connecting the comics to the science of entomology.

“I didn’t know anything about insects before,” said Chris Burns, OSU freshman. “I’m definitely learning a lot.”

Excepting the first class, Burgett said he does not make the class a lecture, but instead an environment where students learn from each other.

“I call myself the guide on the side,” Burgett said.

Burgett said that one of his main goals is for the course to encourage creativity in his students.

The course began 22 years ago when Burgett was nominated by students to teach a class at OSU. After the nomination, Burgett was given the opportunity to create his own course and came up with Far Side Entomology.

“This is the only Far Side Entomology taught in the world,” Burgett said.

Other professors have approached Burgett about wanting to model a class after Far Side Entomology, but Burgett maintains that his course is the original.

“It has been a fun run and I hope to continue on for as long as possible,” Burgett said.

Burgett said his objective for the class is for students to get a taste of the world of insects. His experience stems back to his service in the army during the Vietnam War, where he was first introduced to entomology. The U.S. military employs a large number of entomologists to research diseases spread by arthropods.

“For every one person who gets shot, 50 get illnesses,” Burgett said.

Upon coming to OSU, Burgett was the first official honeybee researcher on the staff. Burgett said that since retiring from the position in 2002, he has had more time to dedicate to teaching the class.

“The arrow of time moves in one direction, but when you can continue to work with undergrads, it is amazing,” Burgett said.

A recent article by The Boston Globe titled “The Test Has Been Canceled” cited anecdotal and statistical evidence supporting the idea that fewer college courses are administering cumulative finals. At Harvard U., just 23 percent of the school’s 1,137 undergraduate courses scheduled final exams last semester—the lowest rate since 2002.

Exams are often being replaced by take-home essays and group projects, according to the article. It is a break from tradition dating from the 1830s and a challenge to the notion that final exams are the best method of encouraging and evaluating college-level work.

Duke does not keep statistics on the number of courses that give final exams, but every class is assigned a time for a final, said University Registrar Bruce Cunningham.

Lee Baker, associate vice provost for undergraduate education, noted that there are many viable alternatives to traditional final exams, adding that his class this semester does not have a final test. Instead, his course will have three non-cumulative exams over the course of the semester.

“If Duke is giving less finals, I am confident that professors are finding better ways for students to learn, communicate, think and write,” he said.

Partially as a result of his own memories as a student, Orin Starn, professor of cultural anthropology, will also not administer a final this semester. There are better methods of assessment than cumulative exams, he said.

“We have three tests, each covering material from one-third of the class,” Starn said. “My own memories of finals as a student was cramming like crazy for them and then pretty much forgetting everything by the start of the next term.”

Starn also said that his impression was that finals seem to be less frequently administered in the more humanistic departments than in the physical sciences or engineering.

Many Duke students have noticed differences in the number of finals in the University’s departments. Sophomore Zach Epstein said he normally takes math and science courses that often have finals. He has added that it seems like humanities classes frequently have essays and projects in the place of exams. Sophomore Willie Zhang, a math and biophysics double major, said he has had finals in about 80 percent of his classes, most of which were cumulative.

But other students, such as Jose Lamazares, a sophomore Japanese major, have had few finals in their Duke courses.

“This year I’m going to have final exams in all my classes, but last year I had finals in only one or two of my classes,” he said. “The rest were all essays or group projects.”

Prior studies on the effects of alcohol consumption have focused on issues like death and teen pregnancy, which only impact specific individuals. The researchers — economists Scott Carrell of the University of California, Davis; Mark Hoekstra of the University of Pittsburgh; and James West of the U.S. Air Force Academy — decided to focus on college students to study how drinking impacts a broader segment of the population.

The study compared the grades of students who turned 21 just before final exams and just afterward. It used data on 3,884 students at the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2000 to 2006.

The researchers found that students who turned 21 before final exams scored an average of one-tenth of a standard deviation lower than those whose birthdays were after exams. No dip was found among students who turned 20 before exams, showing that there was more than a “birthday effect” at work.

“The performance drop is of approximately the same magnitude as being assigned to a professor whose quality is one standard deviation below average,” the researchers noted.

Researchers used data from the Air Force Academy because it has a strictly enforced ban on underage drinking, as violators of the ban can be expelled. A survey conducted in 2004 found that fewer than 40 percent of students under 21 reported that they had consumed any alcohol since matriculating at the Air Force Academy, while nearly 90 percent of students age 21 or older had done so.

Conversely, a survey conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism this year found that 83 percent of college students in America drink alcohol and 41 percent reported having recently had five or more drinks in one sitting.

Another advantage of using data from the Air Force Academy was that all students have a similar course load. Cadets must take 30 core courses and have no choice in professor, and tests are standardized across sections.

The fact that the drop in performance was largest for the highest-performing students, the researchers wrote, “suggests that the negative consequences of alcohol consumption are not limited to a small fraction of users or even to those who might naturally struggle with academics.”

Duncan discussed racial inequalities in education, the need for education reform, as well as the importance of public service during his talk.

“If you can ride on the front of the bus, but you cannot read, you are not truly free,” he said.

Duncan lamented that many students who graduate from high school are not ready for college because they have been “socially promoted,” a term which refers to placing a student in the next grade despite their not being ready. A disproportionate number of these students are African American or Hispanic, said Duncan.

To address these inequalities, Duncan said that he and President Barack Obama are “making an unprecedented federal commitment to these areas.” The federal government’s $5 billion Race to the Top program funds efforts to accurately measure students’ progress in 44 states in order to ensure that students are on track for graduation and college.

“Our children have one chance, one chance to get a quality education, and they cannot wait,” Duncan said. “We remain too complacent about education reform.”

Duncan also discussed the importance of initiatives directed at college students who are committed to public service. To help these students, Obama and Duncan started the Income Based Repayment program in July 2009, which pays a student’s loans after they have completed 10 years of public service.

“It’s an opportunity to learn from others and enrich your own life while enriching the lives of others,” Duncan said.

Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds presented Duncan with the Robert Coles “Call of Service” Award and thanked him for his commitment to education.

Governor of Massachusetts Deval L. Patrick was also at the ceremony and introduced the honored guest, referencing Duncan’s time at Harvard and his co-captaincy of the basketball team.

The Robert Coles “Call of Service” Lecture and Award was established in 2007 to honor a leader in public service and bring him or her to the College to inspire students to become more involved in service at Harvard and in the community. Past recipients have included Al Gore in 2008 and Geoffrey Canada in 2009.

The poll, conducted by ABT SRBI Sept. 23-30, found that of the 1,001 individuals interviewed, 62 percent believe two-year public colleges are “excellent” or “good” at preparing students for the workforce, and 68 percent feel the same of four-year public colleges. Nearly three-fourths said it is better for some students to pursue a diploma or certificate from a two-year school than enter a four-year college, and two-year schools also rated nearly as highly in giving young adults the practical skills they need to survive and providing a high-quality education.

Although most Americans agreed that both types of institutions perform well in preparing America’s students, Michael Kirst, a professor emeritus and researcher with the School of Education at Stanford U., said the poll results give no indication that one type of institution is better than the other.

“It’s like apples and oranges,” Kirst said.

Institutions prepare students in different ways, Kirst said, and community colleges have many functions that are different from those at four-year schools. For students considering a technical degree or who have aspirations to work in a field requiring only an associate’s degree, a two-year program would be more appropriate, he said.

Kirst noted, however, that the poll’s results may cause trouble for those advocating community college reform because the poll seems to indicate that community colleges across the country are in good shape.

“Polls of K-12 education have shown that the public thinks public K-12 schools are not doing a good job. However, they think higher education is doing a good job, therefore there isn’t the pressure to reform in higher education,” he said.

The Obama administration, though, has put resources toward improving the nation’s community college system and aims for America to have the highest number of college graduates in the world by 2020, he said.

Sarah Gast, public affairs specialist with the U.S. Department of Education, said the goal is to encourage students to pursue higher education in a variety of ways, including both two-year and four-year institutions.

“Obama’s goal applies to all types of degrees — certificates, associates, bachelors,” she said. [They are] all part of goal — he realizes two-year colleges can play a big part in having the highest proportion of educated students.”

A recent study by Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at the Fuqua School of Business, and Aline Grüneisen, associate in research at Fuqua, investigated the quality of online essay mills, which sell papers to high school and college students. Although many of the sites claim they are supposed to help students write their own papers, Ariely wrote on his blog that “with names such as echeat.com, it’s pretty clear what their real purpose is.”

Ariely and Grüneisen bought four essays for between $150 and $216 each, but they contained significant errors and passages that made little to no sense.

“The essays were completely incoherent,” Grüneisen said. The essays cited sources from Wikipedia, and one source was in Russian, she added. There were also awkward word substitutions, like the replacement of “cheating” with “deceiting.”

When the researchers asked for a refund due to the poor quality of the papers they received, one of the essay mills threatened to turn the researchers in to a University dean for using its service, Grüneisen said.

The essays the researchers bought related to how and why people cheat. One paper read, “Cheating by healers. Healing is different…. But these days fewer people believe in wizards,” to answer the assigned cheating prompt.

“If a paper [like that] was turned in, I would fail the student and take it to the honor code council,” Ariely wrote in an e-mail.

The experiment originated from a conversation Ariely had with undergraduates about honesty and challenges they face. The students mentioned Adderall, lying on resumes, plagiarism and essay mills.

Grüneisen added that the poor quality of essays produced by essay mills should be enough to keep students away from them. Grüneisen does not think essay mills are widely used, however. She said she thinks purchasing cheaper essays from friends is more common.

The Office of Student Conduct has not seen cases of essay purchasing in a couple of years, but there have been cases in the past, said Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director for the OSC.

Even though essay mills are not widely used at Duke, Ariely said the mere existence of the mills is a problem.

“The existence of these sites and their popularity can create what we call ‘social proof’ where people think it is okay to do this, particularly when they hear that other people are doing this,” Ariely said.

Only 11.7 percent of the working population holds a bachelor’s degree, 7 percent hold a graduate or professional degree and 6.8 percent hold an associates degree. This translates to only one out of every 4 residents, or 25.5 percent of the population, have post secondary education.

In West Virginia, 19.9 percent of the population attended college but did not graduate, and 54.4 percent of the population has earned a high school degree or less.

The most educated counties in the state are Monongalia, Jefferson and Putnam, with residents with two or four year degree rates of 43.4 percent, 37.3 percent and 34.1 percent.  The least educated counties are McDowell, Lincoln and Boone with rates of 10.3 percent, 14.1 percent and 14.1 percent.

Of the states that border West Virginia, only Kentucky, with a degree rate of 29.2 percent, ranks in the bottom 10 states for education.  Maryland ranks in the top 10 with 43.9 percent of adults with college degrees, and Virginia is 11th on the list with 43.4 percent of adults with college degrees.

Rob Anderson, senior director of policy and planning at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, attributes part of this problem to demographics.  He said census data shows there are fewer high school age students than there used to be, and although the graduation rate has held steady, fewer students are graduating.

Frances S. Hensley, associate vice president for Academic Affairs, said in the past year Marshall has been busy getting a number of initiatives underway to aid students in earning their degrees. Among these initiatives is reducing the minimum number of credit hours from 128 to 120 to graduate.  This applies to incoming students, although returning students can change their course load with the approval of their college dean, Hensley said.  Incoming students no longer take University 101, which has been replaced with a more academically rounded course.

“Students are now taking First Year Seminar,” Hensley said. “In the course, students are getting an academic class with a focus on critical thinking. In the first year seminar, students are introduced to writing intensive as well as multicultural and international thinking, plus working with ‘embedded’ librarians who help students learn to research.”

Hensley said the reasons students don’t graduate are varied.  Several students are the first in their family to go to college. Some cannot come back for financial reasons, but the culture of West Virginia may be the biggest obstacle.

“Traditionally, one could get a solid high paying job right out of high school, but that is disappearing quickly,” Hensley said.

Lumina used U.S. Census data to compile its report.  Lumina is a private independent foundation whose goal is to increase educational access beyond high school.

For the 20 percent of the working population with some college but no degree, the Regents Bachelors of Arts program helps adults with some credit hours earn degrees within an accelerated and flexible time frame.  Lumina gave an $800,000 Adult Learner Grant to the West Virginia Higher Education Policy commission to enhance this program.

“Funds will be used to enhance academic content as well as enhance campus services as they pertain to adult students,” Anderson said.  “These students often must interact with personnel during non-traditional hours due to work schedules, and issues such as this one will be addressed.”

Hensley said the benefits of education exceed just economic benefits, and contribute to people making better choices all around.  The correlation between being the least educated, but also holding the nation’s highest obesity and smoking rates are hard to miss, he said.

“Waiting for ‘Superman’”, a new documentary film by director Davis Guggenheim, follows the struggles of five public school children as they attempt to leave failing public school districts for better, high-performing charter schools.

Charter schools provide an alternative to public education. The schools receive a mix of public and private funding. The schools are not held to the strict, bureaucratic policies of public schools.

The film has received rave reviews from liberals and conservatives. It shines a much-needed light on the failures of public school systems and the benefits of a charter school education, but it leads to an even bigger discussion.

Public school education has become the new civil rights struggle for America.

It is still very true that in the year 2010, the greatest indicator of a child’s academic achievement is her family’s socioeconomic status. This should not be the case; all children have the right to receive a top-notch education.

The Mississippi Delta is one of the poorest economic regions in the United States. According to 2010 accountability records from the Mississippi Department of Education, many of the Delta’s public schools are failing to meet the needs of their students. The West Bolivar School District in Rosedale is considered “at risk of failing” with its middle school deemed “at risk of failing” and its elementary school set on “academic watch.”

In my hometown of Shelby, the North Bolivar School District has been considered “successful,” with its elementary and middle schools both considered “successful.” My alma mater, on the other hand, Broad Street High School, as been set at “academic watch” with a graduation rate of about 59 percent.

