COURSES THEY'D LIKE TO SEE: Experts propose subjects that might come to light if colleges dropped their ivory-tower pretensions and really applied themselves.

SENIOR SWABBERS: Five retired professors from the College of Wooster are volunteering as janitors at a free clinic for people who lack health insurance.

WAR FOR FUN: A former North Vietnamese general surprised a librarian at Youngstown State University by buying 100 copies of a military board game he created.

PEER REVIEW: Georgetown University hires two professors to start its first major in music, in 2005. ... The University of Chicago promoted a professor of classics and political science to be dean of humanities. ... Morris Brown College has named a successful former president to the job, in the hope of winning back its accreditation.

SYLLABUS: Students in "Forensic Accounting," at Central Michigan University, work with IRS agents to create scenarios of real-world evidence-gathering.

LABOR WATCH: Some foreign students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are protesting a new fee that they say is discriminatory. ... The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association held their annual conclaves together as they galvanize their memberships to oust President Bush in November. ... A strike-authorization vote has been set for professors at the University of Hawaii. ... Faculty members at the University of the Virgin Islands are seeking to make their chapter of the American Association of University Professors into a union.

OUT OF BOUNDS: The U.S. Army said intelligence agents who questioned students and staff members about a conference on Islam at the University of Texas at Austin overstepped their authority.

VERBATIM: Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh whose new book is about losing legal battles but contributing to social justice in the process, talks about the meaning of success and failure in an American context.

NOTA BENE: In writing a book about a photographer, a professor of English was confronted with a subject intent on subterfuge.

HOT TYPE: Bristling at their portrayal as outmoded, pricey, and unfairly restrictive, 48 nonprofit publishing arms of scientific and medical societies formed a united front against the increasingly popular movement to make scientific papers available free online.

WHAT THEY'RE READING ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: a list of best-selling books.

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS

• CONTROVERSIAL PROVISION: The U.S. Senate approved a budget resolution after deleting a controversial measure that would have changed the way the maximum Pell Grant is set.
  

REASSURANCES GIVEN: A Colorado state legislator dropped legislation that was intended to protect college students from retaliation by professors who disagreed with their political or religious views.

INTO THE TROUGH: U.S. Sen. Pete V. Domenici, long a vocal supporter of the National Institutes of Health, called those pushing for more spending on the agency "pigs."

LEADERSHIP RESOLVED: Rockland Community College finally has just one president, following a year in which a battle over governance left it with two.

CLASH OVER REFINANCING: Congressional Democrats blasted a Republican proposal that would diminish the appeal of consolidating student loans.

OUT OF BOUNDS: The U.S. Army said intelligence agents who questioned students and staff members about a conference on Islam at the University of Texas at Austin overstepped their authority.

WIDENING AN EMBARGO: The U.S. Treasury Department barred about 70 American medical professors, doctors, and other scholars from traveling to Cuba to attend an international conference.

HISTORICAL INQUIRY: Brown University is continuing to explore the institution's ties to slavery and whether reparations should be made to descendants of slaves.

PLAGIARISM AND A PRESIDENT: Central Connecticut State University is considering how to react to revelations that its president used parts of someone else's work in an article he wrote for a newspaper.

PEER REVIEW: Georgetown University hires two professors to start its first major in music, in 2005. ... The University of Chicago promoted a professor of classics and political science to be dean of humanities. ... Morris Brown College has named a successful former president to the job, in the hope of winning back its accreditation.

A GRAPH DEPICTS pension money in the stock market.

HARDLY ANY DIFFERENCE: Professors often say it takes far more time to teach a course online than it does in a classroom, but a study says the complaint may be all in their heads.

GEEK CELEBRATION: On National Internet2 day, 35 universities held demonstrations of cutting-edge uses for the backbone computer network they have been building for eight years.

TO ERR IS HUMAN: A much-hyped robot race across the Mojave Desert, sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department, ended when no vehicle could go even eight miles.

BLOCKED BLOGS: Professors' personal Web pages at the University of Birmingham, in England, will be taken down unless they are proved to be related to "legitimate university business."

MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR LAWSUIT: A former student sued Rogers State University after an Oklahoma judge said it had wrongfully expelled him on charges of computer hacking.

BOXED IN: New dorms cater to students' every need -- except, perhaps, friendship, writes Witold Rybczynski.

STILL A PROBLEM: The latest report on student drinking by the College Alcohol Study says campus officials treat the risk of consumption differently at different types of colleges.

CHILLING OUT ON THE GRIDIRON: From the university that gave the world Gatorade comes now an invention that blows cold air on football players' shoulders.

RISING OUT OF REACH? A controversy over proposed tuition increases at Canada's largest law school has focused national attention on the rapid rate of growth in the cost of legal education.

TEACHING AND RESEARCH SUPPORT: China pledged to help Pakistan establish a university for traditional Chinese medicine and herbal remedies.

A MATTER OF TUITION INCOME: British undergraduates could eventually be outnumbered by foreign students at the University of Oxford, under proposals in an internal report.

DISPUTE OVER PAY, WORKLOAD, TENURE: Professors at Bishop's University, Quebec's only English-language college outside Montreal, went on strike last week.

WIDENING AN EMBARGO: The U.S. Treasury Department barred about 70 American medical professors, doctors, and other scholars from traveling to Cuba to attend an international conference.

• Changes in Education in Arab Emirates
  
  

• Faculty Members and Publishable Units
  
  

• Whose Money Should Support Tobacco Research?
  
  

• CARNEGIE MELLON U.: A new dormitory teaches students and the university how to be "green."
  

• POMONA COLLEGE: The Smith Campus Center is handsome and tasteful. But students don't like it.
  

• MARYLAND INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART: A luminescent glass building for digital-art classes rises from a cramped site.
  

• U. OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE: Its dramatic atrium and copper accents make John V. Croul Hall an architecturally fascinating place for research.
  

• UTAH STATE U.: Exposed beams, columns, ducts, and pipes in an engineering building create a learning experience for those who study there.
  

• MARYMOUNT MANHATTAN COLLEGE: A swimming pool was removed to make way for two academic departments and audiology laboratories.
  

• SMITH COLLEGE: A difficult site produces a bold and contemporary Campus Center.
  

• BUILDING DATABASE: A searchable online database offers photographs and descriptions of dozens of examples of new campus architecture.
  

BOXED IN: New dorms cater to students' every need -- except, perhaps, friendship, writes Witold Rybczynski.

ELBOW ROOM: Private colleges embrace intimacy, but they still need public spaces for free expression and discord, says Carol T. Christ.

CHANGING PRIORITIES: Too much campus planning can be inhibiting. Too little can be chaotic. The balance lies in wedding the needs for today with the wishes for tomorrow, writes Roger K. Lewis.

HELL ON WHEELS: To solve the campus parking problem, the answer isn't always more parking, Daniel R. Kenney says.

BY THE NUMBERS: Miscellaneous factoids about campus architecture.

ACADEMIC JOB FORUM: A discussion forum on the job search in higher education.

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