Universities Weblog

boston university has a new prerequisite for every course it offers: text messaging. Emergency text messaging, to be specific. Students who don't sign up for the university's emergency text messaging system can't register for Spring semester classes.

The mandatory text messaging program gives BU the most rigid policy in the U.S. for that method of campus security. "Use of these systems, most of which were put in place this semester, are overwhelmingly voluntary and are largely an outgrowth of the Virginia Tech massacre in which a gunman killed 32 people and then himself," writes Jenny Paul at BostonNOW.

So far BU's mandatory policy has resulted in 74% of the university's students signing up. Neighboring Boston College and nearby Northeastern both have voluntary emergency text messaging service and about 80% of students at each institution have signed up.

Inside Higher Ed has just published a very good analysis of the higher education plan recently released by Democratic presidential front runner hillary clinton.

The broad gist of the proposal is that Clinton would increase grant funding available to college students and pay for it by eliminating federal loan programs.

The Washington Post points out that Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edwards both also want to eliminate the 42-year-old Federal Family Education Loan Program. The student loan industry has been chastised recently for deceptive marketing practice, conflict of interest, and corruption. Congress is also targeting student loan funding.

Paul Weinstein Jr. is one commentator that likes the Clinton plan. He says so in his blog.

Some of the proposal's details include:

• Doubling the Hope Tax Credit
• Increasing the maximum payout of the Pell Grant
• Doubling the education award for Americorp volunteers
• Simplifying the financial aid process

You can find another good overview of the proposal here.

The University of California is being sued by the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). That's not really news, since the lawsuit was filed over two years ago now. But developments recently in the case are beginning to make it look like there could actually be a trial. And a verdict on the issue of how state colleges and universities should view private religious school curriculum when it comes time to evaluate a student for college admissions – that would settle one of the long standing battles in America's culture war between Right Wing Conservative Christians and the Liberal Left.

The buzz at the moment is about a Chicago Tribune article on the case. So I guess this is about news making news…

In a way the issue is simple. Students at California's 800 or so private religious high schools take classes that the University of California often won't recognize as fulfilling their admissions requirements. Cal thinks they have perfectly reasonable academic grounds for refusing to accept the credit; the ACSI thinks Cal is biased and that the reasons for Cal rejecting the courses boil down to viewpoint and perspective issues that are protected by the First Amendment. Cal thinks it offers an easy way around the problem by saying that they accept any student that makes above a certain score on the SAT; the ACSI thinks that having to make a higher score on the SAT just because you graduated from a private Christian school is an unduly burdensome requirement.

Edweek ran a nice blog post on the case. They describe the impact the case could have nicely: "The decision of this unprecedented case could have a large impact on curriculum-not only for California's approximately 800 religious secondary schools, but also for religious high schools around the country."

One of the most entertaining comments was from the anonymous blogger at Positive Infinity. He begins by referring to the 31st state as "the People's Republic of California" and goes on to use the phrase "these liberals" a few times. I guess disagreeing with bob jones university (that institution publishes many of the textbooks used by ACSI schools) makes you a Communist…

Anyway, it will be an interesting case to follow. We'll try and keep you posted.

The cost of the GRE has gone up. I have no idea what I paid for it when I took it in 1994. I only remember coming out of the test session and feeling like maybe I should assume a prone position in the hallway and just pass out there. It was a tiresome, grueling test. Whatever I paid, the scores got me accepted to a doctoral program in linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For a variety of mostly personal reasons, I didn't actually enroll.

I'm sure I didn't pay anything close to that $115 the test cost last year. Fees for the test have doubled since it went from a paper and pencil test to a fully computerized assessment tool. This year it's up another twenty-five bucks – to $140. But as Scholarships.Com recently pointed out, you shouldn't expect that to be all you pay…

When I took the test a decade and a half ago, I sent my scores to six or seven schools: UNC obviously, Cornell, Indiana, Syracuse, and a couple of others. Now the first four are free; be prepared to cough up an extra $15 per school if you want your scores sent to more than four places, though. There's a $50 fee if you have to change test centers after you register. There's a $50 fee to reschedule tests under some circumstances. The Scholarships.Com article points out other hidden charges you may encounter.