Coahoma County School District is on an “academic watch.” Coahoma County Junior Senior High School and Friars Point Elementary are “at risk of failing” and Lyon Elementary is “failing.” Coahoma Agricultural High School (which is separate from Coahoma County’s school district) is on “academic watch” with a graduation rate of 47 percent. In the Clarksdale School District, Clarksdale High School is “at risk of failing” and W.A. Wiggins Middle School is “failing.”

Humphreys County School District is “at risk of failing.” Both its high school and junior high school are “at risk of failing.”

There are some bright spots in the Delta. The Quitman County School District is “successful,” with its elementary and junior high schools considered “successful” and its high school considered “high performing.”

In the well-off areas of Mississippi, the numbers look a lot better.

Oxford High School is considered a “star school.” Oxford’s Bramlett, Oxford and Della Davidson elementary schools are all “high performing.”

The Desoto County School District is “high performing.” Horn Lake, Olive Branch and Southaven high schools are all “high performing.” Desoto Central and Center Hill high schools are “star schools.” The Madison County School District’s Velma Jackson and Madison Central High School are “high performing” and its Ridgeland High is a “star school.”

Mississippi has two major education problems to address.

Mississippi has too many school districts. Mississippi only has 82 counties, which mean tax payers are spending money to support superintendents and other administrators who can’t meet the needs of their students in small districts.

Mississippi is also behind on charter schools. The Mississippi senate and house passed a charter school bill in February. The charter school law has its drawbacks, but hopefully the charter schools will perform for Mississippi’s students.

Quality public education is a full legal right, not a privilege afforded to only a few.

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that all of us attend this fine institution of higher learning for somewhat similar reasons: We want to expand our minds and horizons, we thrive on acquiring knowledge, we want to gain a deeper understanding of human nature, we strive to develop insight and enlightenment … or at the very least we are hoping to land a cool, high paying or highly rewarding job.

But college is not for everyone. Having a college degree does not guarantee that a person will get his dream job, make a lot of money or be personally fulfilled. With the economic hardships of the past two years, we probably all know college graduates who are still looking for jobs, and others who have taken jobs far below their perceived experience or educational level.

What’s worse is that, according to the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, only 55.9 percent of American college freshman who entered in 2002 ended up with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree by 2008. That means more than 40 percent of said students did not graduate in six years — and I’d bet most of them are still paying off college debt for a degree they never earned.

In an article for the National Association of Scholars, retired U. Wisconsin professor Thomas Reeves said, “Going to college has become a national fad … Is it always a prudent investment, for the individual and for society, to be sending junior off to the dorm?”

It’s a valid question. Especially when you couple the high rate of college quitters with U.S. government reports that there is a skilled labor shortage. Add that 23 of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate in the next 10 years do not require a college degree and one is left to wonder if some students who have grown up with the doctrine, “after high school, I will go to college,” would have preferred never to have started college in the first place.

In a May piece in The New York Times Jacques Steinberg wrote, “A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It’s time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.”

So maybe four years of college shouldn’t be the default. Pursuing any sort of education past high school is a significant investment of time and money and for some, it may be one that doesn’t pay off.

The findings of this study also show that this decline has nothing to do with the type of institution a student attends, whether or not they work, or what they choose to study.

The study was written by two professors from U. California, Mindy Marks and Philip Babcock. Babcock says the research was inspired by a similar survey that pertained only to students of U. California, “The study-time numbers looked quite low to us, and we wondered if this was true across the nation and if it had always been true.”

The research that followed confirmed these low numbers in current study time clocked by university students.

The data collected by Babcock and Marks includes four sets of data coming from the years 1961, 1981, 1987-1989, and 1991-2003, which involves the responses of full-time students to a survey asking the number hours each studied per week. From these surveys the researchers were able to see an obvious pattern: Study time had gone down, and drastically at that. Hoping to find the cause of the decline, the duo looked at the changes in college culture that occurred over the time span. The two major possible reasons Marks and Babcock cited in their research that may have led to the major decrease in study time were the use of technology and falling standards in universities all over the country.

The use of technology would surely make tasks that would have taken longer before the widespread use of the Internet, such as writing a paper, quicker and easier to complete. However, the study shows that most of the decline took place prior to 1981, a time in which this access to technology was impossible. This means that while technology has had an impact on the amount of time students spend studying, the impact is minimal and recent with little relevance to the study’s findings.

What might be causing this trend according to the research? Universities whose standards for students have dropped in recent decades, resulting in students today who do not need to work as hard in college as students in 1961. This conclusion is problematic as there is no precise way to test the standards of universities today and so many factors affect student study time. However those who believe this theory have several explanations such as student desire for leisure time and the catering of universities to such desires in an effort to attract students.

Ben Smith, a freshman here at the University of Massachusetts who plans to major in biology agrees that there are a lot more options available to students in terms extracurricular activities, particularly club sports and other athletics. This would cause studying to be less of a priority, as today students need not be a part of their college team to have time committed to sports or almost any other activity.

Similarly, Kathryn Tolley, Phil McGilvary and Kit Dyer, all UMass sophomores say that college standards are not the only things that affect study time.

Tolley said that, with larger numbers of students receiving higher education, it has become the cultural norm to go to a university and thus those who do “may not be as study-orientated,” but rather may be attending a university because it is expected of them.
McGilvary agrees that the expectations universities have of students may have changed in a not-so-negative way, claiming that today oftentimes students need to go to graduate school to acquire the qualifications that were once held by undergraduates in order to compete in the job market. This would mean that today the amount of work required of an undergraduate student is similar to what a high school student needed to accomplish 40 years ago.

Dyer feels as though she was more prepared for college than students in the past may have been because as she says, “Now when you are in high school the teachers are there to teach you primarily how to learn and in college you are there to learn the actual material.”

However, this is all speculation and, without more in-depth research, the true reason for the decline in time spent studying by college students would need to be done for a truly accurate explanation to be found.

But in the end, no university can be held entirely responsible for the study habits of its students, who are as adults responsible for themselves, according to Professor Blaustein who works in the Center for Neuroendocrine.

“Universities really can’t be harder. Some professors are demanding; some aren’t,” she said. “Some students rise to the challenge and try to get as much out of college as they can; some don’t. The amount of time students study is determined by the student, not the universities.”

Educational policy works in much the same way. We have a tendency in this country to oversimplify public policy into very narrow, compartmentalized issues, but education (in addition to many other things) does not work this way.

Consider, for example, the recent Texas social studies standards debate. Last spring the Texas Board of Education came under a great deal of public scrutiny when they changed some of their state social studies standards to reflect a far-right leaning ideology. A lot of people didn’t like this because these changes in the standards could have huge impact on the content of textbooks all over the country. Earlier this week, the same school board came under fire again for passing a resolution calling on textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam.

While I am glad this has focused attention on social studies education in this country, much of the ensuing debate has failed to take into account the complexities inherent in education. Regardless of where you stand on the changes and the resolution, the fact of the matter is that the actual impact on most students’ education will be minuscule if any impact is made at all. Teachers are still going to talk about cross-cultural issues and the impact of Islam. Most of the pressing issues that affect education have nothing to do with standards like this. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a shame when we start trying to shape curriculum to fit political agendas, but we ought to just let Texas be Texas, and direct our attention elsewhere.

On the other hand, one piece of legislation that I think has done a good job of at least recognizing the complex nature of education but has not received a great deal of attention is President Obama’s “Race to the Top.” This $4.35 billion federal program (which actually was just completed this month, but will likely receive more funding and continue for at least the next few years) was essentially a competition between states to comply with certain criteria intended to spark “reform and innovation.” States stood to win cash awards from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. There were two yearlong “rounds” of competition, and the winners of the second round were announced late last month (Nebraska did not win).

Now this legislation has certainly been controversial, and personally I think that it is more about compliance with national student and teacher assessment standards and less about innovation than Obama would admit. However, this legislation brings to light many of the important questions we are facing in education and looks at answering them in a comprehensive sort of way.

For example, within the criteria there are provisions to encourage community and family involvement and at the same time provisions that impact state testing and assessment. There are measures for improving low performing schools and for raising overall performance. There are aspects that affect teachers and administrators and others that require state, district and local-level cooperation.

It seems that Race to the Top recognizes some of the complexities within education like the need for a system to accurately measure student learning and development, but also for the freedom to encourage innovative and creative teaching practices or the need to reward encourage great teachers, but also to recognize that some things are beyond teachers’ control.

While I don’t think that in the end “Race to the Top” will deliver the results we’re hoping for, and I don’t think that it gives the right answers to the questions it brings to light, I do know that we need this sort of big picture thinking.

I also think it is commendable of the Obama Administration to try something new like this. No one can deny that our educational system in this country has problems. So while I’m not saying this is a case of “anything is better than nothing,” when you are graduating only a third of students with reading proficiency and facing increasing disparity between schools in this country, it’s worth taking some risks.

Our problems in education won’t be solved by one piece of legislation, and there is no easy fix. The process of improving education has to involve students, families, teachers, administrators, and district, state, and federal officials and we need to work on all levels if we want to see improvement.

If we fixate on single issues without seeing the big picture or get distracted by partisan nonsense like we’ve seen in Texas the past few months, we’ll end up wasting time and hurting students. We need to focus on things that really matter and keep our eye on the big picture.

Obama’s Race to the Top has just ended its second round, and this provides a great opportunity for discussion on some of the things that really matter in education.

The council collected data from 2005 to 2007 at 212 institutions based on 20 variables ranging from the number of awards per faculty to the percent of international students. It considered programs in 62 fields, including 57 at U. Texas. Programs had to meet certain criteria to be ranked, including a requirement that there be at least 25 universities with that doctoral program. For example, UT’s decorated petroleum engineering doctoral program was not ranked because there are fewer than 25 in the nation.

The survey, released publicly at noon Tuesday, is the first that explores this type of data analysis and the first from the council since 1995.

“Reputation and ranking and prestige of any university depends on the quality of its doctoral programs,” said Graduate School Dean Victoria Rodriguez. “Undergraduate education is very important and we have a lot of master’s degrees, but what really gives us our academic heft and makes us one of the most important universities in the world is the quality of our doctoral programs.”

Rather than presenting precise rankings of each program, the survey’s results offer five sets of statistical measures that give a range of possible rankings asserted with 90 percent certainty after 500 iterations of data for each category. For example, there is a 90-percent chance that UT’s doctoral program in journalism ranks between seventh and 23rd in diversity.

The two main measures — the survey-based and regression-based rankings — measure responses to a faculty questionnaire based on their valuations of the 20 variables and an overall ranking based on regression-derived weights of a school’s reputation, respectively.

“This is really the first attempt at trying to do a data-informed analysis of doctoral programs,” said Graduate School Associate Dean Marvin Hackert. “There are a lot of things we can learn from this process going forward that could improve the process. Anytime you do something differently, there are going to be hiccups and wrinkles.”

Hackert said that despite the difficulty analyzing the data as a set of holistic rankings, it gives students seeking very specific things from their prospective doctoral program. The council will present the data in such a way that students can manipulate the weights afforded each variable to determine which university may reach their more specific needs.

The data also provides a valuable resource by which to consider how UT programs may have improved since the data was taken four years ago, Rodriguez said.

“The Jackson School of Geosciences wasn’t even a school five years ago,” said Graduate School spokeswoman Kathleen Mabley. “What their data would show now is very different from what it showed then.”

A survey across 29 nations suggests that competition to the public school system provided by private schools enhances productivity in K-12 education, West said—in contrast to an alternative argument that the existence of private schools increases inequality in education.

Analyzing test data of 220,000 students from the Programme for International Student Assessment, West and Woessmann showed that a 10 percent increase in enrollment in private schools results in an improvement in math test scores equivalent to almost a half year’s worth of learning and a reduction in per-student education spending by over 5 percent of the average for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

The presence of a strong private sector also improved the achievement of students who attended public schools, even though high-ability students may tend to self-select into private schools, the study found.

According to West and Woessmann, theirs was the first study to attempt to measure the causal impact of competition by looking at variation in competition among different countries.

The study established a causal relationship between private school enrollment and performance of the education system by examining the Catholic church’s efforts in the 19th century to establish Catholic schools in various non-Catholic countries.

This allowed West and Woessmann to isolate the effect of education system competition from private schools on students’ performance today.

“The amount of competition in education today varies from one country to another for reasons that have little to do with contemporary school quality, or national income, or commitments to education,” the researchers wrote in the study, instead pointing to the role of the Catholic church.

That’s totally bunk, so here’s the skinny:

Notehall.com:

It’s a website where kids upload word documents with their lecture notes or filled-out study guides for other kids to buy on the Internet. The site is organized by course number, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find your classes and see if someone’s been taking good notes.

Are you taking economics 200? Did you know that someone has posted daily study notes and study guides for four different professors who are teaching that class? Is yours among them? Only one way to find out. Will you never have to take notes during economics 200 again? Maybe!

Some of you aren’t auditory learners. Maybe you retain information better with flashcards or making visual maps than you do listening to a lecture. Don’t let the expectation to take notes limit your motivation to find ways around it and learn enough information to get the grade you want in the class.

Basically, if you’re willing to shell out a few bucks a week for your class notes and are lucky enough to be in a big enough class that someone decided they could make money selling their notes online, notehall.com is your friend.

Ratemyprofessors.com:

It’s a website that tells you which teachers are easy graders and which teachers are attractive (or both).

Ratemyprofessors.com reviews boil down to two extremes: “OMG This was the greatest prof of my life,” or “FML This was the worst prof of my life.” If there’s a lot of the former, and the teacher has a lot of high scores for things like “clarity” and “helpfulness,” it means that’s probably an easy class to take.

Think about it this way: At the end of the semester, you’ll have the chance to take a different professor for General Chemistry. You could take Professor Example again, or you could take Professor Strawman, who is a way easier grader because he’s disillusioned with the educational system.

