News http://chronicle.com/section/News/6/ News Nebraska Regents, Just Barely, Endorse Research on Embryonic Stem Cells http://chronicle.com/article/Nebraska-Regents-Just-Barely/49243/ The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents, despite heavy lobbying by religious groups, narrowly voted on Friday to uphold the expansion of research on human embryonic stem cells, as permitted by the Obama administration.

The regents, meeting at the university's Lincoln campus, voted 4 to 4 on a proposal that the system observe limits on stem-cell studies imposed by the Bush administration, a tie vote that meant the resolution failed.

The regents, an elected body, were...

...]]> Lincoln U. Requires Its Students to Step on the Scale http://chronicle.com/article/Lincoln-U-Requires-Its/49223/ At Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, students who are deemed too heavy must pass a physical-fitness course.

As part of the university's core curriculum, campus health educators weigh and measure all freshmen during the fall semester, and later calculate each student's body-mass index, or BMI. Those with a BMI above 30, which suggests obesity, must enroll in a one-credit course called "Fitness for Life" before they graduate. Students can satisfy that requirement if they "test...

...]]> Friends and Colleagues Search for a Missing Scholar, Philip Agre http://chronicle.com/article/FriendsColleagues-Search/49222/ Philip Agre was an associate professor of information sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, and for years he ran a popular technology e-mail list with thousands of subscribers. But one day the 49-year-old scholar just stopped showing up on the campus, and now colleagues have deployed Twitter, Facebook, and the Web to try to find him.

Last month the university police department put out a missing-person alert for...

...]]> Video: At UCLA, Tuition-Hike Protests Turn Raucous http://chronicle.com/article/Video-At-UCLA-Tuition-Hike/49221/ Tempers flared and Taser guns came out when students at UCLA protested a decision to raise tuition throughout the University of California. Josh Keller, The Chronicle's California correspondent, explains what happened in Los Angeles....

...]]> Report Highlights Characteristics of Colleges With High Transfer-Success Rates http://chronicle.com/article/Report-Highlights/49210/ A new report by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education may provide clues on how best to shepherd students from two-year to four-year institutions.

The findings come at a time when the Obama administration has put out a clarion call to community colleges to educate an additional five million students by...

...]]> Professors of the Year Are Celebrated for Innovative Teaching http://chronicle.com/article/Professors-of-the-Year-Are/49208/ One professor of geology drove his students into the wilderness of Montana so they could put lessons from textbooks to work evaluating government policy. A psychologist encouraged students to generate their own ideas for research, even if that meant he had to investigate pick-up lines to vet one of the projects.

Those professors and two others are being recognized for excellent teaching by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and...

...]]> Number of Doctorates Rose Slightly in 2008, in Summary of Delayed NSF Report http://chronicle.com/article/Number-of-Doctorates-Rose/49219/ Exactly 48,802 people, a number equal to the population of East Brunswick, N.J., were awarded doctoral degrees in the United States in 2008, according to a brief report released on Thursday by the National Science Foundation.

That figure was up 1.4 percent from 2007 — the smallest increase in the last several years.

The NSF brief summarizes...

...]]> Federal Audit Faults Universities Over Researchers' Financial Conflicts of Interest http://chronicle.com/article/Federal-Audit-Faults/49220/ Universities involved in federally sponsored medical research rarely take steps to investigate, reduce, or eliminate financial conflicts of interest among their scientists, a government audit report said Thursday.

The report, by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the latest in a series of audits over the years that have criticized both universities and the National Institutes of Health, which distributes $24-billion a year in research money, as...

...]]> Bishops Discuss Ways to Strengthen Relationship with Catholic Colleges http://chronicle.com/article/Bishops-Discuss-Ways-to/49209/ The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was scheduled to discuss ways to strengthen the relationships between bishops and Roman Catholic colleges and universities on Wednesday, following on the heels of the controversy around the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama at its commencement last May.

The group was set to hear recommendations from a committee appointed in June during a closed-door session at its fall meeting today, said...

...]]> Chart: College Athletes' Graduation-Success Rates: Highest and Lowest http://chronicle.com/article/Chart-College-Athletes/49200/

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's "graduation success rate" differs from federal graduation statistics because it accounts for students who transfer. The NCAA's figures, unlike the federal ones, do not penalize an institution for athletes who leave to attend other colleges, as long as they depart in good academic standing. Here are the Division I colleges with the highest and lowest graduation-success rates for athletes who entered college

... ...]]> Chart: Sport-by-Sport Graduation-Success Rates http://chronicle.com/article/Chart-Sport-by-Sport/49201/

The overall graduation-success rate for all NCAA athletes who entered college from 1999 to 2002 is 79 percent. The overall federal rate for athletes is 64 percent. Here are the graduation-success rates and federal graduation rates for athletes who entered college from 1999 to 2002, in all NCAA sports:

 

... ...]]> International Engineering-Education Group Rejects India's Bid for Membership http://chronicle.com/article/International/49204/ India's bid for full membership in the Washington Accord, an elite international association focused on standardizing engineering education, was turned down this week because of concerns over the quality of faculty members and students in Indian engineering programs.

The group, which includes accrediting agencies from the United States and twelve other countries, agreed to extend India's provisional membership as it works toward alleviating these concerns.

Raman Unnikrishnan,...

...]]> Athletes' Graduation Rates Hit Another High, NCAA Says http://chronicle.com/article/Athletes-Graduation-Rates-Hit/49202/ The nation's college athletes continue to graduate at the highest levels since the National Collegiate Athletic Association began calculating the rate eight years ago, according to data released today.

