Universities Weblog

Ah, the 1960s and 1970s: the heyday of student protests. College campuses were notorious for producing activists of all types. Though this behavior has slowed considerably, is it time to again take a stand? Is this one college tradition that should be kept up?

Students at the University of Minnesota think so. Hundreds of students walked out of their classes on April 28, undeterred by the pouring rain, to protest the war in Iraq.

"It's something we're really, really against," said University of Minnesota senior Amy Clute, who joined the protesters on the school's Twin Cities campus.

The students listened to speakers, chanted slogans and held anti-war posters and banners. Two protesters wore President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney masks and dressed in orange prison garb, toting a sign saying, "Try all war criminals."

Though there was one arrest and several citations for disorderly behavior, the protest was mostly peaceful. Perhaps it's not enough to change the behaviors of the people the students protested against, but maybe it's enough to inspire thought.

Have you ever joined in on a protest? During my years as a college professor, I've only witnessed one student protest. I can't help wishing there were more.

College students know: they're often viewed as simply a social security number. In fact, test forms and on-campus offices frequently request your number instead of your name. This information, along with a wide array of other sensitive personal information, swells within the computers at your campus.

Certainly, this practice makes the retrieval of information more convenient, but just how dangerous is this? Inside Higher Ed takes an interesting, though frightening, look into that question.

Colleges and universities are a gold mine of data: personal information about students and employees, the fruits of research efforts, information about the reading habits of library patrons, even patient data for institutions with medical schools. That store of information — and the fact that the institutions often don't have sufficient security procedures or clearcut privacy policies — make them targets both for identity thieves and for government officials seeking sensitive data, appropriately or not.

"Universities are unique in the volume and sensitivity of the data we collect. We do poorly in dealing with policy, and the failure to take action is troubling," Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at indiana university, told dozens of university chief information officers at a policy conference sponsored by Educause, a higher education technology group.

Sobering stuff. Can you imagine unnamed parties gaining access to the information needed to look into everything from your credit card purchases to your medical history? Can you imagine having your identity stolen, all because an institution you trusted was not properly prepared to guard that information?

What do you think? Should institutions of higher education make improving this situation a top priority? Has your school done anything to help?

(Photo Source: iLord Images)

(Source: Boston College)

Nowadays, the question "Where did you go to college?" might be answered in several parts. Growing numbers of students transfer from one college to the next (and the next and the next) in search of appropriate programs, sufficient funding, the right social mix and other conveniences.

Here are some bits and pieces from a recent New York Times story documenting this phenomenon:

These days, a majority of students take a similarly nomadic path to a degree; about 60 percent of students graduating from college attend more than one institution, a number that has risen steadily over at least the last two decades.

Of those who start their college careers at four-year institutions, about a third transfer for a desired program, according to a study released last May by the National Center for Education Statistics. Another third transfer for better location or more prestige, and almost 10 percent for financial reasons.

Read the full piece here.

(Source: Hampden-Sydney College)

OK, here's a test. Start naming single-sex colleges for women. Go.

Bet you got quite a few: Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Wheaton, Simmons, and so forth. Pretty easy, eh?

Now try this. Name all the single-sex colleges for men. Ready…go.

Um…right. Thought so.

As this New York Times article points out, there are only four: Hampden-Sydney, in Virginia; Wabash College, near Indianapolis; Morehouse College in Atlanta; and Deep Springs, a tiny, two-year college located on a cattle ranch in eastern California. It seems only a relative handful of men seek schools without women (go figure), while many more women are comfortable learning sans men. But at these four holdouts, the spirit of single-sex education remains strong.

Here's a snippet:

Once upon a time, not that long ago really, there was such a thing as a Yale man or a Dartmouth man or, closer to here, a University of Virginia or Washington and Lee man, each believed to be an identifiable subset of the male species. By the mid-1960's, there were still almost 250 all-male colleges, heirs to a long tradition of male entitlement going back to the beginnings of higher education in America. But by the late 60's, hammered by questions about their relevance, their fairness, their exclusivity and their reasons for existing, nearly all began to go coed. [....]

But an odd thing has happened on the road to extinction. In the past few years, a major public debate about education has shifted from underperforming women to underperforming men, from how schools fail to support girls to how they fail to support boys. Consistently, boys do more poorly than girls when tested for verbal skills and get lower grades, and they are more likely to drop out of high school and college. Nationally, the gender mix on campuses has shifted from a predominance of men to one that's 57 percent women and 43 percent men. As a result, men's colleges find themselves talking about issues that sound oddly contemporary. Long after everyone else changed, the dinosaurs seem to be having their day.

Read the full article here.