If you go with Strawman you’ll learn less, but do you even like chemistry? Are you going to use it heavily in your major? No? Thanks, ratemyprofessors.com, for saving me from hours of extra work and a lower grade point average.

Additionally, professors might have a chili pepper next to their name, indicating if they are “hot” or not. A Tuesday Daily Wildcat report revealed that professors with chili peppers are not down with the designation, indicating that it gets in the way of “what matters.”

But that’s totally arbitrary. If you want to pay this school’s ridiculous fees to take easy courses and ogle older women (or men), more power to you. It’s lots of fun.

I know you’re new and don’t always know where the party is at, so you might spend a lot of your time in your dorm room. That’s perfect, because that means you can put these primo cuts of advice steak into practice right away.

Good luck, and happy coasting.

Although the series came to an end in 2008, universities such as Harvard, Duke and Cal-Berkeley have discovered ways to keep alive the lessons of the show, as the series is increasingly being examined inside college classrooms to stimulate discussion on the problems facing the urban lower class society.

This year, Emory U. is following suit. Emory’s interdisciplinary studies department is offering a writing requirement course titled “Watching The Wire,” a discussion-oriented class ­— now in its first semester — based on the show that is just as much praised for its high entertainment value as it is for its socioeconomic commentary.

The 201 level class was developed out of a department initiative created last year that allows graduate students to teach courses based on their own studies in order to help expose undergraduates to examples of higher-level research.

The class was created and is taught by Ajit Chittambalam, a Ph.D student in Emory’s Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) program. He designed the course based on the models of classes taught on “The Wire” at other schools while also throwing some of his own wrinkles into the curriculum.

Students in the class are usually assigned to watch a minimum of three hour-long episodes a week. However, they must also complete weekly reading assignments that incorporate topics in the show into class discussion.

The course is structured by condensing “The Wire”’s vast range of themes into weekly keywords.

Students will present on one of the keywords throughout the duration of the semester.

Chittambalam said the class works better in an interdisciplinary department, rather than as a film studies or urban studies class. “Being able to combine elements from a range of academic perspectives allows for a more complete understanding and appreciation of the show,” he said.

“From professors I spoke to and looked up [who] teach this class, they’re broadly divided into two camps,” he said. “For example, William Julius Wilson, who is perhaps the foremost urban sociologist professor in the country and teaches at Harvard, teaches it almost as if it was an ethnographic document. A lot of other people in media studies departments teach it by looking at TV as a form of literature, the serial narrative. I wanted to put those two approaches together, because in my perspective it seems that each one is a little insufficient.”

The show was created by former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, along with former homicide detective Ed Burns.

Simon’s and Burns’ career backgrounds and experiences have lent them the insight needed to create a work of fiction that functions almost as a journalistic documentary to expose middle- and upper-class suburban viewers to an urban underclass world — a world that many would not otherwise be able to understand or identify with.

“I never thought it was possible to incorporate a show [into a class] and actually learn stuff from it, but it brings up so many issues that other shows do not bring up or that you don’t normally pay attention to,” said Erika Rief, a college sophomore currently enrolled in the class. “Talking about the underclass has brought up a lot of issues about worlds you never see. In the presentation I gave today I talked about different isolated cities within a city and how you don’t see the entire city when you go downtown for a night.”

While Chittambalam acknowledges that no other show could be used to teach a class nearly as well as “The Wire” can be, due to the unique and complex nature of the show, he also noted that television in general can be a useful tool for teaching a broad array of topics.

“Television is the most thriving art form there is today,” he said. “People compare ‘The Wire’ to Dickens, and sometimes people forget that Dickens serialized his novels in the newspaper. At that period, the newspaper was this medium that could reflect the city, that went to everyone … where you have something that tries to do the condition of the English novel. ‘The Wire’ is sort of the Dickens for today in the way it can capture different mediums in the serialized form. But I don’t think that people get the thrill out of reading Dickens that they do with ‘The Wire.’”

Of all the issues the show addresses in its portrayal of a gritty and urban America city-life, the most prevalent theme throughout the duration of the program’s five seasons is the failure of the so-called “War on Drugs.”

Chittambalam said he tries to convey how these issues faced by the underclass are even relatable for suburban kids who have never been exposed to such a different socioeconomic environment.

As the course progresses into the later seasons of the show, he also hopes to connect the issues depicted in urban educational systems and housing markets to the local problems that are currently facing the city of Atlanta.

“It’s a window into a kind of world and issues that we don’t have to confront on a day-to-day basis,” Chittambalam said. “One of the things I’m most interested in is spending time on that disconnect. We’re privileged; we have access to certain things. We’re watching a show on a very different world than us. So what? Is it just entertainment? Is there social argument? If it’s convincing, are you going to change the way you vote, the way you think, because of it? What are the stakes of watching that? I want people to feel a little uncomfortable. It’s not an easy question. ‘The Wire’ doesn’t have any easy answers. I want people to recognize their relationship to those issues and look at how [the themes are] an allegory for things going on around us.”

Chittambalam said that no matter how informative and thought-provoking the show may be, it would not have been able to foster the type of dialogue and discussion that it has if it was not also grippingly entertaining television.

The show’s quality of writing, vivid characters and complex, layered plotline have consistently been praised for keeping the show enjoyable despite its underlying pessimistic and cynical outlook on American institutions.

“Other that the fact that it’s just terrifically entertaining — it’s funny, it’s heartbreaking —, you have a TV series that is considered perhaps the best literature of any sort in the last 25 years,” he said, adding that the show focuses on “a world and a set of social issues that if you just had to take a writing requirement class on, you may think is boring and say why do I want to take this class?”

“But my question would be: how is it that this literature has done this and why are sociologists teaching this show? It’s just sort of a chance to explore a piece of art that has managed to shed light and bring to life certain issues that decades of other disciplines have failed to do,” he said.

Earl Hawkey, director of the U. of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Registration and Records, said UNL offers similar programs. However, unlike other universities’ programs which only offer academic forgiveness to returning dropouts, UNL’s program allows any student to reset their GPA.

“Some programs are based on the fact that a student has to leave before they can gain access to academic forgiveness. They have to be gone a certain amount of time first. The period varies. It can be eight or nine years, or just one or two,” Hawkey said. “The other type of program, which is what we have here, doesn’t require students to be gone for any length of time.”

Hawkey points to two programs in particular that returning UNL students with low grade point averages can take advantage of. The first is called academic bankruptcy. It allows a student to declare up to two terms as “bankrupt,” so all courses and credits in those terms are taken out of the GPA equation and do not count toward a degree requirement. The courses do still appear on the transcript, but are marked as academically bankrupt.

In order to qualify for this a student must either complete 15 credit hours with at least a 3.0 GPA, or 30 hours with at least a 2.5 GPA after the bankrupt semester.

Hawkey said this option is useful for students who had one or two bad semesters, but expect to do better.

“It’s a policy where a student needs to show that their performance in the term they want to bankrupt is not consistent with their abilities,” he said.

Another option Hawkey mentioned is repeating a course. If a student takes a course and gets a grade lower than a C, that student may retake the course for a higher grade. The original grade still appears on the transcript, but is taken out of the GPA calculation. There is no limit to the number of times a student may repeat courses.

Sean Kenney is one student who plans to take advantage of these programs to raise his GPA. A former general studies major, he dropped out of UNL after his freshman year and plans to return in the spring semester of 2011. He said he thinks UNL’s repeat policy is just as useful to him as the academic forgiveness programs of other universities’ would be.

“The classes that make my GPA lower are classes I’m planning to retake anyway for my degree,” he said.

He hopes to use the option of repeating courses to help raise his GPA, which will have several benefits for him.

“I screwed around for my first year and my parents told me they wouldn’t fund screwing around,” Kenney said. “I’m going back this spring semester with my own money. If I get my GPA up above a 3.0, my parents will pay for the rest.”

Online colleges remain saddled with poor reputations but have become economic juggernauts. Apollo Group, Inc., which owns the University of Phoenix and other for-profit education ventures, posted revenue of nearly $4 billion in 2009.

The success of for-profit higher education is clearly benefiting executives and shareholders. But online college holds even greater promise as a means of revolutionizing education in America. To date, however, this promise has yet to be realized.

The staggering cost of traditional college education is certainly leaving an opening in the market for online alternatives. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1980–81 the cost of tuition, room and board at a four-year, private institution was under $14,000 (in 2007–08 dollars), with the cost of a public institution less than half of that. By 2007, the cost of a private university was over $30,000, with public schools costing almost $13,500.  Many Americans simply cannot afford to attend college. Beyond monetary concerns, those who wish to get a degree may have familial obligations or a work situation that prevents them from doing so.

For those who cannot complete a degree in a traditional college setting, online colleges can be a powerful solution. In an article that appeared in the Washington Monthly last year, Kevin Carey, an education policy think-tanker, described an online college experience at odds with the image in many of our minds. Carey profiles a woman who, after earning lower wages than her college-educated counterparts, was laid off and finally decided to finish the degree she started years before. Faced with time constraints as a mother and economic concerns about spending a long time in school without work, she turned to StraighterLine, an online degree-granting program.

From her computer, Carey’s subject could “access course materials, read text, watch videos, listen to podcasts, work through problem sets, […] take exams” and “collaborate with other students via listserv and instant messaging.” She communicated with a course adviser through e-mail and could also talk to tutors online.

As for her two greatest concerns – cost and time – StraighterLine allowed her to complete courses as fast as she could work through the material and then begin new ones right away, all at a fraction of the price the same courses would cost on a traditional campus.

Why do we hear so few of these success stories? Some fault lies with the online college industry and some with the policymakers who govern it.

Online colleges are for-profit ventures, which creates perverse incentives for administrators balancing concerns about students and revenue. While Carey speculates that universities could eventually collapse under pressure from online alternatives in a fashion reminiscent of newspapers, it may actually be for-profit colleges that best resemble the newspaper industry. Like newspapers, online colleges face tradeoffs between efficiency and the quality of their product. How many executives and investors would eschew the former in favor of the latter? Thus, many papers are cutting staff and shrinking their coverage, and there is plenty of evidence showing that online colleges are driven by a desire to maximize profit without regard for students.

A report released in early August by the Government Accountability Office highlighted illegal or unethical practices at every one of the 15 for-profit colleges investigated. Four attempted to defraud the government by suggesting ways applicants could lie on their financial aid forms, “and all 15 mislead potential students about their programs’ cost, quality and duration, or the average salary of graduates,” according to an Aug. 4 New York Times article.

Policymakers also deserve criticism for not addressing the regulations governing higher education, which are stifling innovation and protecting the status quo in an industry that could use some shaking up. As Carey writes, “The most prestigious accreditors will only recognize institutions: organizations with academic departments, highly credentialed faculty, bureaucrats, libraries and all the other pricey accoutrements of the modern university. These things make higher education more expensive, and they’re not necessary if all you want to do is offer standard introductory courses online,” which is StraighterLine’s business model.

But such companies will never attract students without being accredited. When some for-profit colleges can remain accredited while deceiving students and committing fraud, and others trying to deliver a better product are forced to find ways around the rules, the regulations need rethinking.

There’s a strong argument to be made that the importance of college is vastly overstated, and that many people would benefit more from technical training than from a bachelor’s degree. But it is undeniable that in many sectors, a college education is now essentially a requirement for workers, and that on average, college-educated students make much more than those who only complete high school.

While many online colleges suffer from high dropout rates and leave their students jobless and debt-ridden, the potential online education holds should be obvious to anyone who has used a computer. With our workforce struggling and the economy stagnant, it’s more important than ever that politicians make it easier for forward-thinking ventures to offer students new, quality choices in higher education.

But the ’70s producer, songwriter, overall rock star and studio wizard will be joining the Indiana U. faculty as the Class of 1963 Wells Professor in late October. Rundgren is the ninth person to have this prestigious position.

Gass said Rundgren is well qualified to talk about The Beatles because he’s done many covers and tributes associated with the band. He has also toured with Ringo Starr, worked with George Harrison, knows Paul McCartney and worked on and off with John Lennon in the ’70s.

Rundgren is best known for his songs, “Hello It’s Me” from his 1972 album “Something/Anything?” and the party anthem, “Bang the Drum All Day” from his 1983 album, “The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect.”

“He had fame handed to him on a silver platter and he gave it up to do his own thing, like producing,” Gass said. “I’m not surprised that a 20-year-old college student wouldn’t know him until you play his biggest hits.”

During his gig as a professor, Rundgren will make two public appearances on campus. The first will be a public lecture, “LONGHAIR: Todd Rundgren on The Beatles Effect,” at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 in Ballantine Hall 013 during Gass’ The Music of The Beatles class.

Sophomore Brittany Tempest, who is enrolled in Gass’ Beatles course said she is excited about having the opportunity to hear Rundgren lecture
during class.

“Todd Rundgren is pretty much my hero,” Tempest said. “He’s been through it all, he’s not an outsider looking in. He’s lived it. He really knows what he’s talking about.”

Rundgren’s other public appearance will be at 8 p.m. Oct. 31 in Auer Hall where Rundgren will give a public recital entitled, “CLUSTER: The Birth of the T Chord.”

Both events will seat about 400 people and will be free and open to the public.
Gass said Auer Hall will be a great setting to see Rundgren perform.

“It’ll be just him, a guitar and maybe a piano,” Gass said. “He has a spectacular voice. I was stunned with his voice; he didn’t change the key or anything during his [Clowes Memorial Hall] performance.”

Gass is referring to Rundgren’s recent performance at Butler University’s Clowes Memorial Hall on Sept. 11.

Butler senior Jackie Gredell, a member of the Jordan Jazz vocal ensemble, shared the stage with Rundgren during parts of the second half of his show.

