Universities Weblog

Apparently, the UK has garnered the reputation of the best place to turn if you wish to order a fake degree. Educators decry the amount of 'diploma mills' available, and fear that the value of a legitimate education obtained in the UK will be devalued.

Of course, the existence of diploma mills anywhere casts a shadow on education everywhere.

The Times reports:The international reputation of UK universities is being put at risk by the increasing number of diploma mills that use UK addresses to sell fake degrees, quality watchdogs have warned.

While it is not known how many diploma mills use UK addresses, a Swedish study concluded recently that the number of fake universities worldwide had risen from about 200 in 2000 to more than 800 last year.

(Source: MIT)How do you not get into MIT? Bad math SATs will do it. But there are at least 52 other ways, according to the school's director of minority recruitment. Here are his top 10:

1. Don't refer to yourself in the 3rd person. It doesn't work for pro athletes and it won't work for you.
2. Don't use the flashback essay. You know, the one that envisions you receiving the Nobel Prize in Biology and attributing all of your success to your admission to MIT. Yeah, that's about as original as the obligatory standing ovation at the end of an Ashante concert. (This is NOT an endorsement of Ashante or her inability to maintain pitch control, not lip-sync at live performances, or to write lyrics that use Boo as a pronoun.)
3. Do not use words that do not exist…irregardless of how much you orientate the direction of your essay.
4. Avoid slang. Use "street cred" on your own time. If you want to "keep it real" get an "A" in calculus. That's hot!
5. Never refer to your parents as Mommy and Daddy, your dog as your best friend, or your girlfriend as your "Ride or Die."
6. In that same vein, if your mother really is your hero—you'd make your bed, refrain from calling your younger brother a mistake, and stop taking the cable box apart for poops and giggles.
7. Do not quote Holden Caufield in your essay. (It's a good way to share A ROOM WITH MARK DAVID CHAPMAN.)
8. Additionally, don't use quotes from Fountainhead or Jugghead.
9. The "Every Important Lesson I Learned in Life, I Learned From Wolverine" essay has been tried. (Feel free to ask the author how he's enjoying his PG year.)
10. There is no reason to use the word "nipple" anywhere on your application.

You can find the remaining 42 here.

From The Kansas City Star:

College students and their families will pay higher interest rates on their school loans if Congress approves a deficit-reduction bill that contains the largest cuts in history to the federal Student Loan program.

It's a topic that has been hot in the news lately: the amount of 'partying' and drinking that takes place among college students. Often, those imbibing are under the age of 21. Some schools look the other way; some issue warnings. Some, like the University of Georgia, are getting a whole lot tougher.

According to Online Athens, UGA officials are no longer issuing mere citations for underage students caught drinking on campus. Instead, students will be arrested.

Most underage drinking citations are a result of complaint calls to campus police for disruptive or inappropriate behavior.

Although he hasn't studied all the data, alcohol-related arrests probably have increased since the policy change, even as the number of underage possession incidents has dropped, Epps said.This an interesting, perhaps drastic, policy change. Will this affect other schools in the nation, and will it ultimately affect the trend of college-age drinking?

(Source: Kenyon College)They're an afterthought, right? Those pesky letters of recommendation no one reads. They all paint glowing pictures of students with impeccable study habits, multiple extracurricular interests and laudable social skills.

Not always. In fact, a small percentage are actually negative, albeit sometimes accidentally so. Others are generic enough to be construed as negative. The point here? Take those recommendation letters seriously, and choose teachers most likely to speak to specifics.

Consider this from USA Today:

A letter can determine a student's fate. "Homogeneity among applicants makes it difficult to discriminate in a highly selective pool. The letters provide an independent view," says Ann Wright, vice president for enrollment at Rice University in Houston. "It can make all the difference in the world."

"Thirty years ago, a letter might have said that Johnny is not a nice person, whereas today the letter might say that Johnny does not have many friends," says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.Read more here.

Recently, 7,000 copies of Morehead State University's campus newspaper, The Trail Blazer, were stolen. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident, and is in fact "a popular form of censorship and became popular in the 1990s."

From The Trail Blazer:

Thefts of campus newspapers have occurred at colleges and universities across the country and many of these thefts were successfully prosecuted even though the newspapers were offered free of charge.

Goodman said the SPLC reports on from 15 to 40 cases of newspaper theft each year but not every incident of newspaper theft is reported to the SPLC.

The idea of such extreme Acts of censorship committed by college students is a disturbing thought. Why not write an article to the paper expressing displeasure, rather than commit theft? Isn't college the time to explore others' opinions and views on issues? Even if a student does not agree, the idea of higher education is to expand the mind, not to limit it.

When the topic of binge drinking arises, thoughts invariably turn to college students. But students are not alone, according to a recent study.

Reuters reports:

Though getting drunk is often seen as a traditional college pastime, other young adults, particularly men, have similarly high rates of potentially hazardous drinking, new research shows.

What's more, they add, the study shows that risky drinking "is neither unique, nor necessarily the highest among individuals who complete college."

Student who aren't terribly organized quickly learn they need to be. Managing workloads, taking class notes, studying for exams, juggling hectic schedules and social lives—it's all part of being in college. Organization is critical.

