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Late one night in February 2005, Boston University students Molly Ferguson Shattuck and Andrew Voluck decided to take a late-night break by taking a walk in a rail yard that borders the campus.

The yard did not have a passenger station and wasn’t meant for public use. Shattuck and Voluck apparently gained access by going through a hole in a fence. While walking near a track, they were struck and killed by a commuter train.

Shattuck’s parents faulted the school, among others. They said the school’s website and police handbook contractually obligated it to protect its students from harm.

No way, said the court. Throwing out the claim before it could get to trial, the court said no reasonable jury could find the school breached a contractual duty owed to Shattuck. The danger posed by the yard was obvious, and the school did not have a duty to warn about or remedy it.

Cite: Shattuck v. Trustees of Boston University.

Did the court get it right? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

An estimated $1,122 a year – per student – is spent on textbooks, a 32% increase from five years ago, says the College Board. But an increase in textbook rental options may change that.

Renting texts saves about 50% over the price of a new copy from online companies like Chegg, Campus Book Rentals and RentScouter. The companies have access to millions of titles, and provide books to students for a semester, after which the student mails the book back.

Students have to agree to standards of care (underlining and highlighting is okay, but serious damage means the renter pays for the replacement costs) and return books on the agreed date.

Hoping to stay competitive, some campus bookstores have started using education companies like Follett Corp’s Rent-a-Text model, or rental companies like Campus Book Rentals, to provide short-term book use for students themselves.

Will this money-saver catch on with students? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Randomly assigned roommmates may soon become a thing of the past. These days, more and more students are selecting their own roommates — with a little help from online sites. For instance, there’s RoomBug, which “empowers students to do their own roommate matching online by harnessing the power of Facebook,” according to its Website.

The site lets students view prospective roommates’ Facebook profiles, which includes such lifestyle preferences as how neat they are, when they like to go to bed, etc.

Students find their match online — all before they ever have to set foot on campus.

“Your roommate. Your choice,” RoomBug’s video tells viewers.

RoomBug is currently used at the University of Florida, Emory University, Temple University, Wichita State University and William Paterson University.

To many, it makes perfect sense.

“We decided that rather than continue to fight against the social media that is so much a part of our students’ lives, we need to get engaged in that social media, “University of Florida Associate Housing Director TJ Logan tells The Wall Street Journal.

Similar sites include URoomSurf and RoommateClick, which serves nearly 25 colleges including Rutgers, Tulane and Mount Ida.

Laura DeVeau, Residence Life Director for Mount Ida, told National Public Radio, “It narrows down the functionality of Facebook in terms of networking. For this particular generation, they feel more comfortable because they’ve connected online.”

Still, not everyone agrees the trend is a good one.

Critics say being randomly assigned to a roommate should be part of the “college experience,” where students are forced to grow, adjust and compromise.

Learning how to get along with different people — and not necessarily students with whom you have any common ground –  is a valuable lesson, they argue.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.

U.S. colleges aren’t doing enough to reduce alcohol consumption among students, says a new study from the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

The report analyzed responses from 351 college administrators who were asked if they follow recommendations from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s college drinking task force.

Among the responses:

• More than 22% of administrators didn’t know about the recommendations
• Only a third of college communities performed compliance checks for illegal alcohol sales
• 15% mandated server training
• 7% restricted the number of outlets selling alcohol, and
• Only 2% raised alcohol prices.

But that’s not to say schools aren’t doing anything right: 98% of colleges provided education on excessive drinking and two-thirds of schools provided interventions for high-risk and problem drinkers.

How is your school putting the breaks on student drinking? Let us know in the comments section.

Beth Bloomer enrolled at Becker College in September 2007. She chose the school for its equine studies program and quickly joined its all-female equestrian team.

Bloomer said the team’s coach, 67-year-old Edmund Paro, engaged in a variety of sexually harassing behavior. According to Bloomer, he told team members to wear revealing tops and thong-style underwear during competitions.

He also allegedly pinched team members’ buttocks, took pictures of them in odd positions and posted them on Facebook, and touched their breasts during “physical therapy” sessions.

Bloomer’s allegations went even further. She said that when she had trouble with her roommate and accepted an invitation to stay at Paro’s house, he drank, offered her alcohol and touched her inappropriately. She also claimed that he once offered to drive her to her dorm, but instead took her to his house and refused to take her home.

Bloomer said that when she tried to complain, she was told to wait until after the semester break because the school was already investigating a separate, similar complaint against Paro.

She left school and sued, raising an assortment of claims including sexual harassment under Title IX, assault and battery, false imprisonment and breach of contract.

