Universities Weblog

TechSmith Corp., the world's leading provider of screen capture and recording solutions, today announced the release of its SnagIt Notes and Skype Output accessories. SnagIt enables computer users to take screenshots of exactly what they see on their screens to communicate ideas faster, explain concepts clearly, and archive electronic information with point-and-click convenience.

With SnagIt Notes, customers can take screenshots, add graphic elements and text, and save them to their desktop as a virtual sticky note. With SnagIt's Skype Output, customers can share screen captures over chat sessions with a single click, adding visual reference or clarification to any conversation.

"In today's multi-tasking, information-intensive world, these two accessories will help any knowledge worker get more organized and save precious minutes throughout the day," said Tony Dunckel, SnagIt product manager at TechSmith. "We hope our customers find the Notes and Skype accessories to be a nice complement to the powerhouse feature set SnagIt is known for. These are the second group of free and fun accessories that we'll be rolling out this year."

Using SnagIt Notes, customers can:

Create visual reminders by saving screen captures as a virtual sticky note on their desktop and add text at any time.
Save screenshots to the clipboard or to the SnagIt editor to do more with the image later.
Avoid desktop clutter by organizing multiple notes from the tray icon, including opening, closing, hiding, and rolling up notes.
Using the SnagIt Skype Output customers can:

Quickly communicate ideas effectively with screenshots instead of wasting time typing and speaking lengthy explanations.
end unlimited screen captures to the same person over chat without having to save and attach them all to an email.
SnagIt is the world's most popular screen capture software with more than 7 million users worldwide. With SnagIt, users can capture, edit and share any image, including scrolling windows, objects, menus, video, text, and Web pages and include them in emails and instant messages, PowerPoint presentations, MS Office documents, marketing and sales materials, technical documentation, class handouts, websites and blogs.

System Requirements and Availability
SnagIt 8.2 supports Microsoft, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. SnagIt 8.2 can be downloaded immediately at www.techsmith.com. SnagIt Notes and Skype Output can be downloaded at http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/accessories.asp. The suggested retail price is $39.95 for a single-user license. Free trial licenses are also available. For additional information, visit: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp.

Sponsored by TechSmith

Pundits may dismiss the U.S. News rankings as superficial, misleading, misguided, or simply a profit-making scheme. Whatever you call them, add "influential" to the list. Right or wrong, people pay attention to them, as do institutions.

So here we go for 2008, graduate style. The "best" are (envelope, please)…

Business
1) Harvard
2) Stanford
3) Penn (Wharton)
4) MIT (Sloan)
5) (Tie) Northwestern (Kellogg), U. Chicago

Law
1) Yale
2) Harvard
3) Stanford
4) NYU
5) Columbia

Medicine (Research)
1) Harvard
2) Johns Hopkins
3) Penn
4) Washington U.
5) UC-San Francisco

Engineering
1) MIT
2) Stanford
3) UC-Berkeley
4) Georgia Tech
5) Illinois

Education
1) Columbia (Teachers College)
2) Stanford
3) (Tie) Harvard, Vanderbilt
5) UCLA

(Source: The New York Times)

The New York Times is offering a few articles on community colleges, along with profiles of students and individual institutions. For those considering a two-year school, the section's worth a look.

Here's a bit from John Merrow's intro:

Matters were simpler 100 years ago, when junior colleges were created to prepare deserving students for the final two years of a university. In fact, the very first public junior college, in Joliet, Ill., was set up in a high school, as the equivalent of grades 13 and 14.

It's a long to-do list on a tightening public purse. Two-year colleges receive less than 30 percent of state and local financing for higher education, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. Yet they are growing much faster than four-year colleges and universities, enrolling nearly half of all undergraduates. That's 6.6 million students. Add those taking just a course or two, and the total reaches some 12 million.

You can read the rest here and find the "Ed Life" section here.

(Source: Princeton University)

Homecoming. It's a time-honored tradition on American campuses. Football games. Parties on the quad. Parades featuring returning alums. Revelry and reflection.

Hogwash. We've decided to dump it at my institution. Why? See my latest Chronicle of Higher Education column:

It's officially spring, though the New England weather gods evidently haven't consulted the calendar lately. Campuses across America are busy planning commencement exercises and dipping into their coffers to woo only the most deserving speakers. Many of us working in development and alumni relations are also busy planning next year's homecoming events.

You see, my institution spent its youth as a commuter college. We've become more residential over the years, but still only half of our undergraduates live on the campus. Many work part time or full time while taking classes, and vacate the premises on Friday afternoon. The sense of place just isn't very strong for many students, and it doesn't get any stronger when they become alumni.

Read the rest here.

(Source: Associated Press)

The killing rampage at Virginia Tech remains the top story in the media, dominating the evening news, radio call-in shows, and talk TV on Fox. Related issues such as gun control, psychological profiling, foreign students and crisis communications are on everyone's mind.

