The Paper Trail

Stanford University's housing officials had a cozy surprise waiting for a handful of undergrads who were returning from studying abroad: a dingy basement room with three other displaced roommates, the Stanford Daily reports.

[One student] found himself occupying a study room in the basement that had been converted into a one-room quad. Pipes hanging from the ceiling prevented [him] and his three roommates from lofting their beds. The heating system would not turn off, he said, leaving the room stuffy within the first few minutes. Several hundred law books lined the walls, taking up valuable floor space. Cobwebs and dead spiders hung near a rusty pipe that one occupant found so appalling he pulled his bed away from the wall.

The school says that this semester's housing crunch is actually less severe than last year's—but that's probably little comfort to students waked up by janitors trying to access a storage closet and concerned by the lack of any privacy whatsoever. In short, according to one student, this is "just absurd."

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For many, the end of the holiday season poses the question of what to do with that pesky fire hazard some people call a Christmas (holiday?) tree. UC-Santa Barbara students can join Santa Barbara County in its annual tree-disposal bonfire, the Daily Nexus writes. The event combines a pine-scented blaze with fire-safety lessons—officially taking all the fun out of pyromania.

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The already contentious renovations of the University of Michigan's football stadium have struck another nerve. Because of work on plumbing and electrical systems planned for April, the school's graduation ceremony will not be at the Big House. And because no other campus facility could conceivably fit the 50,000 commencement attendees, the ceremony will instead be held at the nearby Eastern Michigan University football field.

Students, not surprisingly, are upset. They've started a blog, made a petition, created angry Facebook groups, and complained. A lot.

The Michigan Daily's "Banished From the Big House" series runs the gamut of emotions from sentimental self-pity to righteous indignation to shock, confusion, and hurt. One distressed senior wrote, "It's nothing personal Eastern Michigan: But no amount of 'maize and blue-ing' at Rynearson Stadium will make us feel at home."

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If you didn't notice, I have a soft spot for stories about impostor students (it made my Top 10 Biggest Stories of 2007). But what do I think about an impostor school?

The BBC has uncovered a scam that targets foreign students flocking to London to attend the bogus Irish International University. The unaccredited "school" has 5,000 "students" worldwide and thousands of "graduates." While the institution claims to be a "university"—a title that needs to be approved by the government—the Irish Department of Education and Science says it has never given permission to the IIU to use the label. Furthermore, the IIU's elaborate website had boasted it was accredited and quality controlled by a company in North London—a company that happened to be owned by the school's "boss."

Tack on the award ceremonies staged at Oxford and Cambridge (a successful ploy, considering IIU's seven-year run)—and you've got yourself a bona fide educational scandal, ready for prime-time TV.

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