By Andrew Mytelka. The U.S. Education Department is cutting ties with five private collection agencies that it says provided inaccurate information to student-loan borrowers. In an announcement late Friday, the department also said it would step up its monitoring and guidance of such collection agencies, which work under government contracts, to ensure that they give borrowers accurate data on their loans. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Racial Diversity in the Medical Profession: The Impact of Affirmative Action Bans on Underrepresented Student of Color Matriculation in Medical Schools”
Authors: Liliana M. Garces, assistant professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, and David Mickey-Pabello, doctoral student in sociology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Summary: The study, published in the March/April issue of The Journal of Higher Education, attempts to gauge how medical schools’ enrollments have been affected by bans on race-conscious admissions. More...
By Steve Kolowich. The university is planning to try out a new app, called Class120, to “ping” its students’ iPads during class periods. If GPS or the campus wi-fi network indicates that someone’s device is not present, the app will send the student an automated reminder, and may notify his or her academic coach as well. More...
By Casey Fabris. Mr. LeBlanc will be involved with the department’s innovation agenda, specifically its experiments with competency-based education and with establishing new accreditation methods for innovative programs. More...
By Casey Fabris. Once upon a time, Facebook was reserved for college students only. A new social network is trying to reboot that idea, with a college-only service called Friendsy.
The service is the creation of two Princeton University undergraduates, Michael Pinsky and Vaidhy Murti, who hope to help facilitate connections among college students who might otherwise never meet. More...
By Mark Burstein. As colleges and universities compete more vigorously than ever to attract applicants from a smaller population of high-school seniors and strive to provide a deeper, more compelling education, many of us in academic leadership have looked to business practices and concepts to manage our institutions. We have created marketing plans, sought advice from management consultants, and developed metrics and strategic plans. More...By Bruce Hoffman. Does terrorism work? Its targets and victims steadfastly maintain that it does not, while its practitioners and apologists claim that it does. Scholars and analysts are divided. Given the untold death and destruction wrought by terrorists throughout history, the question has an undeniable relevance that has only intensified since the September 11 attacks. Yet a definitive answer unaccountably remains as elusive as a universally accepted definition of terrorism itself. More...
By Robert Zaretsky. For several years, Michel Houellebecq has been France’s most celebrated writer and also its most controversial. But the infamy sparked by his earlier novels like Whatever, Elementary Particles, and Platform, evaporates under the klieg lights trained on his most recent work, Soumission. It has topped French best-seller lists since its publication in early January—the same week as the terrorist attacks in Paris, when a caricature of Houellebecq was featured on the cover of Charlie Hebdo. More than a literary sensation, Soumission has become a historical event.By Peter Schmidt. As alumnae of Sweet Briar College rallied on Wednesday around desperate efforts to save it from sudden closure, its students and faculty and staff members found themselves having to come up with new plans for their lives.By Peter Schmidt. The University of Tennessee’s Board of Trustees has triggered suspicion among faculty members by calling for tenure policies to be reconsidered as part of a cost-cutting plan./https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