That's what occurred to Bryan Healey, a student at Northeastern University in Boston. He recognized the need to coordinate something as simple as taking notes, and created a web application called "Student Manager." Now the site offers much more. I'll let Bryan tell his story through the following Q&A:

UW: What prompted you to create Student Manager?SM: Originally, this project started as a very simple solution to a personal problem of mine. I am currently a student at Northeastern University, and last January I was taking a class on operating systems that required a significant number of notes to be taken each day (sometimes as much as 10 pages). Now, it's important to note that I have horrible penmanship under the best conditions, and it only degrades even further the more frequently I write continuously. So, I setup a simple web-based app for myself that ONLY took notes. As soon as I started using it, some of my fellow classmates curiously inquired as to what it is, and once I informed them about what it was, they immediately asked if they could use it also. I had no problem with that, so I added a little login page so that multiple users could use the tool. Then, I started to add some minor features to it as I needed them, such as a simple calendar, etc. My fellow classmates loved the app, and it suddenly occurred to me that this is something that I would imagine many students could use. So, I scrapped the original code and started over, this time with a clearer goal in mind as to what I wanted: A complete information management application for students.

Before I knew it, 11 months had passed and I had single-handedly written several million lines of code (including back-end), and I had a fully functional information control and management application that was about to go into a short Beta period (which was, essentially, a three-week time span where my friends used it and found bugs for me to fix). Then, after Beta was over and I was confident that the app was bug-free, I opened up registration to the public.
UW: How does it work?

SM: In essence, Student Manager is designed to operate as a complete and unified information control and management application to help students with their academics. Inside the application itself there are only a handful of truly unique and original tools (such as Connect and Study); however, all of the tools have been personally programmed and meticulously refined to coincide and integrate with the truly original tools, thus providing a single, easy-to-use interface that allows students to perform any task they would need during their academic studies AND outside of their academics: detailed note-taking tools; study tools that provide practice quizzes generated from fuzzy logic programming; interactive flash cards; and a fully-functional scientific calculator; journaling; calendaring and task management; file management, including complete version control and backup protection; easy categorization and organization with labeling; complete contact management; easy bookmarks management; high-powered and detailed search capabilities; and social interaction and information sharing capacity with Connect.

Furthermore, Student Manager acts as a publication utility, allowing a user to share or privatize any information that is provided to Student Manager. You can make any file, journal entry, calendar event, etc. as private as you want (fully protected and invisible to anyone but yourself) or as public as you want (truly published and accessible by anyone) and any level of privacy in between those two extremes, including user-specific sharing, user-group sharing, etc.UW: How does it benefit students?SM: It will benefit students in several distinct ways:

2) Make inter-student collaboration simple and easy. Using our unique Connect tool, students will be able to collaborate with project partners and other classmates with more ease than ever before, including simple and easy information sharing, including files, notes, journal entries, task details, etc.UW: Does it assume students have laptops in class?SM: While Student Manager can be used anywhere that the user can access the web, certain tools (such as the note-taking tools) are much more valuable when used during the classroom setting. While currently this does mean that the student must have a computer with an internet connection while in class to use this tool during class, programming has already begun to offer more options to students, including:

To sign-up, just go to http://student.infinience.com/register/?reg_type=select and select an account type, or click "Learn more" to get more details about each account type.UW: How might you expand or improve it in the future?SM: In the near future, I will be adding additional mobile support, as well as developing an off-line application so that those students who do not have internet connections in their classes can still use the tool during class (I intend to make this app for all platforms, including Mac). Furthermore, I will be implementing full 256-bit SSL encryption application-wide before the end of 2005 in addition to the current security protocol which is already in place.

Also, I always have and always will take each and every comments, suggestion, complaint, criticism and concern extremely seriously, and will personally respond to all e-mails and requests in a timely fashion and fix/add features where necessary as quickly as possible. The first priority of this application is serving the student, and that philosophy will remain eternally.Intrigued? Take Student Manager for a test drive and discover how it can help organize YOUR hectic schedule.

What a great homework assignment! Ithaca College is offering 5,000 dollars for the best 30-second movie shot entirely with a cell phone. Both college and high school students may enter.

The contest reveals a rather fascinating trend in the changing face of higher education. From Business Week:

It may come off like a gimmick, but Dean Dianne Lynch has no doubts about the contest's academic value.

"Historically, we've always had students thinking bigger and bigger. It's gone from radio to television to the movie screen, to the era of blockbuster films. All of a sudden, things have reversed and everything is getting smaller," said Lynch.I can't wait to see the masterpieces students will create.

NYU recently became the twentieth U.S. college to ban Coca-Cola products from its campus.

Representatives from NYU initially requested an investigation into possible employee mistreatment at a Columbian bottling plant. When the popular soda company refused to comply, NYU responded by removing, and banning, all Coca-Cola products from campus.

More from The New York Times:

New York University will begin removing Coca-Cola products from campus Friday after enacting a campus-wide ban on the Atlanta-based company's products Thursday because it failed to comply with university demands for an independent investigation into alleged labor violations at its Colombian bottling plant.

"All along, our real desire was for this independent third[-party] inquiry," Hancock said. "We want unbiased information, and Coke stood in the way of that."

Whether or not you agree with the ban, it is refreshing to see college students working together to accomplish something they believe in. It's a nice reminder of what the true benefit of a higher education should be.