Universities Weblog

community colleges with honors programs? Weren't they designed to be egalitarian and remedial?

Well, yes, but times have changed. Look beneath the surface of these colleges and you'll find plenty of good students preparing to transfer to top four-year institutions. They're getting personal attention, sharpening skills and saving money in the process.

The option makes sense for students unsure about what or where they want to study. Why invest so much on a hunch? Spend a year or two figuring things out—then make a wiser choice.

Looking for a reason NOT to attend Harvard, should your Crimson-tinted envelope this spring be a fat one? Well, it seems Harvard undergrads aren't a terribly happy bunch, at least judging by the results of a new survey conducted among a group of 31 colleges known as the Consortium on Financing Higher Education. That group includes the eight Ivy League schools, other elite research universities like MIT and Stanford, and liberal arts colleges such as Amherst and Wellesley.

Here's a bit from an AP story, which draws heavily on a Boston Globe report:

[A] 21-page memo, from staff researchers at Harvard to academic deans, documents student dissatisfaction with faculty availability, quality of instruction, quality of advising, as well as the sense of community and social life on campus.

In the classroom, students can go through four years with limited contact with professors. Large lecture classes are divided into sections headed by graduate students. Small classes are frequently taught by temporary instructors. In many cases, advisers are graduate students, administrators or full-time advisers.

And that aptly describes many research universities. Maybe Harvard students expect too much and find that reality falls short of reputation.

(Source: New York University)For the second straight year, New York University headed The Princeton Review's list of "dream colleges." Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Princeton rounded out the top five.

NYU?

From Bloomberg.com:

"Over the last five to eight years, urban schools have had an incredible renaissance with college students," said Robert Franek, Princeton Review's publisher and vice president of admissions services.

"Young people want to be in cities because they can do things in a city they can't do in the wilderness," said New York University spokesman John Beckman. "They can get a taste of what their career might be like, they can do interesting jobs as they go to school."Makes sense. But Columbia happens to be in the same city, and didn't make the top five, even though it has a better academic reputation. Evidently, NYU's marketing machine is pumping out the right messages to students.

Parents had a slightly different top five. They ranked Stanford as their first choice, followed by Harvard, Duke, Princeton and Yale. It looks like parents don't want their kids roaming the streets of New York, great internships notwithstanding.

On the Web: The Princeton Review

Got dust?

A new venture called DormAid is here to help. Started by a couple of Harvard students, DormAid (known first as DorMaid until officials nixed the moniker for sexist overtones) offers to clean your room for a fee, starting at $18. So far, the company has set up shop at Harvard, Princeton and Boston University.

Naturally, nothing happens in higher education without a protest. It seems some Harvard students have pointed out that only rich kids can afford such a luxury, and that hiring DormAid is simply a show of affluence (along with laziness). Here, courtesy of the New York Times, is how the student newspaper, the Crimson, addressed the issue:

"Hiring someone to clean dorm rooms is a convenience, but it is also an obvious display of wealth that would establish a perceived, if unspoken, barrier between students of different economic means," the editorial said. "It's up to each one of us to ensure that our peers feel comfortable on campus, and if that means plugging in a vacuum every two weeks, then so be it."Can we count the number of ways students can display wealth, especially in Cambridge, home to trendy shops and expensive restaurants? Everyone knows Harvard enrolls lots of rich kids, as do other Ivies and top schools. They also enroll lots of middle-class and poor students. Signs of socio-economic class divisions are everywhere. DormAid is just one more example.

(Source: Harvard University)You may have noticed that Harvard has been in the news lately. Then again, maybe you haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Harvard is always in the news. Sometimes the news is positive, such as the university's commitment to giving families making less than $40,000 a free ride, and sometimes it's not so positive, recently thanks to Loutish Larry's lips.

Two new books shed some light on the university, offering insiders' views. This Baltimore Sun piece doesn't provide much detail on the books, but it does give readers a sense of why Harvard might relish the attention, good or bad.

(Source: Dartmouth College)Hacking into computers to learn your admissions fate evidently isn't enough to earn you a ding from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. The school recently announced that it will admit some of the 17 people who committed the online crime, breaking ranks with Harvard, MIT and Carnegie Mellon, which rejected well over 100 such perpetrators outright.