“When I found out we were singing back up for him,” Gredell said, “I googled him and found out that he sang ‘Bang the Drum All Day’ and ‘Hello It’s Me,’ which are very popular songs, so I was excited.”

Rundgren and a full band performed each and every song from 1974s “Todd” album and 1981s “Healing” as well as an ending with audience participation on the song “Sons of 1984.”

“The Butler concert showcased his back catalogue, which shows his depth,” Gass said. “Healing was perfect for 9/11. Him, the band, the choir, the students really nailed it. It was great.”

The four-week Wells Scholar course, The Ballad of Todd Rundgren: Musical Journeys of a Lifetime, will be instructed by Rundgren, Gass and contributing faculty; Bernice Pescosolido, distinguished professor and chancellor’s professor of sociology  and Nick Toth, professor of anthropology and co-director of the Stone Age Institute.

Director of the Wells Scholars Program Tim Londergan had the final say in bringing
Rundgren to IU.

“Todd’s here for two weeks. Those weeks are framed for him to prep students for an understanding of his background,” Gass said.

Gass met Rundgren through the friendship that his sons had made with Rundgren’s nephew who lived next door during Gass’ year-long sabbatical in Hawaii. Only then was Gass able to approach Rundgren.

“We got to know their family. They always had them [our kids] over at ‘Uncle Todd’s,’” he said. “I had been trying to get in touch with him as the rock teacher trying to talk to Todd Rundgren, but was never able to.”

Depauw’s Executive Director of Media Relations Ken Owen, who is a Rundgren fan and scholar, invited Rundgren to speak at DePauw in April 2009.

“Todd wasn’t sure if he would enjoy lecturing, but he went, and he enjoyed it,” Gass said. “So I mentioned that we had to get him to IU, and we did with endowments from the Class of 1963.”

As to what Rundgren will be teaching, Gass said Rundgren is keeping that to himself.

“He’s got great stories to tell. Musicians are sometimes more comfortable talking about someone else they admire and who influences them versus their own music,” Gass said.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) received feedback from 479 professional recruiters on the nation’s top 100 colleges. The WSJ.com survey stated that “the nation’s largest public and private companies, nonprofit organizations and federal agencies across every region of the country and spanning nearly two dozen industries,” were asked to assess the list of 100 colleges the website compiled.

After six months of collecting data for the survey, the results placed Penn State at the top of the list of 100 colleges, said Jennifer Merritt, WSJ.com’s careers editor, said.

Merritt said many students deciding on a college feel the need to attend Ivy League schools if they hope to get a job.

“What we’re trying to find out is if that’s true,” Merritt said. “Is that what you need to do to get a professional job?”

The survey’s results show a large public university is more likely to help students find a job after college.

Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said she is not surprised by the ranking.

“[The ranking] is because the education that students get here is the kind of education that employers are looking to hire,” she said. “Our education goes beyond just the book learning.”

Connections Penn State faculty are making with researchers turn into jobs for students, Mountz said.

Tanna Pugh, director of Penn State’s Industrial Research Office, said the National Science Foundation ranks Penn State third in the country in industry-sponsored research, bringing in $100 million annually for research, Pugh said.

Pugh said the connections her office creates between faculty members and companies sponsoring research projects grow into opportunities for students to get involved with the research.

Since 1995, 49 companies have signed research agreements with Penn State — 80 percent of them in the last five years, Pugh said.

Recruiters also ranked the colleges based on what majors they recruited from and which schools produced the best graduates in those majors, Merritt said.

According the 479 companies surveyed, Penn State ranked No. 5 in accounting, No. 6 in finance, No. 7 in computer science and No. 9 in engineering.

Overall ranking for a school was done by a point system. Recruiters were asked to rank their top schools overall.

The survey required a college to have at least 60 companies out of the 479 say they recruit from that institution to be considered for rankings. Penn State saw recruiters from 187 companies — the most of any school listed, according to the survey.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that more than 1,000 for-profit colleges are in danger of having the federal government reduce or eliminate funding for student loans due to student loan repayment rates that fall well below federal standards. Simply put, students who graduate from these schools aren’t making enough money after graduation to pay back their loans, and taxpayers are footing the bill.

If loan repayment rates at these types of schools are really this low – 13 percent at one school in Connecticut – then the federal government should absolutely stop providing students with loan money. If students are not getting a good return on their educational investment, than neither is the federal government. And the last thing American citizens need now are more costs transferred onto them.

It is unfortunate for the students who are already attending these schools that their funding could potentially be pulled in the near future. Although people should probably know better than to attend a school without first doing research into that school’s success rate, one can still see how the flashy advertising and grand claims could trick people into thinking that for-profit schools are a sensible alternative.

Although students who are attending for-profits would be hurt by an elimination of funding, it would ultimately be helpful for students down the line who may make the decision not to attend a failing school because of a lack of money and instead spend less money by going to a community college. It is a necessary step that will ultimately do more good for more people than it would do harm.

For-profit colleges are businesses, and the success or failure of a business always lies in the bottom line of its performance. If these schools continue to fail in graduating students who have the skills and qualifications necessary to garner a well-paying job, then their business plan won’t be able to continue. If the absence of federal loan funding becomes a reality and students stop attending, then for-profit universities will end up with the bottom line that they deserve.

Naturally, upperclassmen probing the void for job prospects are apprehensive about their chances of snagging a job. To stand out in a highly competitive, straining economy many students are considering graduate school as an option.

Despite the high cost of education, especially in today’s budget stretching times, some feel that they are making the right financial decision by pursuing a master’s degree.

Jordan Bryant, sophomore biology and pre-pharmacy major at U. Arkansas, feels that success in his career field almost mandates a higher degree.

“Getting a master’s or a doctorate shows companies that you are both experienced and dedicated,” he said. “It shows you mean business. So it is a huge advantage on a résumé.”

When asked about how he intends to pay for the initial education, he expressed little concern.

“Money isn’t everything,” Bryant continued. “Once you get your degree, you will be able to pay it off in the long run.”

Sophomore Luke Smith feels similarly.

“I think graduate school definitely makes you more marketable. I can get a job while I am in school and probably get a few scholarships, based on my academic performance here at the U of A. And even if I do not get scholarships, the income I will get from having a master’s degree in aerospace engineering will more than make up for it,” he said.

Thus, a future-oriented mindset can be observed in students pursuing graduate degrees. Student loans, perhaps two of the foulest words in a college student’s vocabulary, are of no consequence, provided that the end result is a steady, respectable paycheck.

“It is an investment,” Smith said. “You are investing in your future. And you are counting on that investment to bring greater returns in the future.”

Some career fields are more demanding than others when it comes to education. The importance of distinction and specialization in broad career fields, especially within science, is extremely high. Salaries in such academic focuses are directly proportional to extent of education.

Johnathon Faught, senior psychology major, said that “it really depends on your field. For example, a bachelor’s degree in psychology will get you nowhere; you have to go to graduate school if you want to get any sort of job.”

Claud Lacy, a UA physics professor put it even more bluntly: “Publish or perish,” he said.

As a physicist and a repeatedly published astronomer, he understands the cutthroat nature of science firsthand. And there are some credentials one simply must possess to even be considered for a job.

“If you are an astronomer and you want to teach, you have to get a Ph.D. All science fields are like this,” Lacy said. “A bachelor’s degree in this field can get you a job in research and development, much like engineers, but you cannot teach without a higher degree. It just doesn’t happen.”

It follows that record numbers of students, heeding the advice and examples of their elders, are applying to graduate schools this year. However, it would be a mistake to see graduate school as a necessity, and certainly one to see it as being universally beneficial. The stakes are high, nothing is guaranteed and a plain, razor-edged question remains even after one has a Ph.D in hand: “Is this really what I want to do with my life?”

Jack Breffle, Gregson CRE, gave his input on the question of graduate school.

“What may seem like a certainty now may not be as much of a home run as a student continues to grow and mature,” Breffle said. “Life can change, folks may start families, and working through an on-call shift in an ER may not seem so appealing anymore. Someone can set themselves up for success and happiness if they do not handcuff themselves to a pile of debt they have to pay off in a job they may end up disliking.”

Breffle himself took a “year off” after completing his undergraduate degree, working a job, saving money and taking time to decide if he wanted to attend graduate school. During that reprieve from academia, he found himself able to reflect on what he truly wanted to achieve.

“I had a delayed launch,” he said, “but by the time I started graduate school a year after finishing college, I had developed a hunger for the knowledge and experience I would gain which drove me to be successful in my venture.”

For those concerned about paying for graduate school, resources exist to help guide you on your path to higher education. The Princeton Review annually compiles a list of the best graduate schools, sorted by size, cost, quality and area of study. Many large corporations will also grant scholarships for top employees to obtain advanced degrees. Education in today’s market is a win-win situation for both parties involved.

The most vital concept to understand in the realm of education is very straightforward, and twofold. Where do I want to go with my life? And what is the best way for me to get there?

Quoting Joseph Campbell, the noted author, Lacy again answered with succinctness. “You should follow your bliss.”

The students were first introduced to the medical aspects of global healthcare during two weeks of classes at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They then departed to Mumbai for a week and a half. Dr. Sonia Suchday, co-director for the Institute for Public Health at Einstein, organized all lectures and planned the entire mission.

The course requirements for the first part of the mission, both at Einstein and at IIHMR, included attendance at all lectures and debriefings as well as two research papers, the completion of which earned participants three credits in biology. Dr. Suchday put together a group of dynamic faculty members from different specialties to teach the students the breadth and depth of global health issues. The lecture series was open to undergraduate and graduate students and was designed to prepare them for what they would encounter in India.

The second part of the trip began in Mumbai where the group took a general tour with a Jewish-Indian guide named Yael and saw several historical landmarks including the Gateway of India, the Sassoon School, and the Sassoon Synagogue.

The mission spent two Shabbatot in Chabad Mumbai and visited the old Chabad Narriman House, which was attacked in the famous November 2008 assault by Pakistani Islamic terrorists. Two shlichim (messengers) from Chabad took the members of the mission on a tour inside the old Chabad House where the students saw for themselves the destruction that had captured headlines across the world.

“India is one of the few countries that hasn’t persecuted Jews within its shores,” commented Dr. Suchday. “The fact is that within India, the destroyed Chabad House was universally mourned,” she said, adding that the Hindi people showed their remorse and condemnation of the attack by circling the thousands of bullet holes in red.

After the first weekend in Mumbai the group took an hour-long plane ride to Jaipur, located in Rhajastan – one of the seven states that comprise modern India. The mission made their way to IIHMR to participate in lectures along with Indian students interested in medicine, psychology, and hospital management.

At IIHMR the group learned about different recent epidemics in India. AIDS is a major healthcare setback, but is making strides. “At the end of 2011, drugs used to cope with AIDS will be free [of cost],” promised P.R. Sodani, dean of IIHMR. “Now it’s twenty dollars a month.”

Diabetes is considered a prevalent epidemic in India as well. According to Dr. Judith Wylie Rosette, professor of epidemiology and population health at Einstein, “India is the new diabetes capital of the world.”

Research in health care shows the poor reality of the public health sector. “In India, health insurance is relatively rare when compared to most developed countries; only ten percent of the population has private coverage,” declared Dr. Komal Bajaj, a faculty member at Einstein. “This increases to approximately fifty percent when surveying upper-middle class Indians. As a result, the majority of a patient’s expenditure is still out-of-pocket.”

The group visited a community hospital with communal wards for male and female patients and no air conditioning. Doctors see between 200 to 300 patients a day and make diagnoses by methods that are not conventional Western techniques. In contrast, the private hospital the group visited in Mumbai five days later was immaculate with sterilized rooms, marble floors and air conditioning.

A health care professional in the private hospital pointed out a sign that delineated the illegality of gender selection – aborting a child based on its sex. The Indian government tries to prevent this by blacking out the gender of the baby on the amniocentesis test results. Another gender selection issue arises with vaccinations. A male child is often vaccinated before a female child when there are limited resources because of the widespread preference for males in the Indian culture. Therefore, the Indian government takes necessary precautions to ensure the equality and fair treatment of women and children.

The educators at Einstein demonstrated how the disciplines of science and psychology are both vital to the medical field. Having the appropriate decorum and understanding the culture is not just respectful, but a necessity to function properly in any profession. As Dr. Suchday constantly emphasized, “There needs to be awareness that the world is not as big as we think.”

Columbia’s defenders are quick to note that the University has also produced Republicans such as Pat Buchanan and George Pataki, and that Columbia’s faculty is no more progressive than that of peer institutions. In reality, though, Columbia’s professors are strikingly liberal: Between 2004 and the present, members of the political science faculty have made 23 donations, totaling $28,785, to Democratic candidates and committees. Over the same period, they have not made a single donation to a Republican candidate or committee.

For such a “liberal” institution, Columbia lacks the diversity of opinion that should be a basic component of any university’s atmosphere. It is Columbia, after all, that requires its undergraduates to trudge through John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”—a text that rests primarily on the argument that “the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion.” Surely it is in Columbia’s best interest to promote that variety of opinion, even if it means actively altering the criteria used to allocate University resources or select new faculty members. Think of it as ideological affirmative action.

The addition of conservative faculty would benefit Columbia students of all political stripes. Conservative professors would provide mentors for like-minded students, additional advisers for right-leaning clubs and publications, and opportunities for undergraduates to participate as research assistants in explicitly conservative scholarship. Conservative professors would also force my fellow Democrats to defend their own politics in seminars and colloquia, which in turn would either sharpen their opinions or prompt them to reconsider their own preconceived notions. Mill also argues that anyone who has considered running for elected office will benefit from “being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, [and] knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them.”

