Entries for December 2008

Now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has gone ahead and quantified that by comparing average SAT scores and grade-point averagesGPAs of athletes with the rest of the college's student body. Not surprisingly, football and men's basketball players came out on the bottom, and some averaged hundreds of points lower on SATs than their classmates.

The Journal-Constitution studied 54 public universities, "including the members of the six major Bowl Championship Series conferences and other schools whose teams finished the 2007-08 season ranked among the football or men's basketball top 25."

Ohio higher education officials are looking to shift the state's higher education funding model to one based partially on performance, a change that could occur as early as next fall, the Post reports. Currently, schools receive aid based solely on enrollment.

Under the proposed model, the state would allot funding based on a 30 percent to 70 percent split between performance and enrollment. "Performance" could be based on the number of students who pass core curriculum courses, graduation rates, and the university's efforts at helping at-risk students. No specific benchmarks have yet been determined.

The Ohio University president supports the plan, saying, "We have to be accountable not only for recruiting students but for retaining them and for graduating them." He added that OU would most likely do well under such a system but said the school does not anticipate an increase in funding because state funding for higher education as a whole is likely to be significantly cut in the near future.

New York University is the latest college to admit being affected by Bernard Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme. In a lawsuit against J. Ezra Merkin, Gabriel Capital LP fund, and Ariel Fund Ltd., the nation's largest private university claims to have lost $24 million in investments tied to Madoff. The complaint, which was filed last week, alleges that the funds invested with Madoff without telling investors or conducting proper due diligence.

Other schools that have lost money in the scandal are Yeshiva, Tufts, and New York Law School.

Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is taking heat for the cushy compensation package she received even as her school laid off 98 employees, the Albany Times Union reports. Jackson, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a possible replacement for Hillary Clinton in the Senate, was given a $1.3 million compensation package in 2006-07, as well as access to the presidential residence and a 36-acre Adirondack home that the school bought for $450,000. She also makes around $1.3 million for work on outside corporate boards, such as IBM, Marathon Oil, FedEx, Medtronic, NYSE Euronext, and PSEG, according to the Times Union.

At least one professor has suggested Jackson take a pay cut, pointing to other presidents who have done so already.

The layoffs are of particular concern since they tend to be rare (universities generally lean on hiring freezes and travel cuts first), and Rensselaer's layoffs have mostly been doled out to lower-wage workers.

Louisiana State University may owe $750,000 for three years of back taxes for meal plans, the Daily Reveille reports. For years, LSU and other schools in the state enjoyed a special meal plans exemption from the 4 percent sales tax, but some time ago, the state legislature suspended that exemption. No one at the schools noticed—until now.

"I was shocked," LSU's associate vice chancellor for accounting said. "Now we have this huge tax bill we were told we weren't going to have."

Colleges will start charging the 4 percent sales tax on meal plans in January. The tax will cost current LSU students an extra $37.50 for the spring semester, but officials say it is impossible to track down students from previous years. The university may end up having to pay those costs.

Meanwhile, the University of Louisiana system says the private food-service providers—Aramark, Chartwells, and Sodexo—should be liable for the back taxes. "We're not the provider of the service," [the UL system vice president for business and finance] said. "We're not providing the food."

A quick rundown on what this contest actually is. Since the beginning of the week, I've been accepting nominations for four categories:

• Story of the Year
• Nonstory of the Year
• Newsmaker of the Year
• Best Alternative Media Outlet

After some undisclosed amount of time, I will take all those nominated topics and put them up for vote by the population at large. Whatever/whoever gets the most votes wins. I will admit that the "winners" of the first three categories tend not to care, but this is apparently a really big deal for some of the competitors in the last. This is for you, so please nominate yourself.

If you're still confused about what counts as what, read below:

Story of the Year: This is the biggest college story that happened in 2008. Last year's winner was the visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia. This year, I imagine most things involving Barack Obama would fit in this category, as would the epic FAIL that college endowments became. Other important stories include the Northern Illinois shooting that left six dead in February and how the economy is affecting admissions and financial aid.

Nonstory of the Year: Enough of that serious stuff. What in 2008 was utterly unimportant but still captivated our hearts and minds? The Berkeley tree-sitters won last year and could technically be in the running again since their protest mercifully ended in September. Some other worthless bits of college-related news: how many schools Sarah Palin went to and that strange Yale art project that somehow involved abortions (Real? Fake? Who cares! It's art).

