An interesting piece in the news: The University of Southern Maine has banned 462 students who didn’t get up to date mumps shots. The students can remain in college housing apparently, but they are forbidden from coming to class. The measure was taken to avoid an outbreak of mumps on campus. In the state of Maine, authorities believe that 35 people have the mumps, including one university student.
So get your vaccinations. It’s serious business.

European universities have been going through severe crises in the past years. Unlike America where the best schools are private, most European countries have maintained government control over their top schools, if not all higher education institutions.
In France, home of Le Sorbonne, widely regarded as one of the best universities in the world, many have complained that too much government control has led to stagnation and lack of innovation. A law was recently proposed to allow universities to raise funds from private sources with more freedom. This would allow French …Continue

Right now as Congress is working on amendments to the 1965 Higher Education Act, the big issue on the table is tuition. The bill under debate would among other things create a “watch list” of universities that increase their tuition by more than 6%. Some analysts note that this list may likely punish less well-endowed universities i.e. those that increase tuition drastically because they need the money. Universities like Harvard or Princeton who have high tuition and little need for income also tend not to increase tuition by more than …Continue

An interesting development is being considered at the University of Surrey, UK. As universities deal with problems of internationalizing and trying to prepare their students for an international world, Surrey is looking at an innovative program which would allow students to, for example:
Surrey students, from anywhere in the world, will be able to choose where they study in each year of their course. For example, a student may be able to spend the first year studying in the USA, second in China, third in industry and final year in Guildford …Continue

The Modern Language Association has released a survey on Enrollments in Languages Other than English in US universities.
The last time this survey was done was in 2002. Spanish is by far the most common languages of study, and the number of students enrolled in Spanish classes is still increasing. French and German are also extremely popular, probably because they are traditional international languages and because much scholarship is published in both.
American Sign Language is the fourth most popular, with Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Latin, Russian and Arabic rounding out the top …Continue

A professor at Brandeis University, where I got my masters degree in 2005, is accused of using a slur against Mexican Americans. According to students in his class, Professor Hindley in the politics department, used the term ‘wetback’ which insultingly refers to illegal immigrants to the US from Mexico (i.e. having snuck over by swimming across the Rio Grande River, they have wet backs). The professor, in an interview with the Brandeis student newspaper The Justice said that his use of the term was appropriate and in the context of …Continue

I somehow missed the scandal over the new US News rankings which came out in August of this year. My views on these rankings have been made pretty clear.
First of all participation in the survey they send college and university administrators is falling to 51% return rate from 58% last year. And even 58% is pretty low, indicating that many people do not consider the rankings to be a high priority. The reputation survey asks university presidents, deans, and admissions officials to rank other universities based on their reputation. It …Continue

Just a couple of quick news stories. Students and alumni at Peking University are protesting the destruction of the Democracy Wall, a wall used as a bulletin board and meeting place for political gatherings and protesters.
And the new edition of the Academic Handbook came out and Inside Higher Ed has an interview with A. Leigh Deneef, co-writer and a professor of English and former associate dean of the Graduate School. The interview focuses on changes in Academia and is probably more interesting to faculty than students.

Another fun article! According to the Chronicle of Higher Education a University of New Hampshire professor has been acquited of charges of stalking and disorderly conduct after allegedly assailing a university administrator because of a parking ticket!
John Collins, department chair of biochemistry and molecular biology, recieved a parking ticket this summer and blamed an intermin dean. Witnesses claim he threatened to kill the dean. That got him banned from campus and stripped of his title of department chair. Although the courts found him innocent, the campus has not reinstated him …Continue

The ETS TOEFL newsletter popped in my inbox today, and there was a short article that I thought might be of interest to some students on Applying to MBA programs. It’s just some common sense advice but for foreign students where the process is so different, it’s worth listening to. For example in Kazakhstan, starting to look for schools a year ahead of time is not common but in the US it is. Which means that admissions officials assume you have been thinking about business school (or university or another …Continue

If there’s a sign of the times in college admissions, it may be this: Steven Roy Goodman, an independent college counselor, tells clients to make a small mistake somewhere in their application on purpose.
“Sometimes it’s a typo,” he says. “I don’t want my students to sound like robots. It’s pretty easy to fall into that trap of trying to do everything perfectly and there’s no spark left.”
This advice to deliberately make a mistake in your application comes from a story on ABC News, Colleges Seek ‘Authenticity’ in Hopefuls. Controversial advice, …Continue

Just a couple of funny news items that caught my eye from the Chronicle of Higher Education news feed.

First off, How Not to Sell Marijuana. Namely, do not shout out your window, “If you’re looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale.” That might attract the attention of nearby policemen who might then search your room and arrest you. You might get kicked out of school as well for that.

Or your wardrobe may get you in trouble. As the busy holiday travel season begins, take a look at …Continue

A new project by ETS, the makers of the TOEFL, GRE, and SAT exams, will attempt to measure candidates for graduate school in a more accurate way, by standardizing measures of subjective merit.
One of the biggest problems graduate programs face is just that: getting the ultimately subjective information they need about a candidate’s personality, academic qualifications and ability to study in a way that is easy to evaluate. The GRE test is one measure of academic ability and skill but that is only part of what a graduate program needs …Continue

Inside Higher Ed is reporting on a settlement in the SAT Errors suit. On the October 2005 test, a number of test takers claimed that their test scores were incorrect, and filed a class-action suit against ETS, the creator of the SAT and other standardized tests like the TOEFL, GRE, MCAT and GMAT as well as NCS Pearson, which scores the SAT.
Last week, the lawyers representing around 4 400 test-takers and ETS and Pearson settled and the test centers have agreed to pay 285 million dollars. The victims can either …Continue

According to a report by the Kauffman Foundation, restrictions on visas may cause a reverse brain-drain. American research benefits from foreign researches invite to work in the US. According to the report, in 2006, foreign residents of the US were named as inventors or co-inventors on 25% of applications for international patent applications coming from the United States. And patent applications filed by some major corporations such as GE and Merck, even the government itself, showed a much higher percentage. Nevertheless, there are only 120 000 permanent resident visas available …Continue