Every Columbia student is invested in the school’s reputation, and it helps no one if consensus opinion holds that Columbia merely provides a niche education designed to incubate and promote liberal thought. That view delegitimizes Columbia as an institution, and it delegitimizes me as its student. Surely we all prefer that Columbia be thought of as a world-class teaching university, a place where intelligent students gather to hone their own beliefs by exchanging ideas with peers of all opinions. We would all benefit—especially the Democrats among us—if Columbia were seen in a less partisan light. But, as it stands now, the Columbia brand is so crudely liberal that it may well blight the hopes of current students who wish to return to their conservative hometowns and run for office.

Concerted efforts toward balancing the faculty will bring enormous benefits at little cost and will not be totally unprecedented. As dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan expressed concern that the school had grown too liberal and launched a successful effort to recruit conservative faculty to Cambridge. Stanford University became affiliated with the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank that has attracted prominent Republicans such as Condoleezza Rice and Edwin Meese to Palo Alto.

In the meantime, smaller changes can be made. The political science department can offer a course on conservative political thought. More money can be funneled to conservative groups on campus. Perhaps Columbia can even create its own Hoover Institution, a unique enclave where conservative research can be promoted and protected in the heart of New York City.

Somehow, somewhere, Columbia must make an effort to combat the stifling dominance of liberal thought on this campus. It is high time for Columbia’s Democrats to follow Mill’s advice and “[seek] objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them.”

People sat on the descending stair walkways, notebooks in hand, hoping to learn about a relatively unexplored subject: modern Native American architecture.

Blue Spruce, who is Laguna/Ohkay Owingeh, spoke about coming from a native standpoint and how it affected him while he helped design the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

“To me, (indigenous) architecture is created by both native architects and non-native architects,” he told the crowd. “Those traditional architectural methodologies and forms can be the inspiration for contemporary works of architecture.”

Blue Spruce’s speech was part of a series held by the Contemporary Indigenous Architecture class. Every Monday, the class will have practicing Native American architects as guest speakers. Talks are open to the public.

“This is an area that has never seen the spotlight before,” said Eleni Bastea, who is one of three professors teaching the class. “It is a field that is very much in the beginning. I think we were able to get four books (on the subject) out of the library.”
The field is in infancy, Bastea said, so no one is exactly sure what even qualifies as Native American architecture.

“It is a discipline in the making. … One of the questions that comes up is ‘What do you include under Native American architecture?’” she said. “We agreed not to decide on that and leave it up to the students.”

Since the curriculum is still being developed, Bastea said teaching the class is unusual. Right now, the majority of classes consists of the weekly guest lecturers, who are coming from all over (two are traveling from Canada) to speak about what Native American architecture means to them.
Lynn Paxson, another instructor for the class, has been teaching on the subject for 15 years in Iowa. Paxson said Native American architecture is an important, and underappreciated, subject.

“Most of the stuff we think is new for sustainable purposes today, you can find all of those kind of things done historically in native architecture,” Paxson said.

Take the teepee, for example, she said.

“You start out in summer, and you roll the sides of the teepee up, and you get cool breeze. Gets a little cooler and you roll the sides down. Gets a little cooler you put a ring of rocks around the base,” Paxson said. “It’s an architecture that changes year-round to meet needs.”
Jayne Franck, a senior architecture student who attended Blue Spruce’s talk, but is not enrolled in the class, said the speaker had interesting viewpoints.

“I’m hoping to learn how to integrate modern materials into the New Mexico style and still preserve the history and the identity of it,” Franck said.

Even in New Mexico, where there is a significant presence of native
peoples, this is the first class on modern indigenous architecture at UNM, and one of the first in the country, Bastea said. It also might be the last time this course is offered at UNM.

“Realistically, I don’t see how we could have this kind of show every night,” Bastea said, citing budget restrictions. “But we hope to develop something.”

While the details of those disclosures aren’t yet available, Harkin’s staff said information will likely spur further hearings in the fall.

“Our goal remains the same: to ensure that students and the American taxpayer are getting what they are promised,” a Harkin spokeswoman told The Daily Iowan.

As that investigation continues, experts say the federal government’s pursuit of more regulation could have farther-reaching effects — bearing consequences even on nonprofit colleges such as the University of Iowa.

“Higher education is already experiencing problems with the public in terms of the perception of whether we are a suitable use of public dollars,” said Christopher Morphew, the head of the U. Iowa educational policy and leadership studies department. “Questions about whether the higher education institutions are preparing their graduates are questions, when brought to the forefront, that call into question some of the nonprofits as well.”

For-profit institutions only enroll around 10 percent of U.S. college students but those students receive almost a quarter of federal financial-aid dollars — more than $20 billion annually.

Additionally, Pell Grant totals at nonprofit schools have declined while for-profit colleges’ students are seeing more Pell Grant dollars.

Students at both for-profit and nonprofit schools draw federal aid from the same limited funds.
Even outside higher education, the for-profit sector’s burden might weigh on the entire economy.

For starters, 40 percent of students at for-profit schools default on their loans within 15 years of graduation, according to a report from the Chronicle of Higher Education last month.

“It’s taxpayer money going to corporations, and that’s money we’re not going to get back. There’s an economic interest that goes way beyond consumer protection,” said Alisa Hicklin Fryar, a political-science professor who studies education and public policy at the University of Oklahoma.

Fryar also points out the possible long-term implications of a federal solution for for-profit college issues.

“For the most part, higher education is governed by state bodies so the entrance of the federal government at least raises questions to what does that mean down the road,” she said in an interview last week.

Youngstown State U. senior Jeanette Iskander, who is double majoring in psychology and political science, said some of the techniques she uses help her achieve her academic goals.

“Using a planner is extremely important for me. It helps me to know when I have exams and when I have projects due so I know when to get to work,” she said. “Note cards seem to really help me. If you need to memorize material, it’s an easy way to study. Plus, actually writing out the information seems to really help me retain the subject.”

But what happens when you actually sit down to study, and there’s a computer with easy access to distractions, people texting and the ever-important Facebook?

“If it’s a more challenging class that requires my utmost attention, there can be no distractions. No TV, no cell phone and definitely no Facebook,” Iskander said. “I usually have to sit at a table in a room by myself in order to not get distracted.”

“If the material isn’t as challenging, I can sometimes listen to music while I work,” she said.

While textbooks can, at times, be a heavy burden on the pocketbook, Iskander said it’s important to read the text for each class.

“I also think it’s extremely helpful to read your text way before the exam. Don’t wait until the last minute because if you do, you may encounter material that you don’t quite understand and you might not have time to ask the professor for help,” she said.

It’s no secret that studying is important, but it’s not the only part of a student’s life that is important in order to succeed.

“I try to complete my school work as early in the day as possible so I can have time to socialize with others. However, if the work isn’t done, I don’t go out,” Iskander said.

And she’s not the only one who takes the initiative to put work before play. Emily Zehall, a sophomore dental hygiene major, agrees.

“Balancing school and recreation is usually pretty easy. When the school work is finished, rec time can come,” she said.

Fear not, school doesn’t have to be the entire life of a student.

Zehall said some activities that help keep her active outside of school are tennis, horseback riding, kayaking and spending time at Mill Creek Park and the Andrews Student Recreation and Wellness Center at YSU.

“When studying, I usually pick a quiet setting, make sure the TV is off and [make sure] that I’m not lying on my bed,” she said. “As well as taking breaks every hour or so, and go back to studying when I can.”

As Western Illinois U. has made note of in the past, concern over environmental waste has pushed the administration towards a concerted effort to save paper. Some professors have avoided a printed syllabus to pass out for the first class, instead directing students to where they can view it online.

Avoiding excessive use of paper and toner from the University’s overworked printers is an admirable agenda, but perhaps the method of conservation is a bit backwards.

It is understandable that in a time of economic uncertainty and cost-cutting that a department’s paper budget is subject to review in a world of decimals and spreadsheets. The University is not at fault for working towards solutions, however less paper handouts are not the answer.

In an academic setting students simply require paper. Whether it is books or academic journals, most students who must spend hours reading simply prefer generic paper to a headache inducting LCD screen.

This ushers in a problem that may not have a large statistical study behind it, but any student who has waited ten minutes for their pages to print can understand.

If the professor does not provide a printed copy of online material many students simply decide to do it themselves. The result often being a disgruntled academic realizing they didn’t print in the correct format and blowing through another gallon of toner by the time they rectify their mistake.

If the University is going to impose paper restrictions, perhaps they should take a look at the students before going after organized PhD-laden departments with class lists telling them how many copies they will need, as well as secretaries who understand the technology around them far better than frantic students trying to print out a ten page PowerPoint composed almost entirely of shaded pictures.

Cost awareness and environmentalism have their place, but sometimes the hidden costs of one policy do not become apparent until later.

Not to say that students do not display responsible paper use, but the faculty members are assuredly more adept at understanding precisely how many sheets of paper they will require.

After all, they are the ones who control the courses that require the paper in the first place.

Usually it’s better to give powers to a studied professional, instead of the lonely student sitting next to the printer.

Hall, who was appointed interim dean on January 1, was chosen to be the next dean by the Penn State administration, Penn State spokesman Geoff Rushton said.

A search committee was formed to conduct a national search for a new dean. But it was not successful in finding a fit for the position, Rushton said.

“Candidates who were interviewed all commented on the job that Dr. Hall had shown as interim dean,” Rushton said.

Hall said he was happy to be dean on a permanent basis, adding that he’s received “broad support” from the administration.

“I think I am pretty ready for the role,” he said. “I’m much more ready than I was eight months ago.”

Hall said he is excited to be working in the ever-changing world of technology.

“IST is a really good college, and it’s in the right place at the right time,” he said. “There’s a rapid evolution of communications technology … and social networking.”

As dean, Hall said it is his job to be a “facilitator that helps understand the needs of the students, capabilities of the faculty, and represent the college externally to parents and donors.”

Tom Bierly, Class of 2010, said Hall is actively involved with IST students. Bierly, who graduated with a degree in information sciences and technology, said Hall held feedback sessions with students each month as interim dean. Hall said he worked hard at making himself easily accessible.

From a student perspective, Bierly said it is the dean’s job to make sure students are getting the education they need.

He said Hall can help bring the college “a fresh perspective” so it can collaborate on academic initiatives at the university.

According to Martin Simpson, director of the Reading and Writing Center at U. Florida, the biggest problem is usually procrastination.

It can be an “academic killer,” he said.

The problem stems from the simple fact that college is harder than high school, he said. Students may have been able to get by with procrastinating in high school, so they don’t think they need to fix the problem.

“What used to work doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “Writing the paper the night before it’s due—maybe you got away with that in high school, but not here.”

Students need daily checklists, and they need to stay on top of their homework to be successful, Simpson said.

Part of the problem is the structural difference between high school and college. Most public high schools have students in school for more than six hours every day, amounting to more than 30 hours a week of instruction.

In college, full-time students might have 15 hours of lectures each week for 15 credit hours. They are expected to study 30 hours a week outside class, Simpson said.

Channing Mims, who graduated Aug. 8 with a degree in family, youth and community sciences, said she liked the added freedom that came with coming to college.

In high school, it’s like “having a teacher talk at you,” which is ineffective, she said. “In college, you kind of work at your own pace. You can dabble in a lot of subjects.”

Freshman, first-semester transfers and first-year graduate students make up about 80 percent of the people who use the Reading and Writing Center’s tutoring services, Simpson said.

“In college, you can go all semester long without attending class,” he said. “There isn’t going to be a truancy cop out there.”

Students might not realize they’re in academic trouble until after their first few exams and

it might take getting a “James Bond 007-type GPA” for students to realize they’re in trouble, he said.

“If you have a really lousy first semester, it takes a few semesters to get back to where you want to be,” he said.

Note-taking is also a big challenge for freshmen, he said.

In high school, students can usually get by with weak note-taking skills. But in college, it’s harder to do well without good notes.

The Reading and Writing Center’s website has videos with advice for note-taking, reading speed, memory, time management and test-taking.

Students need to set up external motivations, he said. Sometimes, scheduling weekly meetings to work on study skills can be enough.

The Teaching Center lets students sign up for weekly tutoring sessions that last 50 minutes.

“We can give you external support when you need it,” Simpson said. “Some people can pull it off with internal reinforcement of shame, guilt or wanting that grade.”

The most important thing is that students need to learn from their problems as early as possible, he said.

“It’s one of those old sayings, you only learn through pain. The sooner you deal with the problem, the less serious it’ll be,” he said.

Sounds like a class from the future, right? Wrong. This is just some of the technology that students in the U. Central Florida College of Medicine will be using this year.

The college of medicine recently debuted its state-of-the-art medical education building that features technology that no other medical school in the state of Florida has, and in one case, is the first of its kind in the U.S.

“The dean gave us the challenge to make this the most technologically advanced medical school, and we needed to do that,” said Ron Knappenberger, the assistant director of educational technology for the College of Medicine.

A release on the college’s website states that the 170,000 square-foot building located in Lake Nona cost $65 million and was constructed on time while staying within the budget.

According to Knappenberger, the building has high-tech lecture halls that have automated control systems, meaning that professors can control the audio, video and lighting in the room.

Professors can also record their presentations, which can come in handy for those students who can’t make it to class.

The main lecture hall seats more than 350 students and will be used for guest speakers and lectures by Nobel laureates and leading scientists.

The room is also equipped with high-definition video and surround sound — perfect for the “movie nights” that the dean plans on having for the students.

The Clinical Skills and Simulation Center provides real-world opportunities for students to practice their skills.

The center is equipped with computerized mannequins that students can draw blood from and use to determine heart rhythms.

According to the release, “each of the center’s 12 examination rooms has video recording and computer monitoring, so faculty members can observe and evaluate students in action.”

The microscopy lab is equipped with a 10-headed microscope that can display pictures of specimens on multiple video monitors. Students will also be working with “digitized specimens” instead of real ones.

Wendy Spirduso Sarubbi, media relations coordinator for the college of medicine explained that because some specimens are so unique, and even rare, it can be difficult to obtain large amounts of them. She said that this also keeps a consistency to what the students are seeing.

