Entries for March 2009

A bunch of acceptance rates are out, and it looks like some of the top schools (but not all) had record-low rates this year.

Harvard: A record-low 7 percent of applicants were accepted, down from 7.9 percent last year. That's just 2,046 of 29,112 applicants. The school saw a 6 percent increase in the total number of applicants.

Columbia: The university saw a 13 percent rise in the number of applicants (a record 25,428), resulting in a record-low 9.8 percent acceptance rate this year.

MIT: The school saw a 17 percent increase in applicants, and its admittance rate dropped to a record low of 10 percent, with 1,597 students out of 15,661 applicants admitted.

Brown: In its "most selective year ever," the institution admitted 10.8 percent of its applicants. The number of applications rose 21 percent over last year. In total, 2,708 of 24,988 applicants were admitted.

Dartmouth: The school has admitted 12 percent of its record 18,130 applicants.

Duke: The university accepted a record-low 17 percent of applicants after seeing a 17 percent increase in applications. "We'll be denying and wait-listing people that we may have easily admitted a year or two ago," said the dean of undergraduate admissions. "In terms of talent, broadly defined, this is the best class we've ever seen. And that's made possible by a larger applicant pool."

University of Pennsylvania: The school accepted 17 percent of its applicants this year, roughly the same as the year before.

University of Virginia: 29 percent of applicants were offered admission, compared with 35 percent last year. The total number of applicants rose 17 percent over last year.

University of Nevada-Reno officials submitted proposals last week that outlined what would happen if the school had to cut its budget 20.7 percent, the Nevada Sagebrush reports. Under this scenario, the institution could lose two sports, 25 percent of classes, and its planetarium.

A 20.7 percent cut represents a reduction to 2006 budget levels. If the state cuts the entire higher education budget further than 2006 levels, Nevada would not be eligible for about $123 million of stimulus money.

University officials and Gov. Jim Gibbons have been in a loud and high-profile fight over how massive the cuts to higher education institutions should be. School officials would prefer cuts in single-digit percentages; the governor has proposed reductions of 36 percent, and Gibbons has asked the Obama administration for a waiver from the stimulus requirements. Budget levels from 2006 (an 18.8 percent cut to the entire system) fit snugly between these two constituencies.

At Reno, school officials have already made plans for a 14 percent cut, but "if they went to 20 percent, we're kind of out of options," said the Reno provost. "If we go further than [14 percent], I'm having a hard time figuring out where to go. We are just whacking all over the place." Officials would not name which sports could be affected by a 20.7 percent cut, but they said it would not be football or basketball. As for education, 100 faculty and 20 classified positions could be eliminated, and Reno could save $12 million by cutting about 800 class sections between 2009 and 2011.

Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., shut down at 5 p.m. Saturday because of a norovirus outbreak that has affected more than 100 students since Wednesday, the school reports. All classes and events have been suspended, and students have been asked to stay on campus and avoid congregating in groups to prevent the spread of the virus.

Symptoms of norovirus include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea and last between 24 and 60 hours. Health officials do not believe the outbreak was food-borne and are still searching for the root cause.

The school plans to reopen Wednesday morning.

North Dakota State University, Minnesota State University - Moorhead, and Concordia College have canceled classes until April 6 so students and employees can help with the flood effort, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Concordia turned off its water and sewage systems and closed its campus on Friday after the City of Moorhead advised evacuation of the area the college is located in. The college helped transport and arrange housing for students who could not return home. Concordia football players built dikes to protect houses, and its soccer teams helped protect a neighborhood from a flooding channel, college officials said.

Minnesota State, which is on relatively high ground, remained open even though classes were canceled and on-campus students were urged to go home. About 25 students who had nowhere to go were evacuated to Bemidji State University.

Two MIT police officers have been suspended without pay after they admitted to trashing hundreds of copies of the student newspaper, the Boston Globe reports. Last Tuesday's issue of the Tech had a front-page story about another officer's recent drug trafficking arrest. The story featured a large mug shot of the officer, who is accused of distributing prescription painkillers.

