Entries for December 2009

I'm trying to think of a more obvious result from a report than this one: Prospective college athletes have a better shot than nonathletes at sneaking through admissions without meeting all the requirements. Outside of a study finding that Americans don't like the BCS bowl system, I can't think of anything less shocking.

That's the cynical world we (or maybe just I) live in.

A cognitively disabled student who has battled his Michigan college for campus housing for more than a year has finally gotten his wish. A federal court ruled that Oakland University in Rochester must allow Micah Fialka-Feldman, who has problems reading and writing, to live on campus even if he is not on the path toward graduation, the Oakland Post reports.

The case made national news, drawing the attention of disabled-rights advocates. The university denied Fialka-Feldman campus housing in 2007 because he wasn't in a degree-granting program, the Detroit News reports. Fialka-Feldman studies in Oakland's OPTIONS program, which allows students who normally wouldn't get into the school to take ungraded classes. The 25-year-old Michigan native still pays fees comparable to tuition.

Mark Mangino resigned from his head football coaching job at the University of Kansas a few weeks ago after allegations of verbal and physical abuse of his players surfaced. And to keep the theme going this bowl season, Texas Tech's football coach, Mike Leach, is headed to the unemployment line behind Mangino for similar reasons.

Texas Tech fired Leach on Wednesday, several outlets have reported. Texas Tech's student newspaper, the Daily Toreador, which ceased publication for its winter break, hasn't confirmed the firing as of early Wednesday afternoon but did acknowledge the reports of Leach's dismissal on its Twitter page. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal had nothing about the firing on its website at the time of publishing this post.

Texas Tech officials reportedly handed Leach's lawyer a termination letter just before the two sides were set to meet in court to discuss Leach's suspension from coaching, ESPN.com reports. Leach had signed an extension through 2012.

Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach is known for being a character. The 48-year-old gained national notoriety during the 2007 college football season when he criticized Big 12 officials and, in turn, received a whopping $10,000 fine for his comments. Leach also made headlines for his comments about Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee, who had entered the NFL draft, saying the Dallas Cowboys coaches liked McGee more than his coaches at Texas A&M did.

Obviously, none of those comments went over well. Leach's mouth and personality already have him on a short leash at Texas Tech. News of his suspension by Texas Tech for alleged player abuse only makes matters worse. As of now, Leach will not coach in the Alamo Bowl on Saturday, when Texas Tech faces Michigan State, reports the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

OK, people. We are within six days of the deadline for all nominations for the Paper Trail end-of-year awards. We started the process last week, and this post serves as your reminder. If you don't make nominations, you won't be able to vote for that candidate.

We're looking for nominations and candidates for four awards: Story of the Year, Newsmaker of the Year, Nonstory of the Year, and Alternative Media Outlet of the Year. Last year was the year of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, rising tuition, and blogs. Has 2009 been much different? Send us your picks, and we'll set up polls so that everyone can vote.

It only makes sense that colleges are seeing a rise in the popularity of sustainability and green majors. Climate change, energy, and the environment are hot-button issues, and students are interested in studying them.

USA Today reports that colleges created more than 100 majors, minors, and certificates in energy and sustainability-related programs this year. Just three programs were added in 2005, the report says.

"There's a great perception that there's a sweet spot with energy to do good and do well, and it appears to be the place of job growth," Rob Melnick, executive dean of the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, tells USA Today.

Arizona State's program has more than 600 students who have declared sustainability a major. Illinois State University has 65 majors in renewable energy, the report says. MIT and the University of California–Berkeley, among many others, have also seen more students drawn to sustainability programs. And with issues like "Climategate" making waves nationally, the interest in environmental topics is likely to continue.

[See "green" careers that are among America's Best Careers 2010.]

What is it with the University of Florida and coaches changing their minds? A few years ago, Florida's two-time national championship-winning head basketball coach Billy Donovan left Florida for an NBA job, only to return a few days later.

Now, Florida has another coach taking the Gainesville school on a roller-coaster ride: Urban Meyer. The highly accomplished, highly respected football coach resigned from his post on Saturday, citing serious health concerns. Speculation about who would replace Meyer and where the 45-year-old coach might end up in the future flew. Then, Meyer changed his mind.

The University of Texas has a big moneymaker coming in 2010. You know, the BCS National Championship game, which has an expected payout of more than $31 million. But it turns out that Texas making bank from the BCS title game is a lot like Bill Gates making money from a new skyrocketing stock.

Why? Well, the University of Texas program is the most valuable in college football, Forbes reports. The team generated $82 million last season. The biggest bits of the breakdown are astonishing: $33 million in ticket sales, $30 million from donations, $1 million from Nike, and close to $1 million in sponsorship payments from Coca-Cola and Gatorade. All those numbers add up to Texas being the most valuable team in college football, worth a whopping $119 million, the report says.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says it defends and sustains "individual rights at American colleges and universities." Well, FIRE is taking up a new issue, and it could get sticky.

FIRE wrote a letter to Yale University that rebukes the school for a decision it made earlier this year, the Yale Daily News reports. Controversy swirled around T-shirts that the Freshman Class Council made before Yale's football game against Harvard. The shirts bore a quotation from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel: "I think of all Harvard men as sissies." Yale's LGBT Co-Op said the word "sissies" was a gay slur and asked for its removal from the T-shirt, and Yale and the Freshman Class Council agreed.