That same stride for consistency is the driving force behind the anatomy lab and the exclusive technology housed there.

The lab’s 23 32-inch flat-screen computers — 22 hang over each of the dissection tables — were specifically designed for UCF by Mitsubishi.

“I saw this technology at a trade show and the manufacturer sent me a demo – and it was bad,” said Knappenberger who has had a working relationship with Mitsubishi for several years.

He then approached Mitsubishi to see if they would be interested in designing the technology, and they gladly came on board. In fact, they changed their production schedule to accommodate UCF.

According to Knappenberger, the computers have touch screens that allow the students to look up information while performing dissection.

The professor’s terminal has a MiniMac mounted on the back, which is linked to digital cameras.

Those cameras enable the professor to record dissection and link them simultaneously to every other computer in the lab as well as to lecture halls throughout the building, so that students in other classes can watch the dissection as well.

Knappenberger said that with this technology — as is the case in the microscopy lab — students won’t have to gather around a single body during dissection.

Aside from the technology in the building, students will be using digital textbooks instead of paper-and-ink textbooks and second-year students will be given iPod Touches, which have many medical apps that the students can use to aid them in their studies.

“I think the idea is to help educate 21st century doctors, to prepare doctors for treating in this century,” Sarubbi said.

The College of Medicine also announced that members of the community will now be able to will their bodies to the college for medical students to study. The University of Miami and the University of Florida are the only other schools in Florida that people can will their bodies to.

“It’s a tremendous gift,” said Sarubbi about those who donate their bodies to science. “Dr. German says that [those who donate] are really donating the students’ first patient.”

Students attending orientation for the college of medicine have gotten to tour the tech-savvy building, and according to Sarubbi, they like what they’re seeing.

“The new students are very excited,” she said, “and the returning students are a little jealous.”

Sarubbi said that the new technology was the number one reason students chose to enroll at the college of medicine.

“The first-year students said what drove them to UCF was what the medical college had in cutting-edge, high-tech ways to learn,” she said. “We have students from California and Tennessee to New York and Florida and they all said that technology was of great importance to them.”

Georgia Tech recorded another strong showing in the 2011 U.S. News and World Report rankings for America’s Best Colleges, which were released Tuesday, Aug. 17. The Institute tied for the No. 4 ranking for engineering programs at schools that offer doctoral degrees with the California Institute of Technology. Tech also tied with U. California-San Diego for No. 7 among all public universities in the nation.

“The fact that Tech has sustained a top 10 ranking in U.S. News and World Report for more than a decade helps to give visibility to the Institute and our tradition of excellence,” said Institute President G.P. “Bud” Peterson.

Tech earned recognition in a variety of more specific categories, including high rankings for individual schools and academic programs. Seven of the Institute’s engineering schools ranked in the top five for their respective disciplines. Leading the way were the School of Industrial Engineering (No. 1 overall) and the School of Aerospace Engineering (No. 2). The Schools of Mechanical, Biomedical and Civil Engineering each earned a No. 3 ranking, while the Electrical and Environmental Engineering programs came in at No. 5.

Notably, some of Tech’s individual programs saw improvement from last year’s marks. The School of Mechanical Engineering rose one spot after coming in at No. 4 in the 2010 rankings, and the College of Management continued its steady rise; one year after jumping from No. 35 to No. 31, it rose three more spots to No. 28 in the national rankings.

Aside from individual schools of study, the Institute was acknowledged for excellence in four categories of general academic programs: internship/co-op opportunities, undergraduate research, study abroad programs and senior capstone projects.

“From a recruiting standpoint, potential students, faculty and staff who are considering a top ranked university environment look further and find out about all the opportunities available through various programs,” Peterson said.

A new feature of the report this year included a survey of high school counselors to determine which university they thought offered the best education. Tech tied with several other universities for No. 22 overall, including public institutions such as the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina and private universities such as Rice University, Emory University and the University of Southern California. Only one public school (the University of California-Berkeley) was ranked higher in the poll.

The successful showing follows a similarly strong performance by Tech’s College of Engineering in the publication’s April release of its graduate school rankings. The Institute placed in the top 10 for nine engineering fields, including a No. 1 ranking in Industrial Engineering and a No. 2 ranking for Biomedical Engineering. Three other graduate programs—Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering—placed in top five of their respective categories.

Cha-am, located in rural Thailand 185 kilometers outside of Bangkok, would remain uninvolved and unharmed from the crises lingering over the developing country.

“In reality, what the (Thai) government does really won’t affect the campus,” said communications professor Kit Jenkins, former Cha-am campus director. ”It’s the perception from the outsiders, from the news, that it’s a dangerous place to be. It’s a misconception.”

The political crises began in September 2006. Then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted from office in a cou. It would take two years for a new prime minister to take his place. Abhisit Vejjajiva took over in December 2008 and many Thai people expected him to bring the political crisis, and corruption, to an end.

In March 2010, supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin revolted against Vejjajiva in violent protests in Bangkok. The protests yielded more than 50 deaths, many of which were protesters themselves. The protesters are officially known as the Red Shirts or UDD – United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship.

Cha-am Rector and Campus Director Ratish Thakur said a constant power struggle exists within the Thai government and that the attempt of a democracy comes with a price.

“Thailand is a democracy that is evolving,” Thakur said. “They have elections. A party gets elected, comes to power, generally tries to take maximum advantage and ultimately abuses the system.”

In turn, a vicious cycle of corrupt politicians looking for wealth and power come in and out of office, ultimately ruining any chance of a legitimate democracy. Thus, anti-government protests arise.

“We’ve had demonstrations this year which were probably more violent than even Thai society expects, or even tolerates,” Thakur said. “If you look at Thailand over the last 30 years or so, political protests are normal, just not usually violent. This was the exception.”

Though violence was a factor in this year’s protests, both Thakur and Jenkins agree that the reporting done on the protests was unbalanced and an exaggerate of the truth.

“When we look deeper and we see the situation in Thailand and then compare it with what is reported on the news, there seems to be no relationship to what is really happening,” Thakur said.

But the question remains – are the country and the campus a secure place to send students looking to study abroad? Jenkins said there is a wide divide between the political going-ons and the everyday life of the Thai people. Many citizens aren’t directly affected by the politics and the protests. This includes the students who choose to study at Cha-am.

“I felt very safe at the campus from the political situation,” said Stela Moric, a senior international studies major, who spent this past spring at Cha-am. “The school sent out text messages to our cell phones regarding any bad situation. They would inform, or rather warn, us that going to Bangkok was not in our best interest.”

Thakur said the campus strictly advises students to stay away from the protests. “We don’t want students in areas near the protests,” he said. “We send out very strong information … telling them not to get involved.”

He said many Thai students aren’t really interested in getting involved with the politics and the protests anyway. ”Most of the time they stay away and avoid areas of trouble,” he said.

Unfortunately for the campus, many parents won’t send their students overseas to Thailand for fear of their childrens’ safety. Jenkins said much of the coverage on the current political crises has given students in the States a bad impression of Cha-am and all it has to offer.

“The campus is on the beach by the sea in an Asian, Buddhist culture that is so different,” Jenkins said. “Thai people have a different idea of time, a different of life. These are the things you don’t see on TV.”

Not only is Thailand culturally breath-taking, but the campus and the cost of living is relatively cheap compared to the Geneva and London campuses.

“In Thailand, you can eat for three dollars a day and eat well,” Jenkins said. Thakur said students studying abroad in Thailand will experience a culture shock of a different kind. “The food is different,” he said. “The sights, sounds and smells are different. It’s not what students expect.”

Fortunately for the campus, there are still interested students who are excited for a chance to study abroad at Cha-am. Mallory Hannecke, a junior public relations major, will be attending classes at the Thailand campus in the spring.

“I knew I wanted to go abroad and, to me, Thailand seemed like the most different and adventurous place,” she said. “If I’m going away, I want it to be somewhere really different.”

Hannecke explained that she and her parents aren’t too concerned about the current crises plaguing Thailand’s political system, especially after they spoke with a campus counselor regarding all the efforts Cha-am takes to keep their students happy and safe.

“I’m not really concerned about it,” she said. “I’ll just be more careful and pay attention to what’s going on in the news and around me. I’ll be more aware.”

To top it off, Thakur has the honor of boasting a recent appraisal mentioned through CNN about the Thailand campus.

“According to CNN, Cha-am was ranked as the safest place in Thailand,” he said.

High school students from the St. Louis area visited the campus each day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to gain hands-on experience in a radio studio. The Galaxy’s media coordinator Jim Singer created the camp to prospective students who want to work in the field of broadcasting. Singer began planning the summer program at the start of his career at The Galaxy in 2006.

“I’ve watched this station sit empty for the three years I’ve been here in the summer and always felt that something could be done,” Singer said. “I thought of high school students that have an interest in broadcasting. Most of them don’t have any outlets available to them to get their hands on anything.”

The three-day program consisted of learning the basics of broadcasting in a classroom setting and then applying the techniques in The Galaxy studio. Each student was able to practice the role of radio disc jockey by introducing songs and providing a brief history or facts about the artists of their choice.

Alexia Majors, a senior at Nerinx Hall, chose to play “Man in the Mirror” as a tribute to the late Michael Jackson during her time on the air.

“There has been a lot of time spent learning about the equipment in the studio,” Majors said. “Even the time in the classroom is interactive.”

The 13 students who enrolled in the radio camp were from a range of high schools, including Kirdwood, Nerinx and the Parkway District. The three-day program cost $100 per student, which included an on-campus lunch each day, studio access and copies of their broadcast sessions. Some of time spent in the classroom was dedicated to writing short scripts and other preparations for later studio time.

Many of the students had some interest in pursuing the world of broadcasting, whether for sports or journalism for their college career. Singer constructed the whole program from both his broadcasting knowledge and his 38 years of experience working in the field.

The Office of Admissions agreed that the Galaxy needed to be used over the summer, and helped Singer organize the radio camp.

“It introduces students out there that are interested in broadcasting to find some really good knowledge as a testing ground to see if they want to take it any further,” Singer said. “Also it introduces students that are considering college to Webster University that we have a really good program.”

A long-time friend of Singer and veteran Jim Doyle visited the radio camp on the third day to teach and share his years of experience in the classroom. Doyle has worked in broadcasting in St. Louis and internationally in Tokyo, Japan. He said he taught the students how to present themselves with confidence and to have a distinct personality on the air.

Ryan Jecha, a freshman broadcast journalism major and a graduate from Christian High School, said the Radio Camp was the ideal summer program before starting his first year at Webster.

“They taught us a lot and were really real with us and gave me a lot of information that I would of never known until I started taking media classes here,” Jecha said. “It was nice to get a jump start on aesthetics and the business side of broadcasting.”

When the program concluded, Singer suggested the students contact him over the summer if they would like more time in The Galaxy studio to practice their broadcasting skills. Singer was extremely pleased and thankful that the students of the program made the camp successful for its first year.

Tying with Boston College as the 31st best national university, the College moved past New York U. and Brandeis U., and gained ground on the 25th-ranked U. Virginia. The College retained its sixth position on the U.S. News list of public universities, while the Princeton Review and Forbes Magazine recently ranked the College as the second-highest state-supported university.

“Whether it’s U.S. News, Forbes or Princeton Review, it is always refreshing when outside publications seem to have some sense of the caliber of William & Mary,” Reveley said in a press release.

Additionally, the College ranked fifth in U.S. News’s category of universities with a strong commitment to teaching, improving upon its sixth place position last year, and placing ahead of Brown University, the U. California-Berkeley, the U. Virginia, Stanford U. and Yale U.

The category, introduced last year, values universities that balance faculty research with undergraduate instruction.

“It is especially satisfying to see our faculty’s strong commitment to undergraduate teaching affirmed by U.S. News,” Reveley said.

The College’s undergraduate business program ranking also improved, moving up from 48th to 42nd. The program was ranked 24th among public universities.

“This is a strong endorsement of the talent and efforts of our faculty, the vision of our program leadership, and the caliber of our students and graduates,” Mason School of Business Dean Lawrence B. Pulley said. “It is also gratifying that the Mason School faculty is recognized among the top five for its commitment to teaching.”

U.S. News compiles its rankings based on factors including a school’s undergraduate academic reputation, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.

Tying with Boston College as the 31st best national university, the College moved past New York U. and Brandeis U. in Massachusetts, and gained ground on the 25th-ranked U. Virginia.

U.S. News also listed the College as the sixth best publicly-supported national university. Rankings compiled by Forbes Magazine earlier in the week listed the College as the second best public university, just behind the U. Virginia.

Additionally, the College’s ranking rose in the “commitment to teaching” category, climbing one spot to fifth. The category, which was created last year, seeks to recognize universities that balance faculty research with undergraduate instruction. With its ranking, the College beat out other highly-ranked national universities, including Brown U., the U. Virginia and Yale U.

The College also ranked highly in more specific categories, including 12th for “happiest students,” eighth in both “professors get high marks” and “best college libraries,” and a green rating of 93.

Princeton had been ranked as the top college in the United States for nine out of the last 10 years. Yale is third on this year’s list, followed by Columbia, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Princeton also fell to second place in the 2008 rankings after eight consecutive years of at least sharing the top spot. That year, Princeton was also ranked behind Harvard, which now holds first place by itself for the second time in three years. In recent history, Princeton and Harvard have often shared the top ranking, and Harvard dropped to second place in the 2006 rankings. Williams College sits alone atop U.S. News’s ranking of liberal arts colleges.

The 27th annual U.S. News rankings, which are set to be released officially on Aug. 17, come less than a week after Forbes magazine released its third annual college rankings. Princeton, which was ranked first in Forbes’s inaugural rankings in 2008, took second place behind Williams this year, while Harvard took eighth.