This snippet comes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

In many cases "their curiosity got the better of them," dean Paul Danos said by phone yesterday. "All of them expressed remorse. Some were admitted. Some were rejected.

Danos said the hackers who were admitted—he would not say how many—would be monitored and counseled, and that the incident would be included in their files.And the lesson they learned would be…?

For the first time in Harvard's long history, the faculty—of arts and sciences, that is—voted no confidence in its president. Larry Summers, following his well-publicized statements about gender and science aptitude, received that vote from 218 faculty members; 185 voted in his favor, while 18 abstained.

In a similar motion, 253 out of 468 (again, with 18 abstentions) voted to censure the president for his remarks.

This bit comes from the Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage:

"It was quite dramatic," said Mary Waters, chair of the sociology department, who voted for both measures but was surprised at the success of the no-confidence vote, which was not expected to pass. "There was an audible gasp when the numbers were announced."Many students objected. One group, calling itself "Harvard Students for Larry," issued the following statement: "This demonstrates a complete rejection of the major tenets of academic freedom and wholesale disregard for the opinion of the student body they instruct."

According to the Chronicle, Summers isn't likely to lose his job over this. Only the Harvard Corporation can hire and fire the president. What's more, college and university presidents often survive faculty votes of no confidence, so such action doesn't always sound a death knell. And keep in mind that Summers' former Treasury Department boss, Robert Rubin, sits on the corporation, which means, in theory, that he has at least one Ally.

So Larry isn't terribly popular, but his job is safe. For now.

Today's Inside Higher Ed website features a piece I wrote called "March Madness." Yes, it's about the basketball tournament, but not as you might imagine. Here's a snippet:

Every March, university campuses embrace an enduring tradition. No, not spring break. I'm referring to college basketball, and those few weeks when our attention turns to bubbles and bracketology, office pools and buzzer-beaters, Cinderella stories and Final Four mayhem.

We might find ourselves whistling the tunes of teams surviving well into the tournament, but how many of us know the words to these fight songs? What do these verses reveal?Find out here.

It seems a number of business school applicants couldn't wait to learn if they'd been accepted. Now they may have to wait another year to start an M.B.A.

Following instructions on a BusinessWeek online forum, would-be students hacked into computers at several business schools thanks to a glitch in the ApplyYourselfInc. software system many institutions use. The universities discovered the perpetrators and some, including Harvard, MIT and Carnegie Mellon, have rejected them outright. That amounts to about 150 students automatically dinged by Harvard and MIT.

Here are the two respective deans quoted in the chronicle of higher education:

"This behavior is unethical at best—a serious breach of trust that cannot be countered by rationalization," Kim B. Clark, dean of the Harvard Business School, said in a written statement. "Any applicant found to have done so will not be admitted to this school."

Richard Schmalensee, dean of MIT's Sloan School, also released a statement. "Honesty and integrity are critical character attributes for students at the MIT Sloan School of Management," it said. "These applicants will be denied admission to MIT Sloan this year."According to the Chronicle, officials at other affected schools—including Stanford, Duke and Dartmouth—are still deciding what to do about their hackers.

What dolts. These applicants couldn't wait another few days or weeks to learn their fates, so they hacked in to satisfy their curiosity. I bet these people snuck into their parents' closets to peek at their presents just before Christmas. Now they may have nixed their chances to attend a premier business school.

If they do wind up pursuing M.B.A.s, I'd recommend the courses on ethics.

Joining rivals Harvard and Princeton, Yale has announced its commitment to eradicate financial barriers for undergraduates from low-income families. Starting next fall, the university will not require financial contributions from families earning less than $45,000 per year. What's more, Yale says it will significantly reduce expected contributions from families in the $45,000-$60,000 income bracket.

Last year, Harvard revealed its policy of not requiring financial commitments from families earning less than $40,000 per year. Before that, Princeton promised to support all undergraduates through grant aid, thus eliminating the future burden of Student Loans.

You can read Yale's announcement here.