Stevens Institute of Technology and its president are in a heap of trouble with the state of New Jersey. New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram says the Hoboken school is in desperate need of reform.

New Jersey is suing Stevens President Harold J. Raveché, accusing him of plundering the school's endowment and receiving $1.8 million in illegal low-interest loans for vacation homes, the New York Times reports. Raveché's salary has tripled over a decade (he received $1.1 million last year), and the lawsuit says that the school hid its financial distress in multiple sets of books, the report says.

"We found extensive misconduct going back years, a pattern of misinformation to the board and misuse of the endowment," Milgram said in an interview with the Times this month.

The IRS is also conducting its own investigation, the Times says. The IRS says Stevens paid $750,000 in penalties and unpaid taxes last year for several of its spinoff technology companies, the report says. Meanwhile, the state's suit says Stevens has borrowed more than $40 million from its endowment since 2000.

Stevens officials and Raveché's lawyer declined comment.

Plenty of eyes were glued to the proceedings in Pittsburgh, where Mayor Luke Ravenstahl had proposed a 1 percent tuition tax for all students attending college in the Steel City. Along with the Providence, R.I., student fees ($150 per semester per student) that were implemented in the spring, Pittsburgh could have been the tipping point for a nationwide movement to tax college students in some way.

Don't expect Pittsburgh to be the test dummy: The city reached an agreement with one nonprofit and two universities­ to help solve the city's growing pension problems, the Pitt News reports. Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and nonprofit healthcare provider Highmark agreed to contribute more to the city to avoid the tuition tax. Ravenstahl calls it the New Pittsburgh Coalition.

"This is a leap of faith for all of us," Ravenstahl said of his decision to scrap the tax. "The future of our city and our citizens is riding on it."

Meanwhile, Pitt Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Robert Hill told the Pitt News that students helped defeat the tax idea.

"Students played an enormous role in fighting this tax," Hill said in an E-mail. "The student activism in this antitax campaign is yet another example of the way students have helped the city's progress."

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd has a vested interest in passing the hotly debated healthcare bill in the Senate. Not only does Dodd, a high-ranking Democrat, desperately want healthcare reform, but he also wants $100 million for his state's hospitals.

His favorite destination for the cash would be UConn, where Dodd hopes the teaching hospital will be updated, the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports. The report says that several academic medical centers could compete for the money if the bill passes, and the language in the bill requires that the money goes to a facility "affiliated with an academic health center." That medical center must be at a public research university in the United States "that contains a state's sole public academic medical and dental school," the report says.

The Hartford Courant reports that UConn will go hard after the money.

"We very much appreciate Senator Dodd's willingness to offer up this proposal and we can't thank him enough for all his hard work on behalf of the state and the University of Connecticut," UConn President Michael Hogan said in a written statement. "We are currently looking at the language in the bill and are hopeful that this will become law so that we can apply for the grant. Without question, UConn has a compelling case to make for awarding this funding to our institution.

It's the time of the year when people dole out awards and honors for things that occurred over the past 12 months. We're joining the show: We're looking for nominations for our fourth annual end-of-year awards. The list includes Story of the Year, Newsmaker of the Year, Alternative Media Outlet of the Year, and Best Nonstory of the Year.

In previous years, we've handed out these awards after your voting. But first, we need candidates for the 2009 awards. So, by category, let's get the nominations rolling in. Send all choices to papertrail@usnews.com. We'd like to have all nominations in our possession by January 4. Once we have those, we'll start the voting on January 8, leaving it up for a week to get a totality of votes.

When kids apply to college and the admissions period rolls around, households tend to get pretty tense. Everyone wants to know where the high school senior got in and where he or she didn't. But imagine the college admissions process for quadruplets. Then, imagine all four quadruplets getting accepted to the same school.

The New York Times reports that 18-year-olds Ray, Kenny, Martina, and Carol Crouch were all accepted to Yale University as part of the school's early application process. It's the first time in anyone's memory that quadruplets were accepted at Yale, the report says.

The quadruplets, who were born more than two months premature, rank between 13 and 46 in a class of 632 at Danbury High School in Connecticut. All four had "sky-high SAT scores," the report says.

There is one caveat: The Crouches aren't sure that they'll attend the New Haven, Conn., school. Financial aid will play a major role in their college choice. But for now, the sheer excitement that comes with such unique news has center stage in the Crouch household.

Going to a bowl is a big deal in college football. It means a team has finished its season at .500 or better, and the bowl game is the sweet payoff for winning at least six regular-season games. In going to a bowl, teams get a nice week (usually somewhere warm) and a chunk of cash.

But what if bowls aren't the cash cows they're supposed to be? Turns out some schools lose boatloads of money during bowl season, the San Diego Tribune reports. The biggest loss of money comes when schools purchase tickets in bulk for an upcoming bowl, only to find limited fan interest in attending. The bulk ticket purchases by schools are guaranteed when the deal to include a school in a specific bowl game is made.

[Check out the Worst Bowl Sponsors.]

Ohio State University and the Big Ten lost $1 million in failed ticket sales for last year's Fiesta Bowl. Western Michigan University lost more than $400,000 last year when the team sold only 548 of its already purchased 11,000 tickets to the Texas Bowl. In all, the Tribune found that schools and conferences lost $15.53 million because of the ticket guarantees last year.

So much for the lucrative bowl deals, right? Experts say that many bowls wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the ticket-buy guarantees. And we wonder why the Knight Commission says the current costs of college athletics are unsustainable.

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