Universities Weblog

If your team wins a championship, watch out. You might get caught in a riot.

As this Reuters article shows, rioting on college campuses has become commonplace. These sudden bursts of madness and mayhem usually follow sporting events. When the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl earlier this month, college students took to the streets of Boston. They overturned cars, lit fires and smashed windows. One person was killed. Imagine if the Pats had lost.

Some students get caught, and pay the price. The article cites one student who, after throwing an egg, was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and put on academic probation. Now the egg's on his face.

As one observer says, perhaps it's time to return to the days of swallowing goldfish.

It's the old bait and switch. Top colleges attract students partly by promising classes with big-name professors. Once enrolled, though, students often find that instructors are graduate students or adjunct faculty who teach at several schools. Either way, students are duped.

As the Christian Science Monitor points out, the use of part-time faculty has become widespread. The good news is that most of these instructors focus primarily on teaching, not research, so classes can be more engaging. The bad news is that part-time faculty hop from one gig to the next, so they typically aren't available to address student concerns.

Does educational quality suffer? Most experts say yes, but I bet most students can't tell the difference. The real losers are the adjunct faculty, who teach part-time because full-time, tenure-track jobs have become scarce. They work for low wages and have little job security. They're academic gypsies hoping to land something permanent. And colleges, looking to save money, want to keep it that way, regardless of how students feel.

Every now and then I hear someone refer to a reputable institution as an "Ivy League college," as if the term simply denotes high quality. In fact, "Ivy League" and "high quality" are synonymous for most people, but the Ivy League is a specific set of colleges and universities, namely:

Brown UniversityColumbia UniversityCornell UniversityDartmouth CollegeHarvard UniversityPrinceton UniversityUniversity of PennsylvaniaYale UniversityThese "Ancient Eight," as they are frequently called, have various traits in common.

1) They're old (all but Cornell were founded before the 19th century);
2) They're located in the Northeast;
3) They're private (again, except for Cornell, which combines private and public elements);
4) They focus on the traditional arts and sciences, and offer prestigious professional schools at the graduate level;
5) They're expensive;
6) They're ostensibly non-sectarian;
7) They're tough to get into; and, most notably, They compete against each other in athletics.

Yes, strip away all the social connotations and the Ivy League is, simply, an athletic conference. That means Stanford, Chicago, Amherst, Duke and Michigan, while all outstanding, aren't among the Ivies. They may compete with the Ivies for students and faculty, but they don't face them very often on the fields and courts.

As I reported last week, a conservative group at Roger Williams University created a scholarship "for whites only" to protest affirmative action. Similarly, students at Texas A&M have established three scholarships restricted to Caucasians.

At least the situation at Roger Williams has ended on a good note—for now, anyway. The student who received the award decided to donate the $250 to a fund benefiting survivors of last year's nightclub fire in Rhode Island (home of Roger Williams). That fire killed 100 people and injured dozens more. The student has also pledged to raise an additional $750 for this cause. He told the Boston Globe that he's "just trying to do something good here."

Kudos.

Evidently the idea of scholarships for Caucasians, recently advanced by Roger Williams students, has caught on. Now a conservative group at Texas A&M is offering three scholarships as rewards for essays on "overcoming affirmative action." The competition, says the chairman of the campus organization, is open to all students, including those of color. Right.

Just about everyone is familiar with the U.S. News college rankings. Not to be outdone, the good folks at the Atlantic Monthly have devised their own pecking order of colleges. But unlike U.S. News, which employs a variety of data to reach its conclusions, the Atlantic relies solely on one factor: selectivity.

In what it deems an experiment, the magazine gathered data on the top 50 colleges and ranked them according to selectivity—defined as a combination of acceptance rates, SAT scores, and class rank. Following that exercise, though, the Atlantic concluded that selectivity tells part, but not all, of an institution's story, and should not be the overriding factor in choosing a college.

That same issue features related articles on college admissions "chaos," SAT bias, "late decision programs," and a new evaluation tool designed to measure learning outcomes.

And while you're there, check out this amusing take on the SAT's new writing component. According to the authors, Shakespeare and Hemingway would have trouble getting a good score on this test, which evidently rewards competence rather than creativity. The Unabomber, however, would do just fine.

Ah, those rapscallions at Roger Williams are at it again. Student Republicans at the Rhode Island university are offering a scholarship for which only white students can apply. To receive the $250 you must write an Essay discussing "why you are proud of your white heritage" and include a photo to "confirm whiteness."

Of course, this ruse is meant to expose the inequities of reserving scholarships for minority students. The group wants all scholarships to recognize merit, not race.

Good motive, bad strategy.

If you're lucky enough to be accepted by a top college, you'll learn from great professors. But to get good grades, you might want to learn something from your roommates.

As this article points out, rooming with smart students can boost your grades. At the same time, living with dummies can lower them. Studies show, however, that students of similar ability tend to room together, so this theory is somewhat suspect.

Here's the upshot: "The answer seems to be, 'Yes, students Affect each other a great deal,'" a researcher says, "but the effects are complex. You have to tell a complicated story about the influence students have on each other."

It seems last June's Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has everyone confused. To what extent can institutions consider race in admissions decisions? Well, we know they can't employ quotas, but they can include race as one of many determining factors. Both sides of the debate claimed some modicum of victory. And as a result, colleges and universities continue to make their own rules.

At Amherst and other elite colleges, officials openly court minority students who score well on the SAT and boast good grades. These students attend special summer sessions, receive promises of financial aid, and even get flown—at the college's expense—to campus for interviews. To no surprise, conservative groups are up in arms, suggesting that by targeting minorities and excluding whites, such practices are unconstitutional. Colleges like Amherst claim this preferential treatment doesn't extend to admissions decisions, and I believe them (wink).

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, legislators in Washington State want to introduce a bill that will allow colleges to more openly consider race in admissions decisions. Is that because minority enrollments have dropped precipitously in Washington in recent years? No. It's because officials want a more "vibrant and challenging learning environment in higher education."

But as an attorney representing a parent group fighting the bill puts it, "As soon as we get away from thinking about people in terms of their race or color, the better off our society will be." Right on.

If you're planning to attend college in Michigan, beware: Your education might take longer than you think.

For various reasons, students at Michigan colleges need extra time to finish a four-year degree. Why? The Detroit Free Press identifies the following reasons:

– More students are working, leaving less time for classes.
– More students are cutting down on the number of classes they take to keep grades high.
– Students are changing their majors, making it likely they need additional courses.
– More students are taking remedial classes, especially math, because they didn't get enough in high school.
– More classes are required for some degrees, such as engineering and teaching.And the result? Again, from the Free Press:

"The majority of students do not graduate in 4 years; they graduate in 6 years," said Robert Maurovich, vice president for student services and enrollment management at Saginaw Valley State University. "Students who graduate in 4 years are probably the exception to the rule."Of course, the longer you stay, the more you pay. Seems like a good deal…for the colleges.