Newsmaker of the Year: A guy just elected president whose greatest fans sometimes seem to confuse him with Jesus comes to mind, but we'll humor the rest of the contenders with a vote anyway. Other ideas include Tom Friedman (pied-in-the-face at Brown) and Sarah Palin (target of scorn and ridicule, also had her E-mail hacked by a college kid).

Best Alternative Media Outlet: For the past two years, this has by far been the most popular category. It's unclear what the parameters are, but basically anything that involves campus news and is not the traditional print college newspaper is OK. I'll accept blogs (both newspaper staffed and outsider), podcasts, Tumblrs, robust Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, or whatever. The point is: We're so hip, anything goes.

This also is the category with the most voting irregularities, so I'm always looking for ideas on how to make this more fair. Also, a note to an unnamed liberal arts school in the Northeast: I'm sorry that a blog coming out of a giant state school (On the Record's University of Michigan blog) beat yours last year. I can't help that its student body is something like a gazillion times larger than yours. Maybe I should break down the votes per capita, but that sounds like a lot of work for me. I'm still open to suggestions, though.

Any more confusion on what this is all about? Leave comments or E-mail me at papertrail@usnews.com.

The Bernard Madoff story has clawed its way into college news, with Tufts, Yeshiva, and New York Law School funds tied to Ascot Partners, a Florida hedge fund with nearly all its $1.8 billion invested with Madoff.

Yeshiva is by far the worst off, reporting it likely lost $110 million of its endowment to the giant Ponzi scheme, which is about 8 percent of its assets. Madoff was treasurer of Yeshiva's Board of Trustees and chairman of the board of its Sy Syms School of Business. He resigned from both positions several weeks ago.

Tufts has also reported it lost $20 million through Ascot Partners, and New York Law School reports similarly large losses. The loss is 2 percent of the university's endowment and officials say they are participating in the investigation and will attempt to recover the losses.

A number of Harvard Medical School researchers, meanwhile, have lost their grants, thanks to ties to Madoff's firm. All grants from the Florida-based Picower Foundation, which was funding millions in diabetes and medical research, were cut off after the foundation—which has a nearly $952 million portfolio—announced it would close its doors because of Madoff-related losses. The researchers are hoping their work has progressed enough for federal funds but are still worried their effort might all be for naught. Said one researcher: "It really is a travesty."

Dartmouth and Yale have reported record numbers of early admission applicants, reflecting a trend seen early in the fall. Yale admitted 13.4 percent of its nonbinding early action applicants this fall, significantly lower than its 18.1 percent rate last year. Yale both had an increased amount of interest in its early action program and was simultaneously scaling back its acceptances because of an unusually high enrollment rate from last year. It had 5,557 applicants this year, up from last year's 4,888, but it also admitted just 742 students, 143 fewer than 2007. Yale sent twice as many rejection letters and deferred 47.6 percent to the regular round, down from 65 percent from last year.

Dartmouth received 1,550 applications for its binding early decision program and accepted 401 of those students, just two more than the prior year, even though the number of applicants went up 9 percent. Dartmouth also reports an 8 percentage point increase in financial aid requests over last year.

Cornell has similarly seen a 10 percent increase in the number of binding early decision applications, from 3,094 to 3,405. Apparently the number of admits also went up, because acceptance rates held relatively steady around 37 percent. However, the university reports an increase in denials (similar to Yale's), from 34.84 to 40.23, while the percentage of applicants deferred into the regular admissions pool declined from 25.89 to 21.53.

Did you know that because we've hit our third time around, we can now call it "annual"? Effective immediately, I'm accepting nominations for four categories of Paper Trail's Best of College Newspapers contest.

• Story of the year
• Nonstory of the year
• Newsmaker of the year
• Best Alternative Media Outlet

I've axed the "Best Columnist" category because, honestly, I don't read student newspaper columns, I almost never mention them in the blog, and cutting one out saves me a lot of time.

On the other hand, I'm leaving A LOT of time for nominations, mostly because I'm smart enough to realize college kids are mostly at home for the holidays right now—and who reads blogs when they're not in class? Nerds, that's who, and there aren't that many of you. Leave suggestions in the comments or mail them to papertrail@usnews.com.