Oh, and by the way, if you're curious about what life's like at Deep Springs, read this bit from their website:

Students often rise before the sun. At 6:00 the dairy boys are already milking cows half asleep when the feedman gets up to do his first feed run. A farm teamer may have been in the tractor baling hay since 4:30. All of these people are especially thankful for the breakfast cook, who's up early preparing the morning's fixin's.

Most labor positions entail working from lunch until dinner. This could mean spending an entire day alone in an alfalfa field fixing leaks in irrigation lines, repairing fences and gates with a partner, or working as a group to dig up frozen pipes that need to be repaired and insulated. There are less romantic jobs that could mean spending the day in the office or scrubbing toilets in the main building.

Sign me up!

When photographers from the famous men-targeted magazine Playboy traveled to Waco Texas, they hoped to find a new 'Bunny' at Baylor University. What they found instead, was the cold shoulder.

Officials from the self-billed 'world's largest Baptist university' threatened to expel any female student caught associating with Playboy. Baylor Vice President for Student Life Samuel W. Oliver declared in a mass e-mail: "Playboy is clearly antithetical to Baylor's mission and associating with the magazine would be a violation of the code of conduct."

Female students still braved the university's wrath and met with photographers, though Playboy isn't releasing the exact number. A spokesperson from the magazine also claimed that they were not looking to cause trouble for female students.

Do you think any university has the right to dictate the actions of its students outside of campus? Would any other magazine have caused such a ruckus? What would you do as a Baylor student?

The Internet is buzzing loudly about this one. Go here for a full listing of news articles.

(Photo Source: Gizmodo)

Welcome to the Credential Era, where degrees are currency. Bachelor's degrees have become standard; without one, it's difficult to rise in any profession. So now the consumer's focus has shifted to the quality of one's degree-hence the obsession with Ivies and such. And more people are pursuing graduate and professional degrees, hoping to gain some competitive advantage in the workplace.

Lifelong learning, once a rhetorical concept proffered by universities in mission statements and strategic plans, has caught on. Adults are returning to campuses, especially those in urban settings, to pursue second master's degrees, professional certificates and other forms of sheepskin. For some, learning has its own intrinsic rewards. But for most, it's all part of staying in the race.

Here's a bit from a recent Washington Post article that captured this phenomenon:

Adult education is thriving nationwide, with more than 92 million adults taking college classes. At the nearly 70 two- and four-year colleges in the Washington area, an estimated 175,000 adults are enrolled, 40 percent of them on a part-time basis. And increasingly, college officials say, they, like Krumm, are returning to school for a second advanced degree even as they juggle full-time jobs and families.

"The life span of careers means that a credential you may acquire early on, an undergraduate degree and a first master's, may not be enough to sustain individual competitiveness over time," says Daphne Atkinson, vice president of industry relations for the Graduate Management Admission Council in McLean, who holds master's degrees in English literature and business management. "You are simply not competitive in the job market without a refresher."

You can read the rest here.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. — Walter Bagehot

We kick off our Surviving College series this week. Tune in every day for tips on everything from time management to getting on your professor's good side. Whether you're a Freshman or a seventh-year undergrad, there's something useful in here for you.

Today we start with: time management. It's a term many people dread, because most of us just aren't good at it. Unfortunately, it's the one skill that can make or break your academic–and even social–success in college.

The kicker about time management? It's amazingly simple once you get the steps down. Much as we do with computers and attempts to try anything new, we build time management up to be much more difficult than it really is.

And you can only use the dead grandmother excuse so many times. Why not just make it easier on yourself?

Everyone knows a college degree is good for your intellect, social skills, and most likely, your employment options. But can it really make your heart healthier, too?

That's what a recent study is claiming. Apparently, increased education correlates with lower levels of coronary artery calcium, a substance that can lead to atherosclerosis and often, death.

Many studies have documented that education is inversely associated with a wide array of clinical disease outcomes and death, and this relationship between education and cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease in particular is among the most consistent and pronounced, according to background information in the article.

Those participants with a high school education or less were four times more likely to have these calcium deposits, compared to their college-educated counterparts. That's quite a difference!

What do you think? Is there a direct relation, or might it be that people with college degrees often find better jobs that include better health insurance? Or is there some sort of intriguing physiological connection?

Well, if it is true, you may be paying off your Student Loans for the rest of your life, but at least you'll have a longer time to do it.

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Harvard University is asking about 250,000 people for advice on choosing its next president. The university emailed faculty, staff and students and will soon mail letters to alumni. I'm an alum, so I imagine I'll get one; I did the last time they were looking for a president.

Whom would you recommend? What qualities should Harvard stress? Should the university seek the antithesis of Larry Summers? What about diversity concerns?

Care to apply?