The school filed a motion to dismiss, but the court allowed all claims to proceed except the breach of contract and assault and battery claims.

The assault and battery claims against the school failed because Paro was not acting in the scope of his employment when he allegedly engaged in the physically harassing conduct, and there were not enough facts asserted in support of the contract claim.

Cite: Bloomer v. Becker College.

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Test bias may still exist in standardized exams despite detection methods by the top experts in the field, and may result in inaccurate prediction of job and academic performance, says a new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The study challenges the belief that there are no biases in standardize tests that could benefit certain racial or ethnic groups over others, by showing how such biases can be present but not detected.

In the study, researchers created a massive simulation, using nearly 16 million individual samples to create more than eight trillion pairs of test/outcome scores. They built bias into most samples to resemble real-world results.

Checking the tens of billions of scores with super-computing technology, they found the detection procedures used regularly – and repeatedly – missed the inserted biases.

The researchers hope these results lead to more research, a closer examination of existing tests, and possibly the creation of new ones.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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The results are in: Take a look at the most recent college rankings from U.S. News & World Report.  Here are the top 20 national universities for the coming year — along with their acceptance rate for fall 2009:

• Harvard University: 7%
• Princeton University: 10%
• Yale University: 8%
• Columbia University: 10%
• Stanford University: 8%
• University of Pennsylvania: 18%
• California Institute of Technology: 15%
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 11%
• Dartmouth College: 13%
• Duke University:: 19%
• University of Chicago: 27%
• Northwestern University: 27%
• Johns Hopkins University: 27%
• Washington University in St. Louis: 22%
• Brown University: 11%
• Cornell University: 19%
• Rice University: 22%
• Vanderbilt University: 20%
• University of Notre Dame: 29%
• Emory University: 30%

To view the entire list — and to see the methodology used in the study — click here.

Did U.S. News & World Report get it right? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Delaware State University student Camisha Terrell says a male student at the school beat her after she refused to have sex with him. She also says that when she told the school what happened, it let the attacker stay in school – and even continue to take classes with her.

Terrell said the school’s director of residence life and judicial affairs told her she should change her schedule to avoid contact with the attacker. According to her, it got even worse when the school charged her with violations of the student code and placed her on leave before she had a chance to file a grievance.

Terrell sued, claiming the school created a hostile environment by letting the attacker remain on campus.

The court refused to dismiss Terrell’s hostile environment claim against the school, though it said a separate hostile environment claim against the director could not proceed.

However, a due process claim against the director will go forward.

Cite: Terrell v. Delaware State University.

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The Princeton Review’s annual list of college rankings has named  the University of Georgia as the nation’s biggest party school, knocking previous leader Penn State University down to #3.

The rankings are based on responses from 100,000 students across the country about their college experiences. In addition to academics and extracurricular activities, social scenes receive attention.

Students pass along info on the frat and sorority scene, drug use, availability of beer and more.

Here’s the full top 10 list:

1. University of Georgia
2. Ohio University
3. Penn State University
4. West Virginia University
5. University of Mississippi
6. University of Texas at Austin
7. University of Florida
8. University of California – Santa Barbara
9. University of Iowa
10. DePauw University, Indiana

Where does your school fall on the party-meter? Let us know in the comments section.

A venture with a website called Ultrinsic is letting students bet they’ll do well in a particular course.

That’s right: If you make the grade you bet on, you get paid. Miss your target? You lose.

The Ultrinsic option will be available to students at 36 schools this year. And it’s not illegal gambling, its president says, because it relies on skill rather than luck.

What do you think of this idea? Tell us in the comments section below.

Beloit College has released its 12^th annual Mindset List, looking at the cultural reference points of students entering college this year. Created to remind faculty of dated references, it has since become a catalog of the changing worldview of each incoming class.

For these students:

• Benny Hill, Sam Kinison and Tony Perkins have always been dead
• Cursive writing is a nearly unknown skill
• E-mail is slow, and regular snail mail is almost never used
• The world has always been trying to accommodate people with disabilities with ramps, Braille signs and handicapped parking spaces
• A quarter of them has at least one immigrant parent
• Korean cars have always been a staple of American highways
• Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess
• Phones have never been attached to coiled handset wires
• DNA fingerprinting and human genome mapping have always existed
• Czechoslovakia has never existed
• Domino’s delivery boys have never killed themselves to rush a pizza to their house in under 30 minutes
• There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics
• Russians and Americans have always been partners in space exploration
• Nirvana and Pearl Jam are on the classic rock station, and
• J.R. Ewing is still a completely unknown reference.

Check out the full list here, and share your thoughts in the comments section.

