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What College Rankings Tell Us About Veep Candidates
Tweet Share on Facebook August 22, 2008 Comment (5)If Obama's VP options were college rankings, who would be at the top of the list? Because U.S. News doesn't have one giant, combined ranking of all the different types of schools, it's tough to directly compare the candidates and their undergraduate alma maters—but I'm doing this highly irrelevant list anyway.
Hillary Clinton—who most people say is out of the picture but is included for comparison's sake—tops the list with #4 Wellesley. Yes, liberal arts colleges are very different from national universities, but Wellesley is so high on that list that we're gonna give her the top spot.
In the middle of the list, it's a dead-even race between Evan Bayh and Joe Biden, both at #71, but it's new contender Chet Edwards who gets the national university edge (at #64).
Lastly, Kathleen Sebelius's college falls into the much smaller master's university (north) category, but that school's Tier 4 placement isn't doing her any favors.
Now it's time to wait and see the predictive quality of college rankings.
- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton
#4 Wellesley College (Liberal Arts Colleges)
- Texas Rep. Chet Edwards
#64 Texas A&M University (National Universities)
- Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh
#71 Indiana University (National Universities)
- Delaware Sen. Joe Biden
#71 University of Delaware (National Universities)
- Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine
#96 University of Missouri (National Universities)
- Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius
Unranked Trinity University in Washington, D.C. (Tier 4 master's university)
- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton
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Arizona Affirmative-Action Ban Off Ballot
Tweet Share on Facebook August 22, 2008 Comment (5)An anti-affirmative-action ballot initiative in Arizona—one similar to those passed in California, Michigan, and Washington—hasn't collected enough valid signatures to go on the ballot, Secretary of State Jan Brewer said Thursday. Brewer threw out 139,774 signatures for various reasons, leaving 194,961 valid signatures, short of the 230,047 necessary to bring a proposed state constitutional amendment to a vote.
The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, which would ban the use of race- and sex-based preferences in state-run universities and other government agencies, was spearheaded by Ward Connerly, the same man who lobbied for such proposals in California, Michigan, and Washington and is working on similar measures in Missouri, Colorado, and Nebraska.
Supporters of the initiative in Arizona plan to appeal the secretary of state's decision next week.
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St. Louis Sees Jump in Chinese Freshman Enrollment
Tweet Share on Facebook August 22, 2008 Comment (4)St. Louis University has twice as many freshman Chinese students this fall as it did last year, reports the school's student paper, the University News. This year also saw almost 1,000 applications, up from 450 applications last year.
The University of Kansas has seen a similar influx of Chinese freshmen, as well as more international students as a whole. And Boston University has a record 444 foreign freshmen, a 39 percent increase from last year. Most of Boston's international students are from South Korea, followed by India and China. The increase in foreign students has been attributed to both greater recruiting efforts and the weak U.S. dollar.
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Georgia Students Fall out of Bus
Tweet Share on Facebook August 22, 2008 CommentTwo University of Georgia students were taken to the hospital Thursday after falling out of the back doors of a campus bus, according to the Red and Black, the university's student paper. The back doors of the crowded bus reportedly swung open as the vehicle made a turn, sending the two students to the sidewalk.
Since the accident, transit officials have taken the 13-year-old bus out of service and are investigating the cause of the malfunction. Some students are questioning the overall age of the bus fleet.
The condition of the two students was unknown.
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Universities Are More Green. Sort Of
Tweet Share on Facebook August 21, 2008 Comment (2)Managing to turn centuries of conventional wisdom on its head, academia has proved it is sometimes easier done than said, at least when it comes to environmentalism. A report by the National Wildlife Federation says that more universities have shown a greater commitment to sustainability in their operations but have made few gains at integrating the same lessons into their curricula.
University administrators have taken strides in providing more recycling programs, energy efficiency programs, and green landscapes. In 2001, 43 percent of schools had a written pledge to sustainability, while that number is now 65 percent. Similarly, more than 90 percent of those surveyed said they had hired or planned to hire an energy conservation manager, compared with 42 percent seven years ago, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
On the other hand, there are fewer schools that offer degrees in environmental and sustainability fields and fewer students had taken sustainability related courses this past year when compared with 2001. "It is extremely counterintuitive," said an NWF official. Now, some can only hope that greener operations will eventually trickle into the classroom, too.
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Nebraska Police Get New Segways
Tweet Share on Facebook August 21, 2008 Comment (2)If there's one thing that screams "campus safety," it's the addition of Segways to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln police fleet. Along with their four new Segways used to patrol campus and large events like football games, UNL police have also installed new security cameras and plan to heavily promote the department's almost year-old text-message alert system, the Daily Nebraskan reports.
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Georgia Student Survey Finds Little Free-Speech Restriction
Tweet Share on Facebook August 20, 2008 Comment (2)A survey of students commissioned by the University System of Georgia suggests that political oppression by the faculty is not as severe as some (like "Academic Bill of Rights" advocate David Horowitz) have suggested. Instead, students actually perceive more intolerance of each other's differing political views than intolerance by their professors. "I didn't see any systemic ideological bias to be of great concern," Susan Herbst, executive vice chancellor of the Georgia system, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Students and faculty [aren't] crushing each other's free speech with great force."
About 21 percent of students feel that their peers aren't tolerant of the political views of others, and only 47 percent said their peers were accepting of their views. As for professors, 13 percent of students said professors presented their views inappropriately.
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College Heads Unite to Debate Drinking Age
Tweet Share on Facebook August 19, 2008 Comment (46)The pursuit of an 18-year-old drinking age saw new light today, as more than 100 college presidents called on lawmakers to reconsider the current minimum. The movement is called the Amethyst Initiative, which is named after the gem the ancient Greeks credited for warding off drunkenness. It contends that the "21-year-old drinking age is not working, and, specifically, that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses."
The group has been quietly gaining ground over the past year, recruiting presidents and chancellors to sign on to its mission of provoking debate about the drinking age, and it now plans to take out newspaper ads over the next few weeks.
Critics of the initiative include Mothers Against Drunk Driving, who accuse the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. MADD even goes as far as warning parents to think about the safety at colleges represented on the list, the Associated Press reports.
Prominent universities on the list include Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Morehouse, Ohio State, Spelman, Syracuse, and Maryland.
Join a Discussion
Do you think the legal drinking age should be lowered? Our friends at BettyConfidential want to know.
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UNC's Minority Enrollment Drops
Tweet Share on Facebook August 19, 2008 Comment (1)The University of North Carolina saw a drop in its minority enrollment this year, even as applications from and acceptance letters to minority students went up, the Daily Tar Heel reports. For the past two years, black enrollment has been declining: This year's freshman class will be 10.7 percent black, while it was 11.14 percent last year and 12.3 percent in 2006. Growth of Hispanic enrollment also slowed, after two years that saw increases of 20 percent or more.
Admissions officials blame the decrease on top schools like Yale and Harvard that have expanded their aid packages, making it increasingly difficult for UNC to compete financially.
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Ames, Iowa, Installs Rubber Sidewalks
Tweet Share on Facebook August 19, 2008 Comment (9)The city of Ames has installed rubber sidewalks in the Campustown neighborhood, just south of Iowa State University, to address the area's keg problem, the Ames Tribune reports. More specifically, the shock-absorbent shredded recycled tires will soften the blow of hundreds of 140-pound kegs plummeting to the ground. Turns out all that alcohol being delivered to nearby restaurants was not only making students extremely happy but also cracking and ruining the sidewalks.
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