Online college applications are growing more popular every year—more than half of prospective students used Internet forms to seek admission in 2004—and the Web seems especially popular with people applying for early decision. At the University of Virginia, 89 percent of early-decision applicants used the Web this year.

For at least some students, the decision to apply online is a financial one: George Washington University, for example, offers a $20 discount on its application fee to anyone who chooses Web forms over paper ones. (The Cavalier Daily)

If Google is in fact taking over the world, as many tech-watchers claim, the company is leaving plenty of the spoils for Stanford University: The institution has turned its 1.8-million shares in the company into $336-million.

Stanford netted $15.7-million in August 2004, when it sold about one-tenth of its shares at Google’s initial public offering. And by selling more of its stock in Google to undisclosed buyers earlier this year, the university increased that figure more than twentyfold. (Associated Press)

When professors beg students to take Web sites like Wikipedia with a grain of salt, this is what they’re talking about: John Seigenthaler Sr., a journalist and onetime administrative assistant to Robert F. Kennedy, says he was smeared by a false biography posted to the online encyclopedia.

The biography, which sat online for more than four months, said that Mr. Seigenthaler had been suspected of involvement in the Kennedy assassinations, and it incorrectly stated that he lived in Russia for around 13 years. Those claims were made by an anonymous author—one of many such scribes who edit entries on the Web site, which allows any Web surfer to create and alter material.

Wikipedia officials have removed the false claims from Mr. Seigenthaler’s biography, and they’ve added a paragraph on the saga to the article about him. But Mr. Seigenthaler says similar incidents will become all too...

Hand scanners, electronic fingerprint readers, even retina scanners are increasingly in use at colleges to identify people seeking access to campus buildings. Proponents of biometric technology say it offers security and efficiency, and can also help colleges control access to computers and networks. But it is costly, and skeptics worry that it may invade the privacy of students and employees. Are such concerns overblown? Do the advantages of biometric technology outweigh its risks? The Chronicle hosted a live online discussion today.

The University of Pennsylvania has charged at least one student with sexual harassment and misuse of electronic resources after he posted pictures on the Internet that show students apparently having sex while standing beside a large window in one of the university’s high-rise dormitories. But does taking pictures of a public sex act count as harassment? Has the university overreacted? Share your thoughts. (The Chronicle, free link)

Women are something of a rarity in collegiate robotics programs, so those that have chosen to enroll often find themselves acting as ambassadors to their gender. At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities—which boasts five women among 20 students at its Center for Distributed Robotics—three female students participate at summer camps and appear at local schools, encouraging young women to study technology and science. (Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder)

The Record Industry Association of America finally got Grokster and i2hub to shut down, but that doesn’t mean it has run out of collegiate song-swapping suspects to sue. Network users at 12 different colleges were among 754 people named in the industry’s latest batch of antipiracy suits, filed today.

The lawsuit campaign might be scaring some people straight, but it still isn’t generating much positive publicity for record studios, as a spoof from The Onion, the popular parody newspaper, points out.

In an attempt to lure residents and businesses back to New Orleans, public officials plan to make it the nation’s first major city with a comprehensive, free, wireless Internet network. Other cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, are plotting wireless networks of their own, but New Orleans may get one sooner—10 square miles have already been covered so that municipal agencies can more easily coordinate their hurricane-recovery efforts.

Instead of outsourcing the network-management duties, as Philadelphia and San Francisco have proposed doing, New Orleans plans to run the network itself. That may infuriate cable operators and phone companies, who have objected strongly to citywide wireless proposals. The companies fear that such a municipal project will take a bite out of their networking market share. (CNET News)

A communications expert plugs the Web mammoth’s Library Project into his search algorithm, and fear and doubt are his top two results. By Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. (The Chronicle, subscription required)

How much office space does an online university need? More than 60 square meters (or about 645 square feet), according to Japan’s education ministry.

A panel convened by the ministry has come out against the formation of Asahi Internet University, a proposed institution that would offer graduate-level courses on the Web. The university’s headquarters—the second floor of a house owned by the head of its formative committee—are too small to sustain the operation, the panel said, even though Asahi officials argued that all of their meetings and conferences would be held online. (The Japan Times)