Zaytuna College in Berkeley, CA will accept its first students in the fall of 2010 or 2011. Founded by Sheik Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir, it will be the first accredited Islamic college in the United States, open to men and women of all religions.
posted by escabeche on Oct 1, 2009 - 60 comments

On September 10th, to celebrate their initiation week, 172 communications students at the University of Quebec at Montreal decided to put on a show. After weeks of preparation, the costumed and prop-wielding crowd enacted an exuberant, complex, and flawlessly-choreographed performance of the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" that sprawled through the campus's multi-story Judith Jasmin Pavilion... and they did it all in one continuous take (on their second try). The feat is just the most recent example of "lipdubbing" -- a video phenomenon where a single camera moves through a crowd of highly coordinated lip-syncers in a single seamless take, with the original recording dubbed over the finished product. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 1, 2009 - 83 comments

20 movies which make you wish you'd gone to college from UK flim critic Jo Berry. [more inside]
posted by needled on Apr 11, 2009 - 64 comments

Academic Earth collects lectures on a wide variety of subjects from UC Berkely, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale that the universities have released under Creative Commons. The site is still in beta so it doesn't quite have the thousands of lectures its frontpage promises. It has many full courses, for example Benjamin Polak teaching game theory, Amy Hungerford on the American novel since 1945, Charles Bailyn's introduction to astrophysics, John Merriman on the history of France since 1871, Shelly Kagan on death and Oussama Khatib's introduction to robotics.
posted by Kattullus on Feb 4, 2009 - 10 comments

The Delta Project recently released a new report on Trends in College Spending. The NYTimes summarizes.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Jan 15, 2009 - 14 comments

Sadly, colleges are on track to become unaffordable for most Americans.
posted by plexi on Dec 3, 2008 - 114 comments

Remember Laura K. Pahl, the girl who was famously humiliated for trying to buy a term paper over the internet? Perhaps she should have gone to a professional.
posted by Afroblanco on Oct 16, 2008 - 67 comments

The National Association of Scholars has been publishing a series of articles called "If I Ran the Zoo" (inspired by Seuss) in which various contributors describe what they would do if they were in charge of higher education. (via) [more inside]
posted by prefpara on Jul 9, 2008 - 25 comments

KnowHow2Go wants you to take on the tough classes - such as Biology, Foreign Languages, and Algebra II - to prepare yourself for college.
posted by divabat on May 26, 2008 - 31 comments

Slate asks, "What's behind the boom in homeland-security and emergency-management majors?"
posted by Afroblanco on Mar 29, 2008 - 28 comments

Lost bag! Reward if found! Returned! But it's a fake! Finally someone took the advice to GYOFB. But it's a fake! Students at CUNY's Hunter College in a class sponsored by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition produced the blog and related guerrilla marketing activities related to counterfeiting last spring. But "while a television viewer is aware that he or she is watching advertising, those viewing the blog or her posters at Hunter thought they were learning about the experiences of a real student — not a class project crafted by an industry association (that was sufficiently proud to boast about it)." Reports Inside Higher Ed.
posted by pithy comment on Mar 3, 2008 - 15 comments

Open Culture's "10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube" features "intellectually redeemable" channels from UC Berkeley, @GoogleTalks, TheNobelPrize, TED Talks, FORA.tv, the European Graduate School, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, PBS, UChannel, MIT, Vanderbilt, and USC.
posted by Soup on Dec 27, 2007 - 21 comments

U.S. Public Service Academy : A proposal by two Teach for America alum to provide fully-funded top-notch undergraduate education in public service in the style of military academies, but with a mandatory 5-year local/state/federal service work requirement. A bill for this school was put into Congress by Senators Hillary Clinton and Arlen Specter.
posted by divabat on Nov 24, 2007 - 54 comments

And I thought us UC Santa Cruz students and alums only had to deal with the defensive ticks we developed by being the stepchild to that other University of California in the Bay Area. But no! We apparently attended the Worst School in America!