Both U.S. News and Forbes consider graduation rates in formulating their rankings. U.S. News also considers criteria such as class size, average SAT scores and alumni giving rates. Forbes accounts for how many alumni are listed in the 2008 “Who’s Who in America” register, results from ratemyprofessors.com and national award rates for students and faculty. This year, U.S. News also instituted several changes in its ranking methodology, incorporating ratings by high school counselors and placing a greater emphasis on graduation rate.

Colleges across the country, including Princeton, have often criticized the U.S. News survey, charging that no ranking can do justice to a school’s individual characteristics. Several schools have refused to participate in the survey in recent years, though Princeton has not been among them.

Anthony, senior, Management Information Systems major, is the recipient of a prestigious minority scholarship.

The Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award was given to the U. Missouri-St. Louis Tennis player in recognition of his cumulative 3.483 grade point average, according to the Tritons athletic website.

“It truly is an honor to be a recipient of this award,” Anthony said. “My parents are very proud of me.”

Lori Flanagan, UM-St. Louis Athletic Director, also shared much of the same sentiment as Anthony. “He is a real good kid who works just as hard as most of our student-athletes,” Flanagan said.

The scholarship was first established in 1992 to help minority students who exemplify the character of late tennis great Arthur Ashe who passed away in 1995. Anthony, who was one of 23 recipients of the award, was given the award for his tennis performance, grade point average, and his effort in the community, both at UM-St. Louis and elsewhere, according to the Tritons athletics website.

The senior UM-St. Louis tennis player accomplished more than excelling in the classroom last year. According to UM-St. Louis statistics, Anthony had a combined winning percentage of 87%, winning 27 of the 31 matches he played, both singles and doubles.

“We had a really good core group of players last season and my usual partner performed very well,” Anthony said. Andreas Hammar, sophomore, undecided, was not available for comment.  But from the UM-St. Louis and Great Lakes Valley Conference statistics, it is easy to notice that Anthony and Hammar, who hails from Sweden, were an almost perfect match partners.

UM-St. Louis men’s tennis qualified for the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament last season, but was ousted in the first round of play. Despite the early exit, Anthony said he and his Triton teammates hoped to put on a better show and perform better next Tennis season.

“My teammates help me and everyone else out a lot. If it weren’t for them there would obviously be no team,” Anthony said.

Tritons men’s tennis will look to replace some key senior players as well. Anthony, who is one of many returning men’s players, hopes to expound on his high winning percentage next season.  During his UM-St. Louis career, Anthony has been named Academic All GLVC several times and has amassed over 60 wins.

Coach Rick Gyllenborg, UM-St. Louis Head Men’s Tennis coach, was not available for comment. However, last season, Gyllenborg often mentioned that Anthony was one of the leaders of the UM-St. Louis tennis team.

The 2009-10 theme for BYU and Education Week is “Teach one another words of wisdom.”

Approximately 20,000 participants will come to campus, said Bruce Payne, Education Week program administrator, and with so many people, they will certainly learn from each other as well as the teachers.

“One of the tremendous benefits of Education Week is having a great campus, where experts talk and people continue their education,” Payne said.

Classes are available to meet the needs of those present. People will come from all over the world to attend classes and pursue their interests in education.

According to Neil Carlile, assistant to the dean of continuing education, some people come to Education Week looking for recourses to help them deal with personal challenges.

With classes on just about every topic from dance, to human relations, to marriage and family living, Education Week is a good place to find answers to specific questions.

“[Others] come for the pure joy of learning,” Carlile said. “We think there is literally something for everyone.”

With such a wide variety of classes and a diverse group of learners, Education Week provides a great atmosphere to learn about almost anything. Participants can sign up for exactly what they want and take the class with people sharing the same interests.

“People come and they’re getting what they’re looking for,” Payne said.

Sometimes Education Week is held after local schools already begin their school year, which inhibits youth from participating. This year, there is no conflict in scheduling and Payne said he hopes many youth come and attend.

Julianne Long, a BYU junior majoring in linguistics, said she attended Education Week during after-school hours when she was 14 years old.

Long said her favorite class was a lecture series on Islam from an LDS perspective, which she found to be interesting and insightful.

Participants can register early or at the door.

Payne said the presenters are always qualified and prepared.

Education Week often has well-known presenters and participants will be privileged to hear from Susan Easton Black, Sheri Dew and John Bytheway this year, to name a few.

Long said the popular lectures are usually crowded and it may be hard to find a seat. But finding a seat isn’t all that matters to some participants who come.

Payne said Education Week connects people to campus; people graduate and come back to have a great experience with their fond memories of attending BYU.

Education Week offers classes almost any time of day, Monday through Friday.

In addition to lectures, the Devotional is always something to look forward to, Payne said, and will be by Elder Steven E. Snow.

“To The Rescue: The Biography of Thomas S. Monson” will be an inspiration to all ages as they read about the life of the living prophet.

“For years now, and particularly since he became President of the Church, President Monson has had many people suggest to him that he publish his biography,” said Cory Maxwell, director of publishing at Deseret Book.

There are many reasons a Brigham Young U. student should read the biography of a living prophet, Maxwell said.

“Everyone, no matter the age, would benefit to learn how to follow President Monson’s example to minister to the one,” he said. “His lifetime of service is remarkable. President Monson was called as a bishop at age 22 … supervising other leaders who were older than he was at the time. It’s interesting for each of us to consider how we would have fared if we’d been asked to take on that kind of responsibility at that age.  It’s helped me realize that service has less to do with age than with who we are and what we are willing to contribute.”

The process, Maxwell said, was a long one. Once President Monson decided to publish his story, he asked Heidi Swinton to write the book. Swinton is an award-winning author and screenwriter who penned PBS documentaries such as “America’s Prophet.”

President and CEO of Deseret Book, Sheri Dew, shared her excitement about the book at the annual LDS Booksellers Association conference last week.

“For more than 140 years, Deseret Book has published many extraordinary books, but few things rise to the level of the biography of a prophet, particularly a living prophet,” Dew said. “We are honored to publish this biography at this time, the story of a remarkable man, and the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

For more than two years, Swinton met with President Monson, gathering stories and researching. She spent countless hours organizing, writing, revising, and polishing the manuscript.

The book will go on sale Sept. 27.

Noel Hyde and Karla Staheli received their law degrees from BYU, while the other three being reviewed for judge positions obtained their legal education from other institutions, including the University of Utah.

Sen. Scott Jenkins, chair of the Senate Confirmation Committee, has requested to hear public comment on the five potential judges which have been recently nominated.

These, in conjunction with any public comment submitted, will be considered by the review committee at a meeting at the State Capitol on Aug. 20.

Sen. Jenkins said the process of getting public input is a common procedure.

“We always do it. It is a procedure we go through all the time,” he said. “We try to learn and look at their background. We want everyone to have an input in the selection of these judges.”

Hyde graduated from BYU Magma Cum Laude in 1979 and received his Juris Doctor degree three years later from the J. Reuben Clark Law School. He speaks Portuguese and specializes in domestic litigation, bankruptcy and commercial litigation.

Hyde commented on the rigorous process of selection for judge of the Second District Court, for which he is being considered.

“It is thorough and quite fascinating,” Hyde said. “It requires not only the appointment by the Utah governor, but it must also be reviewed and approved by the Senate. The selection process is valuable and important.”

The candidates will meet with the committee mid-September as part of the selective process.

“I have respect for the legislative process in its entirety,” he said. “I look forward to working with the senate and the governor’s office.”

Staheli was president of the Women’s Law forum while attending the J. Reuben Clark Law School and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Utah. Her appointment is for judge of the Fifth District Juvenile Court.

Sen. Jenkins said when the openings become public, applications come in, then a finding committee does background checks and provides a list of names to the governor for approval. The Senate Confirmation Committee then confirms one single name which the governor has submitted.

More than 100 people gathered at the UAF Large Animal Research Station (LARS) on Saturday, August 7, to honor the life of Follman, who died July 26 following a heart attack.  As more and more people arrived, the picnic tables filled up with potluck food, the barbecue was grilling away, and the beer tent handed out free cups of Silver Gulch beer to the 21-and-older crowd.  Each cup of beer had a “The Far Side” comic strip pasted on the side.  Follman loved that comic, and would often incorporate it into his lectures, according to Jon Dehn, a UAF research associate professor and friend of Follman’s.  Jon Dehn’s wife, Lara, earned her doctorate under the guidance of Follman and now works in UAF’s School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences department.

“He was the best of us,” Lara Dehn said, tearing up a little.  A person would have an easier time butting heads with one of the nearby musk oxen than finding somebody who disagreed with that statement.  Ramona Scriber, who originally met Follman 12 years ago at the state virology lab, described him as a, “good man.  Quiet man.  It was a big loss.”  Tom Paragi, who works for the Department of Fish and Game, met Follman 25 years ago and credited him with working hard to get his students involved with the Alaska chapter of the Wildlife Society.  Don Ritter worked with Follman at the Institute of Arctic Biology (IAB) and called his relationship with Follman “purely honest.”  Don Hartbauer, also with IAB, described Follman as, “a special guy.  Good researcher.”

The tables that weren’t laden with picnic fare held photographs: Follman as a young boy sitting on Santa’s lap, Follman as a high school student, Follman throughout his career as a wildlife biologist.  A blown-up photo of Follman holding a whale ovary and smiling perfectly summed up the man.  Torsten Bentzen was one of Follman’s graduate students.  Unaware that the event was providing free, catered beer, Bentzen had brought a case to the memorial.  Bentzen was circumspect though.

“Erich wouldn’t want there to be a shortage of beer,” Bentzen said. Bentzen described a time at a San Diego convention when Follman was unable to order a beer at a restaurant because of a recent surgery.  When Bentzen ordered a beer, Follman joked that Bentzen had “passed the test.”

Follman’s research passion was the arctic fox, but he also worked extensively with marine mammals, including polar bears and whales.  As a professor and academic adviser, Follman dedicated himself to his students.  Craig George graduated with his Ph.D last winter, and Follman awarded him his degree in May. George said that what set Follman apart was dedication.

“There’s no way in hell I would’ve finished [my doctorate] with any other advisor,” George said.  Others at the memorial echoed that sentiment, saying that Follman cared deeply for his students and encouraged them to live balanced lives.

This fall, U. Texas students can get paid for getting good grades.

New York web-based company Ultrinsic will offer “incentives” to students who meet their academic goals in the semester. Ultrinsic enables students to bid on the grade they will attempt to achieve during the semester.

“This will push you along, knowing that if you study an extra half hour you might get another $1,000 or $2,500 [for the school year], you know you’ll put in the extra time,” company spokesman Elliot Schimel said.

The program debuted in September at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University and will be available at 35 other schools, including UT this fall semester.

Students send the company an official transcript from their last semester in school, and Ultrinsic calculates what an improved grade from the previous semester should be.

“[We] analyze their past grades and their GPA, and based on their GPA, we do an analysis on what their expected grade is,” said Jeremy Gelbart, president and founder of Ultrinsic.

The student can choose to place a bid on whether they will achieve the goal, and the company supplements half of the bid.

However, according to Austin attorney Buck Wood of Ray, Wood & Bonilla LLP, the program could have some legal issues.

“This has almost certainly got problems,” he said. “None of [the information] says anywhere how they’re going to handle your money.”

Wood added that the program would not violate Texas Gambling Law because it is not based entirely on chance but on probability and odds. It could, however, present problems if the company cannot show proof of a governmental agency ensuring that its calculations of the “odds” of getting a particular grade are done properly.

Although the program will be available to a number of other schools this semester, the company has to be selective about who can join.

“They can’t open it up to everyone because they just don’t have the bandwidth yet,” Schimel said. “They’re hoping it will become available to all colleges, similar to how Facebook started college by college.”

Gelbart said the inspiration to start the company came from an afternoon in college when he had an exam and was not feeling motivated enough to study.

His friend said he would bet $100 that Gelbart would be unsuccessful in the exam, which encouraged him to study.

“We realized that if you put money on the line, it might encourage you to study,” he said.

Some student leaders see the program as putting a price on academic performance, which devalues it.

“It almost seems to me to cheapen the idea of an undergraduate education,” said Chelsea Adler, president of the Senate of College Councils.

The program was created to encourage students who would otherwise not try to improve their grades to excel, but it is not limited to students with lower GPAs or a lack of motivation.

“If you’re already an A student, you can bet for an A or an A+,” Gelbart said.

He added that students who are already highly motivated can also bid on grades for the entire semester, instead of just one class.

The rating is given by the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index, a benchmarking tool which helps schools to better understand policies, programs and practices that impact the quality of life for LGBT students and allies on campus.

The eight different factors that schools are scored on include LGBT policy inclusion, support and institutional commitment, academic life, student life, housing and residence life, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment and retention efforts.

An LGBT administrator is responsible for answering 50 questions that address the resources that a good quality LGBT program should have. Schools participating in the benchmark tool update their answers annually.

“The rising number of campuses across the nation willing to stand up and speak out for the LGBT students is a testament to the growing recognition that educational environments should be safe and inclusive to all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Shane Windmeyer, the creator of the Campus Climate Index, in a previous press release.

According to Steven Leider, director for the Office of LGBT Outreach and Services, this is the third year that OSU has received the highest rating from the Campus Climate Index.

“The biggest reason OSU has received such strong ratings is because of the activism of LGBT students on campus,” Leider said. “OSU is a very student-driven campus, and the LGBT community is very student-driven as well.”

Many were not shocked to find out about the university’s high ranking for LGBT inclusiveness.

“OSU already had a pretty good ranking, so I wasn’t very surprised,” said Cara Ashworth, a senior in health promotion and the external coordinator for the Pride Center. “However, it’s nice to know that OSU is doing a good job.”

Leider also added that although OSU received a five-star rating overall, the lowest score the university received in the benchmark was in the area of academics. This was mainly due to the fact that OSU lacks an LGBT studies program or minor.