At a Starbucks in Manhattan, three police officers were called in to remove angry customer Lynne Rosenthal. The source of the college English professor’s rage: “linguistic stupidity.”

After ordering a multi-grain bagel, the barista asked, “Butter or cheese?”

Having to specify what items she didn’t want on her order was the last straw (no surprise: Rosenthal has started fights over using “venti” and “grande” as coffee sizes, too). She refused to answer.

The barista – who probably wanted to hurl the bagel at Rosenthal’s head at that point – refused to serve her if she didn’t cooperate. And that’s when Rosenthal called the barista an a–hole.

Things only got worse from there, and the manager called the cops, who ordered her to leave and threatened to arrest her if she went back inside.

And no, she didn’t get her bagel.

Was the educator’s bagel-rage justified? Sound off in the comments section.

Soon after enrolling as a freshman at Southern Illinois University in August 2007, Samuel Milligan got an on-campus job as a student worker in chemistry department stockrooms. The office of 79-year-old emeritus professor Cal Meyers was across the hall.

Milligan said Myers told him he would “make a very sexy lady.” He also accused Meyers of grabbing his buttocks and telling him that he “would surely date him” if he were a lady.

Milligan sued the school’s board of trustees, claiming they were responsible for the sexual harassment. But he lost.

The court said Milligan failed to show that Meyers’ alleged harassment of him was because of his sex. Instead, it reasoned that the school was off the hook because Meyers was an equal opportunity harasser: i.e., he also harassed females so “did not create any adverse condition for one gender over another.”

Even if the alleged harassment was because of sex, Milligan’s claim failed because it wasn’t sufficiently severe or pervasive, the court said.

Cite: Milligan v. Board of Trustees.

Do you agree with the ruling? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

It may seem as if the entire world uses Facebook — but a new study shows most people don’t like it. Here’s why: Even though the social networking site recently hit 500 million users, it’s ranked in the bottom five percent of all organizations surveyed by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a Michigan consulting firm.

That means: Facebook is side-by-side with airlines and cable companies when it comes to customer satisfaction. In fact, even the IRS’s e-file service scored higher!

Out of the survey’s 100-point scale, Facebook scored 64.

Here’s how it stacked up against other social media websites:

• Wikipedia scored 77
• YouTube — 73
• MySpace — 63

Andrew Noyes, Facebook spokesperson, told Inc.com: “We haven’t reviewed the survey methodology in detail, but clearly we have room to improve … We spend so much of our time and energy focused on improving the products we offer and introducing new ones.”

How do you feel about Facebook? Let us know in the comments section below.

The U.S currently ranks 12^th among 36 developed nations in college completion, says a report from the College Board. While almost 70% of high school graduates enroll in college, only about 57% actually graduate within six years.

The numbers are even worse at the community college level – fewer than 25% graduate with an associate’s degree.

Canada currently leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56% having earned associate’s degrees or greater in 2007.

How can this trend be turned around? By re-thinking K-12 education as P-16, the report says, improving education from preschool on up. The College Board’s major recommendations:

• More state-financed preschool programs
• Better middle school/high school college counseling
• Dropout prevention programs
• Alignment with international curricular standards
• Improvement in teacher quality, and
• More need-based financial aid.

What would you add to this list? Tell us your ideas in the comments section.

Fifteen of the 21 members of the Delaware State University’s women’s equestrian team sued the school, claiming the university’s decision to eliminate the team at the end of the 2009-10 school year violated Title IX. The team members say the school’s not giving females equal opportunities to participate in varsity sports.

Initial proceedings led to an agreement to keep the team intact at least until the end of the 2010-11 academic year. And in the latest development, the court allowed the case to proceed as a class action. That means it’s now being pursued on behalf of not just the 15 team members who filed the suit but also “all present, prospective, and future” female students who want to participate in intercollegiate athletics as a member of a Delaware State University team.

Cite: Foltz v. Delaware State University.

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Jeremy Littau, a professor at Lehigh University, PA, created a YouTube video to spread the word to potential students about his upcoming multimedia reporting course. The result: 80-plus views and more attention for a course that might have fallen under students’ radars.

The three-minute video uses interviews with current students, and footage they produced in the course, to “sell” the class to prospective students.

Littau e-mailed the video to journalism majors and posted a link to it on Facebook and Twitter. Students who ask about the class receive a copy of the syllabus. Thanks to the video, students outside the journalism major have also been asking about the class.

The video is available here.

What do you think? Share your YouTube experiences (or video links) in the comments section.

Agricultural schools like the University of Vermont are selling off their cows to private farms, hoping to save the money spent on feed, fuel and upkeep to maintain the herds and their facilities. These costs have been increasing faster than the price of milk (which some schools sell off to offset costs) or state funding.