For in-depth coverage of the situation, visit the Chronicle of Higher Education, which features various articles and commentaries, along with multimedia presentations. Most of the material is accessible (some is restricted to subscribers). Be sure to read the profiles of the victims. And for historical perspective, see the list of other "major shootings" on American campuses.

Once again, condolences and best wishes to the families affected by this tragedy.

(Source: Associated Press)

Yesterday a student at Virginia Tech waged a shooting spree on campus, killing 32 people. The gunman was also killed. The incident is being called one of the deadliest mass murders in U.S. history.

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education offers the following:

As darkness fell over the Virginia Tech campus here on Monday night, hundreds of students clutched one another in tears at the Holtzman Alumni Center to wait for news about friends they feared had died in one of the deadliest shooting rampages in American history.

And even as Virginia Tech reeled from the massacre, many people questioned the university's response. They wanted to know why it took more than two hours to notify the 26,000-student campus of the first shootings, and why more buildings were not locked down sooner.

Find the rest here.

Virginia Tech no doubt has some PR damage control to deal with. Meanwhile, condolences to all the families affected by this senseless tragedy.

It's that time of year again, when college presidents are asked to opine on the educational quality of other colleges and universities–all for the greater glory of U.S. News and its annual rankings issue. As we've seen, college presidents have vented their displeasure with this "beauty contest" for years, but now they're attempting to corral the troops and boycott the practice altogether. Without data–particularly the "reputational survey" that constitutes 25 percent of the scores–the magazine would be crippled.

Read this from the Christian Science Monitor:

A revolt is brewing among college presidents against the influential college rankings put out each year by U.S. News & World Report.

"This increasing interest in measuring everything – these so-called science-based measures of [educational] outcomes and the like – seems to me to be so misguided that it's now captured the imagination of the leadership in higher education," says Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., who heads an association of 124 prestigious liberal arts schools. "This is a bad way of talking about an education. [Students] aren't consumers shopping for a product."

Well, yes, actually, they are. Let's continue:

The boycott of the U.S. News rankings could be extended in coming weeks as a draft letter makes the rounds of academia. The letter, formulated by a dozen college presidents and an education activist, calls for others to join them in neither filling out the magazine's survey form nor touting rankings in marketing materials.

The "reputational survey," as it's called, asks college administrators to rank the quality of hundreds of schools on a one to five scale. The data – which critics call a "beauty contest" – account for 25 percent of the overall U.S. News rankings.

You can find the rest here.

So should college presidents just shut up and fill out the forms, or do they have a point? Are educational rankings really that bad? Are they misleading? Or are presidents simply afraid of what rankings reveal?

As always, stay tuned.

(Source: Harvard University)

Was Drew Faust Harvard's first choice for president? Evidently not, though this revelation is hardly surprising. Harvard always culls presidents from its alumni; Faust is the first non-alum since the original president (who of course couldn't have been an alum). So it's safe to say Faust was down the list. But how far?

For an inside look at the selection process, see Richard Bradley's piece in the new issue of 02138 magazine. As you can surmise from the title (Cambridge's zip code), the publication focuses on everything Harvard. Here's a bit:

On the morning of Wednesday, January 31, Thomas R. Cech, the Nobel Prize-winning head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, picked up the phone and called the Harvard Crimson. In December, the newspaper had reported that Cech was a candidate for the presidency of Harvard. Now, Cech told the paper, "I have withdrawn my name from consideration."

Faust's ascension marked the beginning of a new chapter in Harvard history, but the story was almost very different.

Read the rest here.

(Source: Columbia University)

Getting into the nation's best colleges has become even more difficult, if you can imagine that. Everyone is so brand conscious these days, and spots at the top educational brands are at a premium.

Want some numbers? Check out this New York Times article:

Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages. Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen.

The third trend driving the frantic competition is that the average college applicant applies to many more colleges than in past decades. In the 1960s, fewer than 2 percent of college freshmen had applied to six or more colleges, whereas in 2006 more than 2 percent reported having applied to 11 or more, according to The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2006, an annual report on a continuing long-term study published by the University of California, Los Angeles.

Read the rest here.

(Source: University of Florida)

Congratulations to Florida for winning back-to-back national titles in college basketball. Sandwiched between those victories was the Gators' BCS championship in college football. What a year for Gainesville.

Lost in the news was the university's decision to eliminate its early decision program. It seems Florida wants to expand its applicant pool. I doubt they'll have trouble attracting applicants, especially sports fans.

Here's how InsideHigherEd.com covered it:

The chain seemed to break in September. That's when the University of Virginia said it planned to end its binding early decision program – an announcement that followed just weeks after similar pledges at Harvard and Princeton Universities. The move was followed by months of quiet, until now.

The move comes at a time when Florida is seeing a surge in student interest. Since 2000, the number of applications has increased by 18 percent. During that time, the university's acceptance rate has decreased from 62 to 48 percent and the yield – percentage of accepted applicants who enroll – has increased from 55 to 64 percent. Test scores and grade point averages have also risen slightly in the past several years, Evans said.

Read the rest here.