The latest federal graduation rates, the NCAA says, also show that athletes in the biggest college-sports programs continue to graduate at rates higher than those of their nonathlete peers.

Seventy-nine percent of all Division I athletes who entered college from 1999 to 2002...

...]]> Amid Protests, U. of California Regents Panel Approves 32% Tuition Increase http://chronicle.com/article/Amid-Protests-U-of/49206/ A University of California governing-board committee today approved a proposal that would increase undergraduate tuition by 32 percent over the next year, an unusually large jump that was met by student protests at campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles.

The tuition proposal, which is expected to receive final approval on Thursday by the system's full Board of Regents, will help close a large budget gap, in...

...]]> Duncan Promises Colleges Attention to Cutting Costly Red Tape http://chronicle.com/article/Duncan-Promises-Colleges/49187/ Education Secretary Arne Duncan promised on Tuesday to work on reducing regulatory reporting burdens on colleges, saying he would gladly cut federal red tape if institutions, in return, showed greater progress on improving student performance.

"I'm more than willing to exchange that," Mr. Duncan told college leaders at the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities here.

The secretary offered the commitment in an area in...

...]]> Accountability Issues Persist Under New Administration http://chronicle.com/article/Accountability-Issues-Persist/49190/ More than three years after the Bush administration sought and largely failed to force greater federal oversight of higher education, concerns about accountability, or the lack of it, can still generate heated discussions inside the Beltway.

That was the case Tuesday as the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit organization, hosted a day full of panels devoted to increasing accountability. Speakers rehashed familiar debates over such issues as...

...]]> Qatar Stages a Global Education Summit With Flash and Dazzle http://chronicle.com/article/Qatar-Stages-a-Global/49188/ This week, this Persian Gulf country is staging the first World Innovation Summit for Education, a flashy conference that aims to become an annual fixture for the world's education elite.

The lofty idea behind the conference, known as WISE, is that this wealthy emirate will become the place where the world's most powerful and prominent educators will confront the planet's most pressing educational challenges.

But what the discussions taking place in the lavish meeting halls...

...]]> Teaching Assistants Suspend Strike at U. of Illinois http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-Assistants-Suspend/49189/ Graduate students who work as teaching assistants and researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suspended a labor strike Tuesday night after informally agreeing to the terms of a new contract with the campus's administration.

More than 400 members of the Graduate Employees Organization, a union of graduate student workers which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, unanimously approved the new contract at a meeting on Tuesday...

...]]> Conference Humiliation: They're Tweeting Behind Your Back http://chronicle.com/article/Conference-Humiliation-/49185/ Tweckle (twek'ul) vt. to abuse a speaker only to Twitter followers in the audience while he/she is speaking.

Conference speakers beware: Twecklers are watching.

They're out for blood.

And you may be their next victim.

Once upon a time, conference goers could do little more than passively fork their...

...]]> Ethicists Prod NIH to Spend Money Investigating Conflicts of Interest http://chronicle.com/article/Ethicists-Prod-NIH-to-Spend/49183/ Today marks three months in office for Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. His anniversary present from a group of researchers and ethicists was a new plea to do something about financial conflicts of interest in medical research.

Dr. Collins was sent a letter today from 96 people, including a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and representatives of the leading association...

...]]> Mississippi Governor Calls for Merging Some State Universities http://chronicle.com/article/Mississippi-Governor-Calls-for/49182/ Mississippi should consider merging some of its public universities to save money, its governor, Haley Barbour, says. "Mergers of universities are preferable to closures, but continuing to fund eight self-standing universities is not a responsible use of taxpayers' money," the governor, a Republican, wrote in a letter to legislators that accompanied his budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins...

...]]> Obama Should Do More to Achieve College-Graduation Goal, Panelists Say http://chronicle.com/article/Obama-Should-Do-More-to/49181/ President Obama and his administration need to get more involved if the United States is to meet his goal of having the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, panelists said at the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities here on Monday.

"Only the president can pull this together," M. Peter McPherson, the association's president, said during a panel discussion...

...]]> Hiring Outlook for College Graduates in Coming Year Remains Bleak http://chronicle.com/article/Hiring-Outlook-for-College/49180/ The good news: Hiring for new college graduates is expected to hold steady in 2010. The bad: Hiring for new college graduates is expected to hold steady in 2010. That's after plummeting in 2009 by about 35 to 40 percent, according to a major annual survey of companies.

"It's going to be competitive, no doubt about it," says Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State University's Collegiate Employment Research Institute, which conducts the survey.

Findings...

...]]> Public Colleges Could Feel Sting of Recession for a Few Years http://chronicle.com/article/Public-Colleges-Could-Feel/49173/ The recession may be over, but state-financed colleges and universities will feel its ill effects for the next two or three years, an economist told a group of university administrators here Monday.

Michael H. Strauss, chief economist at Commonfund, an asset-management company serving about 1,300 college and university endowments, said that increases in industrial production and corporate profits have helped the world economy begin to recover.

As major...

...]]> Audio: Senate Seeks Own Mark on Student-Loan Bill http://chronicle.com/article/Audio-Senate-Seeks-Own-Mark/49170/

When the Senate introduces legislation to overhaul student loans, its bill will look broadly similar to...

...]]> British Council Sets Up Fund for Partnerships With U.S. Colleges http://chronicle.com/article/British-Council-Sets-Up-Fund/49169/ A new project designed to foster greater cooperation between British and American higher-education institutions has received $500,000 in initial financing from the British Council, a government cultural and educational agency. The new UK-US Higher Education New Partnerships Fund was unveiled on Monday in an announcement timed to coincide with International Education Week, a joint project of the U.S. Departments of State and Education that promotes international study...

...]]>