About 400 copies of the twice-weekly paper were recovered from a handful of recycling bins around campus. "They put it in paper recycling," said the Tech's executive editor. "They were kind. It seems pretty polite."

The University of Maryland has raised $80,000 for students who need aid to stay in school, the student newspaper, the Diamondback, reports. The Keep Me Maryland campaign started last month in response to the increasing number of students requesting financial aid, and the money raised will go specifically to returning students. This campaign is part of a larger initiative to raise $350 million toward scholarship funds and $1 billion overall by 2011.

Already the financial aid office has seen a 37 percent increase in the number of requests, and it expects $3 million worth of requests this year. Last year, the school was able to fund only $500,000 of such requests.

The various schools within the University of Florida have begun submitting their worst-case scenario proposals for across-the-board 10 percent budget cuts, the Florida Alligator reports. These proposals will be reviewed by the public and decided upon by the Board or Regents. The school is not planning a universitywide 10 percent cut, but it will use the proposals to determine which schools and departments will be cut to what extent. A rundown of some of the potential damage:

Nursing: The undergraduate program will likely be spared and there are no planned layoffs so far, but nursing could see reduced enrollment if the school does not bring back the same number of temporary faculty. The program would cut $813,000 from its budget, $609,000 of which would come by not filling eight vacant positions (seven professorships and one staff position). The program also would cut five temporary faculty members and an unknown number of student assistant positions.

Business: To help achieve a $2.3 million cut, the business program would lay off five faculty members, saving around $407,000. The school also plans to recoup $1.4 million via donations and revenue from online degree programs.

Medicine: The College of Medicine might be forced to cut $3.8 million, forcing it to lay off seven people and leave 28 positions vacant. The latter move would save about $2 million.

Design, Construction , and Planning: Its proposal would cut about $985,000 and would eliminate two vacant positions and involve layoffs of about six temporary faculty members and four faculty members who would not be eligible for tenure. Cuts would be concentrated mostly in the dean's office.

Journalism: To help cut $909,000, the proposal suggests eight layoffs and would leave empty two vacant positions. The college's Documentary Institute and the master's degree program in documentary film would be eliminated.

Dentistry: The program would have to cut $1.7 million, although a spokeswoman says much of that could be made up via clinical revenues and by attracting more donations and grants. The school does not plan to reduce enrollment and has no layoff plans.

YouTube has launched an education portal that compiles all the video from official university and college partners. Creatively named YouTube Edu, it's not the spot to find drunken frat-party antics, but even PR-sterilized content can still be interesting.

Currently, the University of Minnesota has a stranglehold on video popularity, and with good reason. Check out the Science of Watchmen and the impressively produced video on HIV/AIDS.

In preparation for a possible NCAA men's basketball championship win, the University of Pittsburgh is readying itself for potential rioting on campus after the April 6 final game, the Pitt News reports. The pre-emptive fight against rioting will be led by the university's Celebration Task Force, which was formed just after the Steelers' win at this year's Super Bowl when revelers caused at least $150,000 worth of damage on campus. "I was so disappointed after the Super Bowl," said the dean of students. "[The students] have left me no choice."

The university has instituted a no-tolerance policy for dangerous celebrations and right now is focusing on outreach, reminding students to stay responsible. Expulsion, especially for repeat offenders, is a possibility.

Officials hope to control the potential crush of people by screening the postgame show on a large screen surrounded by barricades and have planned a fireworks show if either the men's or the women's team wins the championship. One tactic considered and rejected: greasing light poles so they can't be climbed.

San Jose State University rejected 4,400 students this year, the first time the school has ever had to turn away qualified students, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Because of budget cuts, the school was forced to cap enrollment this year, enrolling just 29,750, down 9 percent from the previous year. "The situation is unprecedented," said Veril Phillips, San Jose State's vice president for student affairs. "We've never had a situation where there were so many applicants and we were not able to accommodate them."