The irony is that the GRE isn't much of a predictor of success in graduate school, according to at leasy one source…

I watched the game. Pretty much every minute of it, despite the fact that I'm not really an LSU fan or a Florida Gator. It was a spell binding game.

My interest in the game was mercenary, I suppose. I bleed Orange and White this time of year. I know all the words to Rocky Top and can carry the tune. Pro football is interesting to me primarily because players from the University of Tennessee get drafted and play there after college…

I love SEC football in general. But the real attraction of the LSU-Florida game on October 6 was simple: Florida's loss put number 25 Tennessee back in control of its own fate. If the Volunteers win their remaining conference games (Mississippi State, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, Vandy, and Kentucky) they play for the conference championship.

What puzzles me most about the the game is how coaches and sports writers come up with their polls.

Follow the logic…

LSU plays Florida at Tiger Stadium in Louisiana. With home field advantage, LSU spends most of the game behind and in the last minute or two they take the lead to win the game. If home field advantage is worth just three or four points, LSU and Florida are both about as good as each other. Right? Yet Florida is now ranked 13th by the Associated Press and 14th in the USA Today poll where coaches vote.

South Carolina, who played at LSU two weeks ago and lost by twelve points instead of four (like Florida) is ranked 7th by the AP and 12th, but still ahead of Florida, in the USA Today poll.

So, did you understand the logic? Me neither. Maybe someday there'll be a better system. This week, I would have had a hard time not ranking Florida as the second best team in the nation. Most people would probably disagree with me.

When I look at the other football stuff I've read recently, the rant about Idiot pollsters on the loose makes the most sense.

Probably your college doesn't have a score yet on the Campus Pride's LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index. A total of 103 colleges and universities have actually taken the survey that leads to a score. (LGBT is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.)

The staff of Student Life, which calls itself "the independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878," wish their campus administrators would fill out the survey. They said so in a recent editorial.

A score of three stars (out of a possible five starts) earns an institution a place on the LGBT Honor Roll from Campus Pride, a national gay students organization. So far seven school have earned a perfect score on the survey: Oregon State, Syracuse, Pennsylvania State, UC Berkeley, U of Illinois Chicago, U of Oregon and U of Penn.

The lowest scores have been at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI and Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, VA (both with one star). Five other colleges got one-and-a-half stars:

• Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY
• California University of Pennsylvania in California, PA
• Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH
• Wichita State University in Wichita, KS
• Youngstown State University in Youngstown, OH

The Blogosphere is abuzz with opinions this week about the developing scandal at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has all the makings of a good soap opera: money, sex, privilege, politics, and religion.

Evangelist Oral Roberts started Oral Roberts University in 1963. ORU calls itself a "charismatic university, founded in the fires of evangelism" and says its mission is "to educate the whole person in spirit, mind, and body." It stresses Christian distinctives. ORU is also noted for its architecture. The campus has about 5,300 students.

President Richard Roberts, his wife Lindsey, and their daughter are at the center of the controversy. An Associated Press article carried by USA Today says that President Roberts has become involved in local political activity that would put ORU's status with the Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit institution at risk. The university's first lady stands accused of arranging non-academic scholarships for the children of friends. She has also allegedly been involved in "sending scores of text messages on university-issued cellphones" to individuals described in a lawsuit as "underage males," according to the USA Today piece.

The list of accusations go on and include putting the cost of remodelling the Robert's residence off on the university and using the university's private jet to send their daughter to the Bahamas on a senior trip.

The current public tizzy is being fueled by a lawsuit brought by three former faculty members. They claim that "they were let go after bringing an internal document containing allegations of misconduct by the Roberts family to the attention of the board of regents," blogger Richard Bartholomew says. President Roberts responds that they are suing to get back at him because they were fired and that God has told him to deny their "lurid" accusations…

The Blogosphere opinions run the gamut from cynicism to sanctified indignation, but more were on the cynical side:

• Well, as it turns out, yet another fundamentalist organization (Oral Roberts University) has been exposed as a cynical front for good, old-fashioned profiteering and (underage?) sexploits. – from an Anonymous blogger.
• There must be a bad connection on the hotline between Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts and the Man Upstairs. Somehow Roberts, who is also chief executive of the socially conservative college, got the idea that donations to shape young fundie minds of tomorrow were supposed to go into his bank account. – from Pam Spaulding.
• Interesting times here. The tragedy is the damage to the organization in the eyes of the public no matter what happens in court. – from Phil Cooke, who goes on to say that this crisis could strengthen the university's board, and that that would be good.