Despite wanting to include LGBT studies as a concentration area for students, Leider says that it is not in the works at this time because an entire curriculum would have to be built from scratch and, currently, OSU does not have the capacity to support a multi-disciplinary program such as that.

However, Leider is looking to integrate an LGBT mentoring program for engineering and science students, as well as for general LGBT students through the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals.

Leider says the program would help to reach LGBT students so they don’t compartmentalize their area of study and sexuality, but rather integrate the two and are more involved within the LGBT community.

OSU has a long history of various support systems for LGBT students.

The Pride Center, formerly known as the Queer Resource Center, was opened in 2001 and housed inside of the Women’s Center. On Oct 1, 2004, which is also National Coming Out Day, the Pride Center was unveiled at its current location on Southwest A Street.

Other LGBT support groups include the Rainbow Continuum, the ASOSU Queer Affairs task force, the LGBT Multicultural Support Network and on-campus gender- inclusive living facilities, located in Halsell Hall. For more information about the LGBT resources at OSU, please visit http://oregonstate.edu/lgbtqqia/.

During the week, more than 2,000 conference participants attended more than 100 presentations, Penn State Outreach Conference Planner Katie Friedman said.

“The aim is to get the latest evidence-based information to educators, providers and families so that those people can effectively educate their students and children,” Friedman said.

Presentations on the spectrum of autism disorders were introduced from 9 a.m. until 4:15 p.m. with exhibits on display throughout the day. Presenters were selected by the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN). Topics ranged from girls growing up with autism to sex education for autistic children, Friedman said.

Dr. Janet Graetz, assistant professor of human development and child studies at Oakland University in Michigan, presented a session on her study that followed 19 college students with Asperger’s syndrome.

Graetz found that students living with Asperger’s exercised less, had high anxiety levels and failed to take advantage of campus disability resources as the school year went on. She stressed the importance of teaching independence in high school to students with disorders like Asperger’s syndrome.

“Students in high school must be taught self-advocacy,” Graetz said. “The best thing you can do for your student who is younger is to teach them about self-advocacy.”

Graetz said she enjoyed learning about what Pennsylvania schools are doing to improve the educational experiences of students with autism.

This year’s keynote speakers were both autistic, Friedman said.

The opening speaker, Brian Adams, discovered he was autistic when his son was diagnosed with the same disease. The closing speaker, Deborah Lipsky, delivered a humorous speech intended to motivate with her stories from her life, Friedman said.

Sessions offered could be used for four types of continuing education credit. Participants paid a fee to earn these credits from the Penn State College of Education, Friedman said, and people interested in gaining credit from a distance were able to do so online.

The Penn Stater offered Children’s Institute daycare services to about 100 children attending the conference, both autistic and not. A play was performed by the older children for the younger ones on Thursday, Friedman said.

Some speakers were taped for live webcasts from the Penn Stater. Viewers had to pay a fee to receive credit for watching, but the webcasts are free for others. Some school districts played the videos for staff members for continuing education credit, Friedman said.

“If people can watch [the webcasts] at home in their pajamas, then great,” Friedman said.

The plan — which is set to be fully in place by 2013 — is “something that needs to be done to keep a higher education institution on track,” Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said.

Mountz listed several of the plan’s goals, including: enhancing student success; realizing Penn State’s potential as a global university; enhancing diversity; serving the people of the commonwealth; and using technology to expand opportunities.

The plan’s goals are listed in a complex implementation matrix, which helps keep track of the plan’s progress, Mountz said.

Pennsylvania State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre, said he supports the plan, even though Penn State will have to spend more money during the economic recession. Corman said Penn State is being fiscally responsible by planning for the long-term.

“Any entity should be doing long-range planning,” Corman said. “If it’s not costly and still effective, more power to them.”

The aspects of the plan that require money are funded by private donations, Mountz said.

Each strategy has a specific implementation plan with a name attached to label responsibility for that part, Mountz said.

“We have accountability and we have actionable items and a timetable for when things need to be started,” she said.

One goal of the plan is to reduce costs of Penn State’s health care benefits. Penn State is currently self-insured, she said.

Penn State currently spends more than $180 million on health care benefits annually, Mountz said.

“We’ve cut the fat out of the budget, were into the bone,” she said.

Another goal of the plan is to reshape the scheduling format to maximize the use of facilities, according to a Penn State Live press release.

This strategic plan will not create financial pressure on students, Mountz said. The plan will mostly work with what the university already has rather than spend money on more, she said.

The new Knowledge Commons in the Pattee Library, funded by private donations, will provide new technological resources to students, Mountz said.

Despite other immediate issues the university faces, including a housing shortage and conflict over the West Campus Steam Plant, Mountz said the strategic plan is just as important as any other issue.

The 2010 fiscal year has garnered $450.6 million toward research, a nearly $100 million increase from 2009’s funding—$82 million is directly from the 2009 stimulus package. Along with additional growth from other grants, 2010’s research funding is the largest the U’s ever had.

It’s a testament to the good faculty here who apply for grants, said Brent Brown, director of Sponsored Projects.

“Our faculty is submitting more and more proposals for grants,” said Thomas Parks, vice president of research. “The environment for getting grants is competitive.”

Even without the stimulus, baseline funding has gone up like it has in past years, with the increase of the U’s research notoriety.

One of the projects is an expansion to the Eyring Chemistry Building, an expansion that has needed funding for almost three years.

Another is a project by the Utah Educational Network, which will use fiber optics to connect the U to other higher-learning institutions. The aim is to share resources with other schools and instructors.

Other projects made possible by federal funding include an expansion of the College of Humanities’ Asia Center made possible by a grant from the Department of Education. The expansion will add on to the center to include more language courses, new faculty, research and most prominently, scholarships, said Remi Barron, U spokesman.

The grant is one of 125 across the nation from the Department of Education to create and strengthen National Resource Centers for foreign languages. The $4.5 million grant will mostly go toward scholarships for students majoring in an Asian language.

Besides these avenues, the stimulus money will be going toward more than 200 different projects, Brown said.

However, the increase of stimulus money this year will be the peak, Parks said.
Although the U will receive some next year, the overall total of stimulus funding received will drop.

The closing of Dana College has left many college students in the dark and numerous faculty members out of a job.

“We’ve had companies who located here because of our college,” Mayor Jim Realph said.

It was determined that the college would be closing after the HLC, Dana’s accrediting body, decided that it would not reaccredit the college. Earlier in the year, Dana had plans to be bought out by an out-of-state investment company. This move would have transitioned Dana from a non-profit college to a for-profit one.

The HLC didn’t support this change and denied reaccreditation, motioning that the outside investment group did not have the experience, outlook and principles needed to run Dana. It was feared the corporation and Dana would no longer be able to maintain Dana’s original mission as a non-profit Lutheran college.

The closing of Dana left over 500 students without a place to go, many of whom had loans and scholarships through Dana. However, other universities in the area reached out to help, including Grandview, Midland Lutheran College and the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

UNO has made some specific concessions of its own to help transfer students from Dana to UNO.

Director of new student enrollment services, David Cicotello, said all Dana transfer students who apply to UNO will have their application fee waived. He also said UNO is honoring the equivalent of Pell grant and/or student loan awards received by Dana students.

Furthermore, UNO is offering the Maverick advantage and UNO advantage programs on a case-by-case basis. Both of these programs work to reduce the cost of tuition for non-resident Dana students. A page has even been set up on UNO’s website for Dana transfer students at unomaha.edu/dana/.

While the closing of Dana College has been tough for many, there have also been a large number of people willing to help. Some good things have come from this tragic event.

For example, with the closing of Dana College, UNO has received Dana’s bird collection. This collection will aid UNO’s biology department and provide new instruments for teaching in the classroom.

“Dana’s bird collection will be used in our animal biology courses,” said William Tapprich, chair of the biology department.

Tapprich went on to say that the birds will be incorporated into teaching and will specifically aid students learning about the anatomy and physiology of animals. He also said the birds will become a part of the biology department’s collection in the animal museum in Allwine Hall.

Dana College was a home to many students and faculty. The closing of the college was a definite shock. Earlier this past year, a large part of the student body thought that Dana would see improvements, as the outside company buying the non-profit college promised.

A lot has changed as a result of Dana closing. Families have moved and faculty is now unemployed. But an outpouring of assistance from universities around Nebraska and Iowa has helped to house those left out by Dana.

Researchers at Saginaw Valley State U. in Michigan studied the grades and exercise habits of 266 undergraduates, and found that students who participated in regular physical activity had higher grade point averages.

This makes sense to Dan Carey, assistant professor of health and human performance at St. Thomas U. He said that this has not only been proven in college students, but also with younger children.

“I think people who exercise are more driven to succeed in a lot of ways, so I am not surprised they do better academically,” he said in an email. “In public schools, it has been shown that allowing students to a recess period improves their grades.”

This study, presented in June to the American College of Sports Medicine, found that students who exercise seven days a week had higher GPA’s that were, on average, 0.4 points higher than those students who did not exercise.

St. Thomas senior Jack Dowd said he believes this study.

“I see a difference in the way I study,” Dowd said. “When I study, working out kind of puts me on a schedule, which helps a lot.”

There are many benefits of aerobic activity, which will benefit students, Carey said. These benefits include reduced stress, a sense of control and accomplishment, and better circulation of “feel-good hormones.”

And Dowd said the commitment helps him throughout his life.

“It is so easy to make a promise to someone else and keep it, but for some reason, it is so much harder to make a promise to yourself and keep it,” he said. “Once you promise yourself that you are going to work out regularly, it helps when you make a promise to yourself that you are going to study.”

In the last few weeks, the 4,500 college graduates who entered Teach For America after graduation have finished their intensive five-week teacher training crash course. Training for this year’s TFA corps, which includes 20 members of the Dartmouth class of 2010, coincided with the release of a new study which found that in their first two years, TFA-trained teachers do “significantly less well” in raising reading and math test scores than beginning teachers with traditional teaching certifications. The finding adds fuel to an already heated debate about whether TFA actually benefits underprivileged students.

Despite the controversy surrounding TFA’s effectiveness, however, this year’s applicant pool was the largest in the program’s history, with 46,000 graduates and young professionals vying for positions. These numbers raise the question — why are so many students from elite universities interested in a program that has thus far failed to prove itself in quantifiable terms? The less cynical among us might argue that it speaks to the sense of civic duty and global citizenship that liberal arts institutions instill in their students.

Unfortunately, for those of us who have spent our lives competing to be at the top (and there are few Dartmouth students who don’t belong in this category) the cynic’s answer is more credible — TFA’s miniscule acceptance rate and the resulting prestige that comes with an acceptance give top students a reason to pursue work in a field they would otherwise consider beneath them. TFA has taken advantage of competitive students’ thirst for recognition and esteem to attract new talent to underserved school districts. While their motives are admirable, potential applicants should question the outcomes of this approach.

Policymakers and academics have argued for a long time that the key to a thriving public sector is to transform public service into an occupation that attracts the nation’s best and brightest. TFA, which competes with the private sector for America’s top graduates, has thus succeeded where many efforts have failed — after Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, TFA was the biggest employer of Dartmouth’s Class of 2008.

Unfortunately, this success is short-lived. TFA only requires its participants to commit to two years of service in disadvantaged communities, and only 50 percent of TFA teachers sign on for longer tenures at the end of this period. After three years, 80 percent have left the classroom.

This is not surprising when most participants see teaching as a stepping stone for their future careers, rather than an ultimate goal. TFA might confer status on its participants during their two-year commitment, but its cachet does not last forever. As the TFA badge of distinction fades, so too does participants’ commitment to teaching. Ultimately, the program fails to make a lifetime teaching career prestigious in the eyes of elite graduates.

The short-term incentives of the program are highly problematic for school districts who employ TFA-trained teachers. The recent study, “Teach For America: A Review of the Evidence,” finds that the high turnover rate among TFA teachers requires school districts to expend extra resources on constant recruiting and training. Experience is also a factor in teaching outcomes; while experienced TFA teachers do as well, or slightly better, than traditional teachers, inexperienced TFA teachers simply do not compare to the experienced teachers they are replacing.

Mandating a five-year commitment rather than the current two years could give TFA teachers time to grow into their positions, but a more sustainable solution would be to cultivate a teaching corps that is both talented and willing to make a long-term commitment to education. Emphasizing longevity might decrease TFA’s applicant pool, but it would also increase the program’s impact by allowing it to focusing 100 percent of its resources on the 20 percent who remain in teaching after three years.

In the meantime, these findings should give potential TFA applicants pause. For the last several years, TFA has dominated the not-for-profit sector in terms of recruitment and name recognition, resulting in driven individuals flocking to the program in large numbers. The rarity of a TFA acceptance appears to have distracted applicants from asking hard questions about whether the program is truly a worthwhile outlet for their time and energy. Unless and until the TFA model proves itself, its large applicant pool speaks more to this generation’s need for status and prestige than to any laudable sense of civic duty.

Greeted by a roaring crowd of 3,500 in Gregory Gymnasium at U. Texas, President Barack Obama challenged the United States to regain its global leadership in graduating students from college.

In an address that lasted more than 25 minutes, Obama also called on UT and other public universities to do more to control the spiraling cost of college tuition. An average of 40 percent of American students receive a college degree. Meeting the president’s goal would require that 60 percent of students obtain a degree.

“The single most important thing we can do is make sure that we have a world-class education system for everyone,” Obama said. “It’s a prerequisite for prosperity.”

Noting that the average debt burden carried by students has increased by 25 percent in the past decade, he called on colleges nationwide to reduce expenses without reducing educational opportunities.

“No one is denied a chance at their dreams because they can’t afford it,” Obama said. “We are a better country than that.”

Obama spoke about administration efforts that he said were lowering the cost of education and how federalizing student loan programs would save the government $60 billion in subsidies to banks, savings he said would be passed onto college students in the form of lower interest rates and improved investments in community colleges.

“This