The always endearing David Horowitz, in addition to posting an article showing the university's crimes-against-academia/cool-classes, was on Fox News decrying the University's policy of turning patriotic Midwestern kids into Molotov-throwing Marxists. After watching that clip, I do have to wonder what career paths are available to someone with a skillset that includes "Can organize anti-capitalist revolutions."
posted by Weebot on Oct 9, 2007 - 43 comments

On average, college students are having a medium amount of sex.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 23, 2007 - 59 comments

Think you're smart? Apply for a Prize Fellowship at Oxford's All Souls College. [via adrianhon]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 12, 2007 - 24 comments

Is College Worth the Cost? In strict dollar terms, is that degree going to be worth the parchment it's printed on?
posted by blue_beetle on Aug 29, 2007 - 134 comments

Radar picks the worst colleges in America. At least one of the picks is rather dubious, although I suppose being the "worst" Ivy League is a position of some note, and another one of the picks was where my school's valedictorian went. Either way, it's always nice to see the Moonies somersaulting into otherwise non-Moonie related stories.
posted by Sticherbeast on Aug 27, 2007 - 75 comments

Soulforce Equality Ride! Soulforce, a nationwide organization working to end religious discrimination of gays and lesbians are in the middle of their second annual Equality Ride to raise awareness of Christian colleges and universities that discriminate against queer students. GLBTQ students are discriminated against everywhere. The Riders have been met with both open arms and anger. The Reverend Mel White, who runs Soul Force, ghost wrote Billy Graham's and Jerry Falwell's autobiographies and worships at Falwell's church in Lynchburg, VA in silent protest. Previously.
posted by parmanparman on Mar 23, 2007 - 51 comments

Do you love learning? I know you do. This might help keep you busy for a while.
posted by loquacious on Jan 13, 2007 - 44 comments

"I hate grades.... [But] I am obliged to follow the rules set forth by my employer and the larger education industry in general. Consequently, I assign grades."
posted by grumblebee on Sep 28, 2006 - 97 comments

2%. (bugmenot login fleeb@fleeble.com, password fleeble) That is the percentage of students in UCLA's incoming freshman class that self-identify as black. Only 96 students in an entering class of 4,852, and the lowest percentage since 1973. Many believe Proposition 209 is to blame, but some want to stop collecting this data altogether.
posted by fugitivefromchaingang on Jun 8, 2006 - 46 comments

The Kids are Alright, Dammit. Reason's Nick Gillespie weighs-in on the 2005 Modern Language Association annual convention. "...faced with a choice between a sort of bitter righteousness and increasing irrelevance on the one hand and engaging students with more fair-minded argumentation and open-ended discussion, some academics are choosing the latter. That's certainly good news for kids stuck in freshman composition classes, those dreary required classes which are often little more than clumsy attempts at political indoctrination."
posted by ZenMasterThis on Dec 28, 2005 - 42 comments

NYU President John Sexton warns striking grad students that they must resume teaching or lose their benefits. After weeks of marching outside Bobst library and refusing to teach classes, NYU grad students have been sent a letter from President John Sexton, warning them that any TA who does not return to work next week will lose their stipends and eligibility to teach next semester. Until recently, NYU was the only private school that allowed graduate teaching assistants to unionize, following a 2000 NLRB decision, which was subsequently reversed. NYU claims that it has negotiated in good faith and that the union's demands would limit decision making that should remain in the hands of academics, while the grad students argue that they cannot trust NYU's admistration to take care of them without unionization (and representation by the UAW). Meanwhile, many undergrads paying tuition upwards of 50K/year will have to retake classes or opt for pass/fail. Do you sympathize with highly educated American grad students who receive free tuition, health insurance, and stipends in exchange for modest teaching duties (when many other students depend on student loans), especially compared the with 19th century coal miners, third-world factory workers, and modern-day wage slaves we normally associate with unions and strikes?
posted by banishedimmortal on Nov 30, 2005 - 98 comments