Anyway, because there won't be much news coming out of the higher education world over break (I hope), I'll be posting updates about the contest nominations throughout the next few weeks. Voting will begin sometime in January (I can't get more specific than that: I want to keep you tuning in.)

The prize is strictly intangible (pride, bragging rights), and we all know the real winner is Paper Trail (hooray page views). Ready. Set. Nominate!

The Recording Industry Association of America confirmed Friday it will no longer pursue mass lawsuits against copyright infringers, which includes a significant number of college students, the Wall Street Journal reports. The RIAA, which has pursued about 35,000 people since 2003, said it is abandoning its longtime strategy—which critics say did little except create a public relations nightmare—and will likely seek out partnerships and cooperation with Internet-service providers.

Some preliminary arrangements made with ISPs include forwarding warnings via the ISP to those heavily engaged in illegal file-sharing to ask them to stop. If they do not, the ISP may cut off service.

The RIAA may still sue those who are particularly heavy uploaders or ignore multiple warnings.

To the dismay of a number of Manhattan property owners, New York state officials have cleared the way for Columbia University to expand its campus, the Columbia Spectator reports. The vote by the Empire State Development Corp. allows Columbia to use eminent domain to clear out a handful of owners who have refused to sell their property in a largely industrial part of western Harlem.

The expansion has been opposed by some residents, business owners, and community leaders for years, and the most recent ruling has been called "unjust and cruel" by the expansion's most harsh critics.

In July, the development corporation labeled the area "blighted." Consequently, the schoolrecently argued that its construction project would benefit the public. School officials say the project will create 14,000 construction jobs and 6,000 new university jobs.

At least one critic of the plan, who may be forced to sell his property to the school at a predetermined price, accuses Columbia of buying up property in the area prior to the July ruling and purposefully neglecting it to make the case for eminent domain.

Those protesting the eminent domain claim have pledged to contest the ruling.

Protesting New School students heightened their overnight protest on Thursday and ended up in a foot chase with President Bob Kerrey. The New York Times writes:

A little after 11:30 p.m., Mr. Kerrey emerged from a university building on Fifth Avenue south of 14th Street to a sea of a few hundred protesters chanting for his resignation. As Mr. Kerrey walked down Fifth Avenue toward 12th Street, about 30 protesters began following him, some of them shouting insults.

As the crowd's pace quickened, so did Mr. Kerrey's. Then, Mr. Kerrey, who lost a part of his leg in Vietnam and wears a prosthesis, broke into a run. The protesters gave chase. Mr. Kerrey turned left on a cross street and ducked into a brownstone.

At some point in the confrontation, a protester threw a tomato at Mr. Kerrey.

The demonstration began Wednesday evening. The students have demanded the ouster of Kerrey and a number of other top officials. Kerrey, a former U.S. senator, has been criticized over his management style, his nonacademic background, and turnover in the New School's provost office.

University of California Santa Cruz students are home on break, but vandals on campus had a wild night Wednesday, damaging up to 20 university cars, breaking windows of buildings and vehicles, spraying graffiti in residence halls, and laying down road spike strips, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. Officials have no suspects. Police said the graffiti expressed opposition to the prison system, law enforcement, and campus growth.

The day he announced Yale's endowment had fallen about 25 percent since June, President Richard Levin told the Yale Daily News that "this is not the end of the world." Yale's decline, which was similar to percentages reported by Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Michigan, puts its endowment at about $17 billion, down from $22.9 billion. According to the president's 2,000-word letter, a number of high-profile construction projects, such as a revamped School of Management campus, would be delayed indefinitely. Levin said Yale will not impose a formal hiring freeze or reduce financial aid but would restrain salary growth. Also, certain parts of the university will be expected to cut 5 percent of their costs.

About 50 applicants to Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management were told they had been accepted into the business school when, in fact, they had been rejected, the Chicago Tribune reports. One affected applicant, who had already eaten his celebratory dinner, said, "It's like you won the lottery and had the rug pulled out from under you." Officials describe the snafu as a "technological glitch" and will be refunding the $235 application fee to those who were falsely told that they were admitted.