There’s also the matter of where to keep the herds. Schools such as the University of Kentucky (which is also reducing its herd) have run out of room to spread manure, while other, less costly agriculture programs expand.

The private farmers who take on UV’s cows would be paid $20,000 a year for three years, while researchers would have access to more cows and more modern facilities.

While selling the herds may sound like a sad day for animal science programs, schools that have made the leap have reaped lots of benefits:

Rutgers University combined its heard with one at the University of Delaware eight years ago. Since then, they’ve enjoyed a more modern dairy facility and space to raise their cows’ offspring, which they can use to study their behavior, bedding and nutrition. All that’s in addition to the main benefit: breaking even on costs.

How is your school trying to cut costs? Let us know in the comments section.

Most of us know what it’s like: Facing the constant pressure throughout high school of getting good grades, joining lots of clubs and playing on sports teams … all for the lofty purpose of “getting into a good school.”

Now many new high school grads are saying “Enough!” They’re opting for a gap year to give themselves some much-needed time off.

And guess what? Many colleges are encouraging students to exercise the gap-year option.

According to The Boston Globe:

• MIT recently saw 24 students defer enrollment, compared to the usual eight to 10 each year. The school’s director of admissions promotes the idea — which has always been popular in Great Britain and Europe — in his blog.
• Last year, Princeton began sponsoring a gap-year program. The school foots the bill for students who choose to spend the year doing public service in countries like Peru and Ghana. Nearly 50 students went for the idea and deferred enrollment last year.
• At Middlebury College, students receiving a letter of admission are referred to a website where they can read about the merits of a gap year.
• In the past 10 years, Harvard has experienced a 33% increase in the number of students choosing to take a year off before entering as a freshman.
• Amherst College saw 20 students go for a gap year this past year — an increase of 67% since just last year.

Those in favor of the gap year say students gain a sense of the “big picture,” an understanding of the world and a maturity they won’t attain as quickly if they head right to college.

On the other hand, some fear students taking a gap year may never find their way to college.

Do you think a gap year is a good idea for a new high school graduate? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Doug Maples and Evelyn Knight, co-workers at the University of Texas at Arlington, didn’t always get along. In fact, Maples once brought Knight to tears in front of other co-workers, calling her “a really mean person.”

Two of those other co-workers were Evelyne Shatkin and Linda Shiflett, and they also had trouble working with Knight.

Shatkin and Maples came up with a plan: One day after work, when Knight was not around, they would go to Knight’s cubicle and pray. Shifflett liked the idea enough to join them.

One day after work, at about 5:30, the three met at Knight’s cubicle to pray. Shatkin apparently led the ritual, rubbing olive oil on the doorway to Knight’s cubicle and loudly commanding the “vicious evil dogs” to “get the hell out.”

When a supervisor got wind of the get-together, Shatkin and Shifflett were fired. They’ve sued, claiming discrimination based on their religious beliefs.

In the latest development in the case, the court denied the university’s motion for pretrial judgment. At this stage of the case, the pair have presented enough evidence of religious bias to go forward with their claims, and  it’s not clear whether they were let go because of their religious beliefs.

Cite: Shatkin v. University of Texas at Arlington.

What do you think of this case? Tell us below.

The website SponsorMyDegree.com provides a listing service for cash-strapped students to post financial aid appeals online.

The site was started by Henner and Lilac Mohr, who both piled up loans to pay for graduate school and hit the web to ask for help paying it off. They soon realized they weren’t the only ones, and launched the website to give those pleas for sponsorship an extra push.

Through SponsorMyDegree.com, students can post a free profile and market it to contacts on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. Donations start at $5 along with a 5% credit card processing fee.

Once the site verifies college enrollment or graduation, money is then sent to the campus for tuition, or to a lender to repay a student loan.

So far, the project has shown signs of success – thousands of dollars have gone out to students. but since they don’t make any money off it, the Mohrs are looking for corporate sponsorship to help run the site.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.

Robert Becker took some online learning courses offered by City University of Seattle. One of those offerings was a human nutrition course taught by Professor Diane Beaudry.

As an assignment, students were instructed to discuss the effect of Beaudry’s class on their post-graduation plans. In an online forum that could be viewed by Beaudry and the rest of the class, Becker called the class a “flub” or “fluff” course.

Beaudry wasn’t happy. She filed a formal complaint against Becker, and the school said it was going to remove him from the online version of the course and transfer him to an independent studies program.

Becker sued, claiming violation of his constitutional rights. But there was just one problem.

City University is a private institution — meaning it can’t be sued for constitutional violations. Becker’s complaint was dismissed.

