The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Investigation Questions If Dartmouth's Trustees Enriched Themselves

New Hampshire's attorney general is looking into claims of conflicts of interest against members of the board of trustees and the investment committee of Dartmouth College in regard to their management of the college's $3.4 billion endowment. A group of Dartmouth faculty members, university employees and alumni — none of whom has come forward publicly — sent the letter earlier this year, but its contents only recently became public when it was posted on an unofficial university blog. The letter accuses the money managers of “enriching themselves” through private equity, venture capital and hedge fund investments made by the endowment. Read more at:
http://www.pionline.com/article/20120528/PRINTSUB/305289979/dartmouth-board-members-are-accused-of-enriching-own-firms

Despite Policies The Evidence Points To Excess College Trustee Conflicts Of Interest

A new report finds that 70 percent of Massachusetts’ wealthiest private colleges did business in fiscal 2009 and 2010 with companies affiliated with trustees on the schools’ boards, a number strikingly higher than the national average of 25 percent. Such arrangements are widely considered to be conflicts of interest. Many of the schools said they have policies designed to keep conflicts of interest from adversely affecting university decisions. But none of themdenied that some of their trustees do have conflicts. Read more at:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-01/news/31521845_1_private-colleges-college-trustees-universities

Adjunct Faculty Member's Thank You For Whistle-Blowing Is Getting Fired

Justin Schwartz, a lecturer at Cal State East Bay in 2009, told his bosses that a colleague in the recreation department was spending thousands of dollars of university money to buy himself a $4,000 bicycle, passes at a climbing gym, sailing equipment and paragliding lessons while claiming they were for classes he taught.  A campus investigation confirmed that the man had billed the school for personal expenses and that much of the equipment he had bought had mysteriously disappeared, and it found that department officials had never asked questions. Rather than thank the whistle-blower, Cal State East Bay fired him. The colleague who appeared to have bilked the school still teaches there. Read more at:
 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/31/MNLS1NO615.DTL#ixzz1qzZumozz

SAT Will Tighten Rules To Prevent Potential Cheating

Stung by a cheating scandal involving dozens of Long Island high school students, the SAT and ACT college entrance exams will now require students to provide a photograph when they sign up for the exams, and officials will check those images against the identification the students present when they take the test. The new rules were part of a broad set of changes announced on Tuesday in the aftermath of the cheating cases, in which high-scoring students used fake IDs to take the SAT or ACT for other students. The revelations had proved embarrassing for the testing services. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/education/after-cheating-scandal-sat-and-act-will-tighten-security.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=education

Welcome To Repression University

Campus spies. Pepper spray. SWAT teams. Twitter trackers. Biometrics. Student security consultants. Professors of homeland security studies. Welcome to Repress U, class of 2012. Since 9/11, the homeland security state has come to campus just as it has come to America’s towns and cities. Today, from the City University of New York to the University of California, students increasingly find themselves on the frontlines, not of a war on terror, but of a war on “radicalism” and “extremism.” Just about everyone from college administrators and educators to law enforcement personnel and corporate executives seems to have enlisted in this war effort.  Increasingly, American students are in their sights. Read more at:
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/22/big_brother_on_campus/singleton/

Two Boards May Be Too Many For University President

University of Miami President Donna Shalala may be in charge of her own university, but at the end of the day she still has to answer to a boss — the university’s board of trustees. The exception to that rule: the days Shalala shows up to meetings as a corporate board member for two local powerhouse companies. The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges advises college presidents to avoid serving on company boards with a connection to trustees.  Shalala says she’s not overwhelmed by her duties, and notes she also teaches 300 students a year. Read more at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/13/2635483/um-president-shalalas-role-on.html

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Firing Of Undocumented Workers Forces College To Question Its Values

The dining hall workers had been at Pomona College for years, some even decades. For a few, it was the only job they had held since moving to the United States. Then late last year, administrators at the college delivered letters to dozens of the longtime employees asking them to show proof of legal residency, saying that an internal review had turned up problems in their files. Seventeen workers could not produce documents showing that they were legally able to work in the United States. So on Dec. 2, they lost their jobs. Now, the campus is deep into a consuming debate over what it means to be a college with liberal ideals. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/us/after-workers-are-fired-an-immigration-debate-roils-california-campus.html?_r=1

What Drove A Claremont McKenna Admissions Administrator To Falsify Data

Claremont McKenna College, a small, prestigious California school, said Monday that for the past six years, it has submitted false SAT scores to publications like U.S. News & World Report that use the data in widely followed college rankings. Such small differences might influence the rankings, and the deception underscores the importance those rankings have taken on, as colleges fret over the loss of even a notch or two against their competitors. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html?_r=1

Just The Latest Incident In The Manipulation Of College Rankings

Any love-hate relationship must have its share of pain, so the academic world, in its obsession with college rankings, is suitably dismayed by news that an elite college, Claremont McKenna, fudged its numbers in an apparent bid to climb the charts. Dismayed, but not quite surprised. In fact, several colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system — in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings — by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying. repeated revelations of manipulation show the importance of the rankings in the minds of prospective students, their guidance counselors, parents, the alumni considering donations, the professors weighing job offers — and, of course, the colleges themselves. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/education/gaming-the-college-rankings.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

Admissions Offices Using Software To Detect Plagiarism In Applications

The detection of such wholesale cheating in college applications is on the rise due to the use of Turnitin for Admissions, an anti-plagiarism database service that compares student essays to an immense archive of other writings. Around the country, more than 100 colleges and universities have adopted it, mainly in graduate divisions. That growth highlights the search for authenticity in college admissions at a time when the Internet offers huge amounts of tempting free material. Read more at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/la-me-plagiarism-20120129,0,6050118.story