Universities Weblog

(Source: Stanford University)

In recent weeks, several major universities have announced capital campaigns with eyebrow-raising goals. Virginia hopes to raise $3 billion, as does Yale. Columbia topped both of them with its $4 billion effort, the largest campaign ever attempted by an American University (any university, for that matter).

Until yesterday. Not to be outdone, Stanford went public with its $4.3 billion campaign, which has already raised about $2.2 billion.

Clearly, the arms race among elite universities has escalated. Modern facilities, better faculty offers, more student aid and spiffy new programs will, the thinking goes, combine to attract the best and brightest and inch a school up the rankings. Penn and Cornell will soon announce similar efforts, and many more are likely on the horizon.

Chief among those horizon dwellers is Harvard. Wait for the university to select a new president and let him or her become ensconced. Then watch for a $5 billion announcement.

Readers of the New York Times should check out this Sunday's magazine for a special section on art and design schools. Called "Great Places to Learn," the section offers a tour of the nation's finest programs in art, architecture, fashion design, photography, digital media and painting, among other specialties.

And it was written by yours truly.

The best source of information on colleges and universities is not through their respective information officers or glossy brochures. Of course, they are going to tell you want you want to hear. To find out the real scoop on the educational institution that meets your needs, you need to ask fellow students. Now this knowledge is captured and available for free through Enotes.com on its new College Search Engine 2.0. Here's more from a company press release:

eNotes.com LLC today announces the launch of their next-generation college search engine, available at http://college.enotes.com. The service allows college applicants to search through profiles of more then 1,500 schools and then save, sort, tag, and rate the schools in their My Colleges page. This information is then shared with the system, so students can see who is applying where, and get suggestions based on others' picks. Users can then share their college choices with the world via a widget that works on blogs, MySpace, etc. By adding a social component to college search, eNotes has helped to remove the opaque nature of applying to college and created an open system for applicants to both manage their college search process and get new information about where their friends and others are applying. For more information visit http://college.enotes.com