Several campuses made it into the news in the last few days with their ongoing efforts to improve campus safety in the wake of the killings in April on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Ball State University has announced plans to test their new emergency text-messaging service. About 3,700 students, faculty, and staff have signed up to participate in the test, according to the Star Press. Nearby Purdue University did a similar test last month and they estimate that their e-mails reached close to 60,000 people within six minutes whereas the text-messaging service reached about 5,000 people within seven minutes.

In Charlottesville, Va., about 150 miles from the site of the April massacre on Virginia Tech's campus, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors is working to implement recommendations from a state panel convened by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. Among the recommendations that UVA has already begun to put in place:

• Keycard locks on classroom doors
• Retrofitting building entrance and hallway doors
  so that they cannot be chained shut
• an emergency text-messaging system
• a campus-wide public address system

St. Bonaventure University in New York also ran a successful campus email alert test last week. The small Catholic school has about 2,000 undergraduates enrolled.

In the last 10 years the University of New Mexico has doubled its freshman enrollment. But getting them is one thing and keeping them is something else. Earlier this month the school announced that it has set a new record for freshman retention: 76.6% of the freshmen in the class of 2010 returned to the college for the 2007-2008 academic year.

Part of the increase in freshman retention at UNM is being credited to a program called Freshman Academic Choices. It includes a service learning component and is designed to help first semester freshmen make the transition from high school.

The university has also instituted a winter intersession to allows students to take a class in between the fall and spring semesters. Twenty intersession classes drew 450 students this past year.

The university would like to see freshman retention rates rise to about 80%.

I read Kari Milchman's October 4th blog and couldn't help but wonder where she took her classes in rhetoric. She's pretty decent at it. Her case, though, is overstated and (I think) she sounds a bit naïve…

In a piece entitled "University for Sale," this is what she said: "Barnard College, which we guess could be dubbed Columbia University's little sister school, is whoring itself out to any major corporation or private sponsor with enough dough to facilitate the school's largest expansion yet…" (Emphasis added.)

Ouch! I'm guessing that Milchman is smart enough to know this is a girl's school. I'm guessing that she's also smart enough to have found some other metaphor, if she'd wanted to. But she didn't…

Barnard College has a 70,000-square-foot building under construction and they're looking for a corporate sponsor to come up with $20 million in exchange for naming rights to the building. The women's college with historic ties to Columbia University says it reserves the right to reject offers if deems problematic or distasteful.

Milchman's piece was for the NY Press. The Sun did a more balanced piece. Barnard is advertising the naming opportunity on the Internet instead of spending hours of advancement office time making the rounds to corporate offices to press the flesh and make a pitch.

The underlying assumption of Milchman's post, however, seems to be that there's something wrong with selling naming rights – even if a college does like Barnard is and reserves the right to reject offers. Wake Forest recently sold the naming rights for its new football stadium to BB&T. The University of South Florida has been involved in a similar deal. Iowa tried to sell a whole campus, I think. Georgia sold off naming rights to every building on a new campus there. It's not like the sell of naming rights is unusual.

I did a stint in the advancement office of a small private college. There was a time not all that long ago when a community member could walk into a small college, lay down some money, and get a seat on the school's governing board. Next thing you know the town's biggest used car dealer or the owner of the oldest hardware store is making academic decisions and helping to hire and fire college presidents because his business has been successful. Now we're just selling advertising – separate from any decision making power over the future of the foreign languages department or the chemistry program.

I hope Barnard College doesn't wind up with a "hooters Building." But personally, I feel better about just selling naming rights than I do about situations where money could get you a seat on the governing board…