85% of college students now use Facebook. With such popularity schools such as MU are examing Facebook usage and "a few students have been turned in for content that violates the conduct code." The phone-directory-on-steroids even attracts employers, "Linda Kaiser ... spoke with two people — an employer and a parent — who used Facebook to screen candidates for employment." Oh and for the Greeks the Facebook is creating problems of its own.
posted by geoff. on Nov 7, 2005 - 50 comments

The Times Higher Education Supplement's World University Rankings [link to PDF]
posted by Gyan on Oct 10, 2005 - 15 comments

More On Anti-Semitism at Columbia My interest in this story is primarily about how the New York Times, considered one of the great newspapers world-wide, in fact sucks!---"A week ago, Deacon and the Trunk posted on the release of a report by Columbia University on its investigation of students' charges of anti-semitic conduct by several of the university's professors. The report mostly exonerated the professors, while, at the same time, recording behavior by them which was appalling. One of the points we noted was the craven behavior of the New York Times, which said that it agreed not to report the viewpoint of the complaining students in exchange for early access to Columbia's report. The Trunk wrote: But what about the New York Times? Is it conceivable that the Times would enter into an agreement not to talk to the subjects of a report in exchange for being given access to the report a few hours before it is made available to the public? [The Times admits it!]
posted by Postroad on Apr 6, 2005 - 50 comments

People talk about how universities have almost turned into diploma mills, churning out degrees to almost anyone that breathes. So what do students think about the current situation? According to this student, it doesn't go far enough: "I have come to the conclusion that the University system makes absolutely no sense. Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we're learning...I'll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn't it be the same with education?" That's right, students want, nay, demand an A, since they paid for it.
posted by mathowie on Dec 8, 2004 - 77 comments

Fired for grading honestly? Historically black Benedict College's president recently fired two professors for "insubordination" after they refused to comply with the school's SEE ("Success Equals Effort") policy. One of the fired faculty members claims his academic freedom had been violated. (Gratuitious opinion: I think what's getting violated here is the idea that you're supposed to do college-level work in college....)
posted by alumshubby on Aug 22, 2004 - 25 comments

A University, far away. Tens of thousands of U.S. students will lose most or all of their financial aid.
posted by plexi on Jul 18, 2003 - 15 comments

13-year-old Gregory Robert Smith graduates from Randolph-Macon College this month. He has yet to find the vaccine for the brutal Atomic Wedgie.
posted by LexRockhard on Jun 1, 2003 - 35 comments

In England it is called the "Graveyard Grannies'' problem, in France the "Chere Grand'mere," while in Bulgaria it is inexplicably known as "The Toadstool Waxing Plan".

Next week, college students around the world will be taking final exams. Their grandmothers will be dropping like flies."
posted by Wet Spot on Dec 3, 2002 - 15 comments

Caley Meals, is a sex columnist. What seperates her from the crowd of them, is that she is published in a college school newspaper. Jokingly, in her first column she states that, "I will try to keep the students of Madison with their heads in the right place: the gutter." She then goes on to cover imortant topics such as, how to work the college sex life around a roomie, the drunken bootie call, fornication with food, female domination and many others. Is it real journalism or only riding on pure shock value? "Writing about sex is about as interesting as talking about sex, which is to say it's not interesting at all compared to the real thing. But at least it can be a little naughty."
posted by Recockulous on Nov 26, 2002 - 38 comments

When you take a good storyteller with keys to much of campus, a desire to get into everyplace else, and a need to bring about change through "constructive vandalism" and then wait for the statute of limitations to pass, you wind up with the published stories of Stealth Force Beta. Those folks who never had fun in college didn't get isolated in the middle of the desert with a bunch of nerds.
posted by ewagoner on Nov 26, 2002 - 6 comments

Salaries of presidents at private US colleges and universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education releases results of country-wide survey (complete database available only with subscription). The salaries and benefits of presidents at public universities from previous report.
posted by shoos on Nov 18, 2002 - 20 comments