Because of the school's commitment to local students, all applicants from Santa Clara County were accepted, as were all students who applied before November 20, when the state and school's dire financial situation became more apparent. The school also limited the number of transfer students it allowed in.

Admissions officials have already begun planning for next year in order to prevent the "sledgehammer approach" of this year's rejections, especially because the state's budget problems will most likely not be resolved by then.

Financial aid officials at the University of Montana and Montana Tech are warning students of letters offering financial aid opportunities—especially ones that require a fee to apply, the Montana Kaimin reports.

The Montana Tech's financial aid director, Mike Richardson, says he knows of at least 24 Tech students who have received letters from a company offering "free financial aid money." The application asks for personal information including address, date of birth, parents' occupation, work experience, and school enrollment, as well as a $49 application fee. In general, officials say, students should be wary of any offers that require a fee. "It might be a little bit on the fishy side," Richardson said.

As part of the University of Connecticut's plan to cut $7 million from its budget, it is reducing its library hours by one hour a day, as well as cutting museum hours by 50 percent in some cases, the Daily Campus reports. The move will make only a small dent in the school's cost-cutting goal, saving around $40,000.

The University of Virginia is planning to shut down its public computer labs by the summer of 2011 in order to help the institution cut its budget, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. The school spends $300,000 a year maintaining the labs, although it's hard to predict exactly how much would be saved by eliminating them.

In an explanation published on the university's Web site, information-technology officials say that students' changing habits have rendered the public labs obsolete. A survey conducted last fall revealed that 99 percent of new students brought their own laptops to the campus. And while the labs are still heavily used (students spent 651,900 hours in the labs last year), internal data indicated that 95 percent of the time those students used the lab computers to surf the Web and read and compose text documents—tasks that officials say they could easily do on their own computers.

For students who rely on specialized programs such as such as MatLab, Eclipse, MathCAD, and SPSS, the school said it plans to negotiate licensing agreements so students could run the software on their own laptops through the university network. Officials are also working on logistics for printing and accommodating students without computers.

On top of Concordia College and Minnesota State University - Moorhead, two other schools that anticipate nearby flooding—North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota-Crookston—have canceled class so that students and faculty can assist in sandbagging efforts along the Red and Red Lake rivers.

The towns of Moorhead, Minn., and Fargo (where NDSU is located) expect the Red to crest by late Thursday or early Friday, and Crookston, about 70 miles away, the Red Lake to crest by Friday. City officials have ordered a voluntary evacuation of low-lying areas in Crookston, and those evacuees have been offered shelter at the University of Minnesota-Crookston campus.

Meanwhile students from other North Dakota and Minnesota campuses have driven into flood-affected areas to aid in sandbagging. The University of Minnesota-Morris volleyball team and a dozen other students have gone to Breckenridge, Minn., and Fargo, more than 100 miles away. Additionally, at least 50 University of North Dakota students skipped class, with the blessing of school officials, to head to Fargo to help. Said one UND student, "We wanted to help out our neighbors to the south so hopefully they'll return the favor when the water comes up to Grand Forks."

Fans in hockey-crazed Minnesota have one fewer team to follow after the University of Minnesota-Crookston canceled the school's Division II hockey program, effective immediately, the Crookston Daily Times reports. The school is already bracing for state budget cuts and has struggled to find a conference to play in ever since the Midwest Collegiate Hockey Association decided to go exclusively Division III.

Although there is no total estimate of how much the elimination of the hockey program saves, the team's travel budget alone was $85,000 last year and was expected to rise to $90,000 next season.

In other sports-related news, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively OK'd James Madison University's plan to cut 10 sports. The court refused to hear a request by Equity in Athletics that challenged the JMU decision.

JMU had announced in 2006 it would cut seven men's sports and three women's sports. Getting the ax would be men's archery, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming, and wrestling and women's archery, fencing, and gymnastics. EIA plans to take its claim back to the U.S. District Court.