The Paper Trail

Ohio higher education officials are looking to shift the state's higher education funding model to one based partially on performance, a change that could occur as early as next fall, the Post reports. Currently, schools receive aid based solely on enrollment.

Under the proposed model, the state would allot funding based on a 30 percent to 70 percent split between performance and enrollment. "Performance" could be based on the number of students who pass core curriculum courses, graduation rates, and the university's efforts at helping at-risk students. No specific benchmarks have yet been determined.

The Ohio University president supports the plan, saying, "We have to be accountable not only for recruiting students but for retaining them and for graduating them." He added that OU would most likely do well under such a system but said the school does not anticipate an increase in funding because state funding for higher education as a whole is likely to be significantly cut in the near future.

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Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is taking heat for the cushy compensation package she received even as her school laid off 98 employees, the Albany Times Union reports. Jackson, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a possible replacement for Hillary Clinton in the Senate, was given a $1.3 million compensation package in 2006-07, as well as access to the presidential residence and a 36-acre Adirondack home that the school bought for $450,000. She also makes around $1.3 million for work on outside corporate boards, such as IBM, Marathon Oil, FedEx, Medtronic, NYSE Euronext, and PSEG, according to the Times Union.

At least one professor has suggested Jackson take a pay cut, pointing to other presidents who have done so already.

The layoffs are of particular concern since they tend to be rare (universities generally lean on hiring freezes and travel cuts first), and Rensselaer's layoffs have mostly been doled out to lower-wage workers.

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A quick rundown on what this contest actually is. Since the beginning of the week, I've been accepting nominations for four categories:

• Story of the Year
• Nonstory of the Year
• Newsmaker of the Year
• Best Alternative Media Outlet

After some undisclosed amount of time, I will take all those nominated topics and put them up for vote by the population at large. Whatever/whoever gets the most votes wins. I will admit that the "winners" of the first three categories tend not to care, but this is apparently a really big deal for some of the competitors in the last. This is for you, so please nominate yourself.

If you're still confused about what counts as what, read below:

Story of the Year: This is the biggest college story that happened in 2008. Last year's winner was the visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia. This year, I imagine most things involving Barack Obama would fit in this category, as would the epic FAIL that college endowments became. Other important stories include the Northern Illinois shooting that left six dead in February and how the economy is affecting admissions and financial aid.

Nonstory of the Year: Enough of that serious stuff. What in 2008 was utterly unimportant but still captivated our hearts and minds? The Berkeley tree-sitters won last year and could technically be in the running again since their protest mercifully ended in September. Some other worthless bits of college-related news: how many schools Sarah Palin went to and that strange Yale art project that somehow involved abortions (Real? Fake? Who cares! It's art).

Newsmaker of the Year: A guy just elected president whose greatest fans sometimes seem to confuse him with Jesus comes to mind, but we'll humor the rest of the contenders with a vote anyway. Other ideas include Tom Friedman (pied-in-the-face at Brown) and Sarah Palin (target of scorn and ridicule, also had her E-mail hacked by a college kid).

Best Alternative Media Outlet: For the past two years, this has by far been the most popular category. It's unclear what the parameters are, but basically anything that involves campus news and is not the traditional print college newspaper is OK. I'll accept blogs (both newspaper staffed and outsider), podcasts, Tumblrs, robust Twitter feeds, YouTube channels, or whatever. The point is: We're so hip, anything goes.

This also is the category with the most voting irregularities, so I'm always looking for ideas on how to make this more fair. Also, a note to an unnamed liberal arts school in the Northeast: I'm sorry that a blog coming out of a giant state school (On the Record's University of Michigan blog) beat yours last year. I can't help that its student body is something like a gazillion times larger than yours. Maybe I should break down the votes per capita, but that sounds like a lot of work for me. I'm still open to suggestions, though.

Any more confusion on what this is all about? Leave comments or E-mail me at papertrail@usnews.com.

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Dartmouth and Yale have reported record numbers of early admission applicants, reflecting a trend seen early in the fall. Yale admitted 13.4 percent of its nonbinding early action applicants this fall, significantly lower than its 18.1 percent rate last year. Yale both had an increased amount of interest in its early action program and was simultaneously scaling back its acceptances because of an unusually high enrollment rate from last year. It had 5,557 applicants this year, up from last year's 4,888, but it also admitted just 742 students, 143 fewer than 2007. Yale sent twice as many rejection letters and deferred 47.6 percent to the regular round, down from 65 percent from last year.

Dartmouth received 1,550 applications for its binding early decision program and accepted 401 of those students, just two more than the prior year, even though the number of applicants went up 9 percent. Dartmouth also reports an 8 percentage point increase in financial aid requests over last year.

Cornell has similarly seen a 10 percent increase in the number of binding early decision applications, from 3,094 to 3,405. Apparently the number of admits also went up, because acceptance rates held relatively steady around 37 percent. However, the university reports an increase in denials (similar to Yale's), from 34.84 to 40.23, while the percentage of applicants deferred into the regular admissions pool declined from 25.89 to 21.53.

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