ICKY!
Sometimes I think I made the right Career move. People complain about having to write papers, study, and do too much home work, but, how would you like to hold your hand in a cage full of mosquitoes to determine if they are ready to feed in order to get your degree (in entomology)?
Don't worry, the mosquitoes used in the tests are raised in captivity and do carry not any diseases suchas the West Nile Virus.
If you're like me, you asked yourself, What do entomologists do?
posted by Blake on Aug 9, 2002 - 6 comments

Schools conspire against boys: educator I really don't know what to make of this. Nobody complained that schools were "anti-boy" before girls started to do better and outpace male enrollment in college. Boys were always the ones getting in trouble when I was a student too.
posted by Salmonberry on Jun 29, 2002 - 47 comments

MBA students at Vanderbilt University examine Google's business strategy. Presented in Powerpoint: Google.com, Google: E-Strategy Analysis, A Brief Look at Google and Google: A Strategy Study
posted by andrewraff on Apr 26, 2002 - 6 comments

Man, I need to go back to college! Berkeley students go to strip clubs and play "The Match Game" in a male sexuality class.
posted by MikeB on Feb 19, 2002 - 15 comments

Harvard students “essentially a lazy bunch,” and not “that smart.” Whatever. At least they have the best friggin footbal team.
posted by Voyageman on Nov 12, 2001 - 41 comments

"It feels like a warm, wet vagina." A mandatory "sex orientation" for students at Dartmouth College. The administration claims it was educational. Students who attended aren't so sure. Is this sort of thing common elsewhere?
posted by gdog on Nov 1, 2001 - 105 comments

Start saving for your little MeFite babies! With the UPromise service, every time you make a purchase with a participating company, a percentage of the amount will be contributed to a college fund.
(more inside)
posted by Hankins on Aug 3, 2001 - 6 comments

Want college aid? Bush insists on total disclosure about prior drug use. "The thing that struck me was the Bush administration stance that a non-answer means you're guilty is ironic, since he spent the entire campaign not answering the question about cocaine," Hlinko said. "I don't care if he did coke 30 years ago, but this is hypocritical." I don't dislike Bush to the same degree as some of you, but this pisses me off.
posted by dong_resin on Jun 25, 2001 - 25 comments

How to get into college Who needs good grades, hard work, and extra activities! All you need to get into college is determination and a gimmick! Look out Harvard here I come.
posted by aj100 on May 30, 2001 - 9 comments

Kent State student senate denies funding for the annual commemoration of the May 4, 1970 shooting. The allocation request was for about $16,000, which is a good chunk of change (out of a $300,000 budget) -- until you consider that they shelled out $86,000 for a speech given by Barbara Bush. Should remembering this era in history be a political question? (via the Alt-log)
posted by norm on Apr 2, 2001 - 7 comments

"Brown Students Steal Univ. Paper" File Under: When headlines get into this weird intentional?/unintentional? pun thing.
posted by Outlawyr on Mar 19, 2001 - 19 comments

The War on... education? It's estimated that 7000 US college students will lose their entitlement to at least some financial aid because of previous drug convictions. Which is nice. Now, the follies of the "war on drugs" are well-documented, but this takes the cake. I thought that punishment was for the criminal justice system to dispense...
posted by holgate on Oct 24, 2000 - 20 comments

Weak leg? A female kicker is suing Duke University because she was cut from the team. She says it was because she's a woman, the coach says she wasn't as versatile as other kickers on his roster. With colleges passing illiterates through based on football skill, I'm skeptical that a coach would make a roster decision based on sex.
posted by owillis on Oct 3, 2000 - 13 comments

Is nudity art? Or is this USF student just a flake?
posted by baylink on May 25, 2000 - 13 comments

ABC reports on Napsters usage on University Campuses.
posted by TuxHeDoh on Feb 27, 2000 - 2 comments