Universities Weblog

A report by the Rethinking Student Aid Study Group at the non-profit CollegeBoard has blasted the U.S. financial aid system, calling it "peicemeal" and "rickety."

"There's a growing recognition that the federal student aid system is simply too complicated," The report's co-author Sandy Baum told the Christian Science Monitor. Baum is an economics professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "We're seeing proposals in Congress; we're seeing the Department of Education talk about simplification…. People are really ready to do something more dramatic to the system."

"We believe that the most important purpose of student aid is to expand the educational opportunities available to those young people and adults who face financial barriers to college enrollment and success," the report's authors said at the CollegeBoard website. In their estimation, the federal government is failing to do that despite spending $86 billion a year on financial aid at the moment.

© cydneycap

Since the start of primary season, the amount of misinformation available about the voting rights of college students has increased exponentially. Last week the Chronicle of Higher Ed carried a news blog about the continuing controversy in swing states like Colorado – where a Republican county clerk "was criticized for falsely stating that students could not register to vote in Colorado if their parents had claimed them as dependents in another state."

The truth is simple. You CAN vote in your college community. Or, you can vote by absentee ballot in your hometown. You just can't do both.

© andrewdavid89

NPR ran an excellent story on campus mental health last week. And while it was set on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, the outreach the story describes could serve as a model for successfully dealing with mental health issues on any campus.

The story quotes Richard Kadison, a college mental health at Harvard University, who says that the stress of the transition to college can bring out depression and other problems. In addition, he says, "more people with diagnoses are going to college because they get treated earlier, and with treatment people are able to get to college, students who never would have been able to get to college in the past."

How does a campus deal successfully with that? Listen to the story here.

© lawmurray

It may well be. Kaplan released a report last week in which a survey of 320 college admissions officers showed that about 10% of them look at the social networking sites of high school seniors who've applied to their college. The news is not good…

In 38% of the cases where an admission officer looked at an applicants Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, or some similar page it had a negative impact on the student's application. In 37% of the cases it had no impact. And in only 25% of the cases the student's social networking page had a positive impact on the application process.

The percentage of admissions officers who look at an applicant's social networking site goes up for professional schools. About 14% of law school admissions offices and 15% of medical school admissions officers look at social netowrking sites that their applicants have online, according to Kaplan.

© pseudoplacebo

The federal Pell Grant program is staring into the face of a huge shortfall for the 2008-09 academic year, according to the NY Times. The grant program that provides assistance for college on the basis of economic need could see a short fall of as much as $6 billion for the academic year just now starting.

A number of factors have come together to create the problem. The Chronicle of Higher Education points to the increased size of the Pell Grant as one factor contributing to the short fall.

© Tracy O

Duke University is introducing an ambitious new model for its global MBA program, according to Business Week. The new model will have students moving between campuses in Shanghai, Dubai, London, St. Petersburg in Russia, Johannesburg, and New Delhi in a fairly radical reworking of the global MBA concept.

The program is described more fully in a statement released by Duke.

"With the simultaneous launch of our new international locations, Fuqua will be the first truly global business school, shaped and driven by the fundamental issues of our time," said Blair Sheppard, dean of Duke's Fuqua School of Business. "The depth of our activities in each location ensures we will become truly embedded in each region. By engaging with these regions through education and research, we will be able to examine the world's opportunities and problems, explore interdependencies between regions, create solutions to address world issues, and prepare practitioners to be change agents and informed leaders."

© phoosh

"Although coed dorms can be fun, they also can be hotbeds of sexual harassment."

Naomi Rockler-Gladen has a gift for understatement…

In a recent piece at Suite101, Naomi talks about how to recognize sexual harassment. While catcalls and sexual propositions are easy to recognize as sexual harassment, dorm residents need to understand that conversations that make you uncomfortable can also constitute sexual harassment once you've asked that a topic be avoided around you.

Naomi goes into some detail in explaining how to identify sexual harassment After all, you can't report it if you can't identify it. And sexual harassment is, well, illegal. Her article is worth reading. You can read the whole article here.

© lucianvenutian

OMG. Talk about radical…

University Business has a post today about how the chancellor of Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities "has stepped beyond the state's new indoor smoking ban and barred students, employees and visitors from lighting up anywhere on campus-even outdoors."

Everyone in the state seems either really happy or super pissed.

An AP report says that the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees plans to fight the ban. They represent about 2,500 maintenance, dining hall, skilled labor and clerical workers.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's blog had reports on some of the rather emotional reactions to the new rule…

© Larsz

My certification as a teacher includes learning disabilities and I've written about the topic occasionally on my education blog, The Green Cup, and at Suite 101. So when I saw Aaron Smiths piece, Helpful Hints for Students with Learning Disabilities, I was interested…

Smith gives some good advice: "The biggest piece of advice that I can give an LD student is to be a strong self-advocate. Know your strengths and weaknesses and feel comfortable self-disclosing this information to an Admissions Counselor during a college interview."

You can read the whole blog post here.

© Tostie14

Okay, I don't know who the national champs will be yet. But I know who they won't be: the Ohio State Buckeyes.

If Ohio State had played a halfway competitive game and lost at USC, it might be possible to pretend that they still had a change. Now all year long we're going to hear about how weak their Big Ten schedule is and how they lost to the only real football team they played outside the Big Ten. After all, Youngstown State, Ohio, and Troy don't really count.

© ronnie44052