Cite: Becker v. University of Seattle.

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As part of its plan to cut $60 million from its budget, Texas A&M University will no longer stock toilet paper in campus dorms. And cutting the TP budget could save up to $82,000.

Starting August 2011, the university will cut off dorm bathrooms shared by up to four students, and will only stock toilet paper in larger bathrooms, administrative offices and public areas. Campus stores will keep it in stock for purchase, though students will receive a few free rolls at the beginning of the semester.

The TP cutback will affect about 6,000 students on campus, while saving about $13 per person.

But it may lead to problems down the road: Penny-pinching students may swipe TP from areas on campus where it’s still available, rather than pay for it at the student store.

While the American Graduation Initiative aims to produce five million more community college graduates by 2020, some schools are saying it’s easier said than done. Across the country, slashed state financing has caused schools to make big cuts in their course offerings and faculty rosters.

These cuts could hinder the already-low completion rates at most schools (about 25%), as well as their ability to handle the influx of new students. Among the affected schools:

• California’s community college system has enrolled 21,000 fewer students in 2009-2010 than in the previous school year, with some districts turning away about half of the new students that tried to enroll, and
• The City University of New York and its six community colleges, which saw enrollment grow by 43% over the last decade, is starting wait lists for the fall.

How can community colleges cope? Let us know in the comments section below.

• Be careful about what you post on social media networks: Whatever you write online can be searched and found by prospective employers. Privacy settings don’t mean anything if someone has shared your info. So whether you’re writing on Facebook, Twitter or your own blog, consider the fact that you future employer may be able to read it.
• Limit yourself: Create an online profile — but limit yourself to only two or three social networking sites. Putting six or seven profiles out there will only irritate prospective employers. Focus on creating one solid profile. The most popular social networking sites HR managers use are: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• Let people know: Keep your profile updated and let prospective employers know you’re looking. If you’re not in a position to announce it to the world, Dan Schwabel of Millenial Branding told The Wall Street Journal you should come up with a “personal brand statement, that depicts who you are, what you do, and what audience you serve, so that people get a feeling for how you can benefit their company.”

To see the other suggestions for online job hunters, click here.

Any tips you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments section below.

]]> http://www.higheredmorning.com/top-3-tips-for-online-job-hunting/feed 0 http://www.higheredmorning.com/eliminate-the-paper-chase-across-your-campus-2 http://www.higheredmorning.com/eliminate-the-paper-chase-across-your-campus-2#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:07:24 +0000 Amanda Thomas http://www.higheredmorning.com/?p=5514 Discover how the University of Virginia successfully evolved its original document management project into an innovative, campus-wide ECM strategy.

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Ariel Fleurimond says she created “Orion,” which is a caricatured drawing of a cougar, at the request of New York University (NYU). She says the parties agreed the design would be used as the mascot for the school’s athletic department.

When NYU began using the design without Fleurimond’s knowledge or consent, Fleurimond sued for copyright infringement. The school says it’s the owner of the copyright because Fleurimond created the design while she was an NYU employee.

Not so fast, the court said. It’s too early in the case to tell who is the legal owner of the copyright, and more proceedings are needed. Therefore, the court denied the school’s motion to dismiss the complaint.

Cite: Fleurimond v. New York University.

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Harvard Business School, Columbia University and other business schools are adding Internet marketing and social media courses to their MBA curricula. It’s a strategy to boost graduate placement rates and prepare students for careers in promising marketing and tech fields.

By recruiting MBAs with social media skills, companies are hoping to tap into online networks to learn brand sentiments, improve customer service and spot new marketing opportunities.

By educating grad students in social media skills, the schools are hoping to give their graduates the social media skills their employers are looking for – and may not have themselves.

Students know it, too. At Harvard University last fall, the course “Competing with Social Networks” drew 172 enrollees – three students for every available seat.

Columbia University is prepping for the demand, adding “Social Media” and “Media and Technology” courses to its current roster of Internet marketing courses.

What’s your school doing to give students social networking skills? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Sherri Adams, a student at Montgomery College in Maryland, is not able to walk long distances around the college’s campuses. After complaining about the lack of parking designated for people with disabilities, Adams fell while walking to her vehicle on campus and sustained several injuries.

The lawsuit that followed accused the college of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. Adams asked for $100,000 or “the maximum legal rate, and the cost of this action.”

But she didn’t get anything – at least not for now. The court said the college was immune to the claim for money damages under the Eleventh Amendment because it is a state entity.

Adams was given permission to amend her complaint to add an individual defendant and seek money damages. But to get them, she’ll need to prove discriminatory intent.

Cite: Adams v. Montgomery College.

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