While admissions officers are well versed in SAT-score and GPA requirements for their institutions, it is now crucial that they know how to answer questions about eligibility for financial aid and merit scholarships. A new "Chronicle" survey of admissions officers found that monetary issues weigh heavily on their minds. When asked about the "most…

College administrators take great pains to ensure that students who are admitted to their campuses have the intellect, motivation, and maturity to succeed. Similarly, they make every attempt to gather information about the character and integrity of the students whom they invite to enroll, to safeguard the reputation and well-being of their…

Many college alumni wear their love for their alma maters on their sleeves, if not their sweatshirts. They are practically a walking advertisement for the college, so it often makes sense to rely on them when recruiting, a new survey of admissions officers suggests. The survey, however, also showed that admissions offices with budgets of less than…

According to this author, a quiet revolution is picking up steam in the nation's private secondary schools, with broad implications for college admissions and for teaching and learning on both sides of the transition from high school to college. About 50 of the nation's leading college-preparatory schools have opted out of the College Board's…

Over the last decade, admissions has become a front-page fixation, and the industry's professionals have higher profiles than ever, on campuses and off. In turn, today's admissions jobs come with heavy doses of prestige and pressure. In this article, the authors discuss the results of a new survey of college officers which suggest that, despite…

The student-loan industry seems to have broken new ground, which raises a red flag after the recent investigation of the private-loan industry by Andrew M. Cuomo, New York State's attorney general. Last June "The Chronicle" reported that in Cuomo's testimony before Congress, he compared the industry to the Wild West, characterizing it as a bastion…

The faculty union at the City University of New York must make it easier for nonmembers to receive refunds of union dues spent on activities other than collective bargaining, a federal judge ruled this month. Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom, of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, found that the union, the Professional Staff Congress (or PSC),…

The opening lines of Shakespeare's sonnet on the destructive power of sexual desire are equally potent as a description of the emotions aroused by warfare. Poets are the best witnesses to the dark connection between violence and the erotic, the link between sexual desire and military aggression. Initially justified by perjured claims about weapons…

The Education Department released a report last week, "Parent Expectations and Planning for College," that offers new insights into the factors influencing whether parents expect their children to enroll at four-year colleges. It suggests that many young people who could succeed at such institutions are not being encouraged by their families or…

This article describes the controversy surrounding a Yale University art student, Aliza Shvarts, who told the campus newspaper that she had repeatedly inseminated herself artificially and then induced abortions as part of her senior thesis. The controversy has created massive reverberations throughout academe, especially in the already hotly…

One may be surprised to learn that the author's institution, a small state college in Massachusetts, has a significant alumni population in and around Los Angeles. In fact, while they do not have an alumni chapter in Boston, they do have one in Los Angeles. The reason is that one of their most popular majors is communications media. They pump out…

Twenty years ago, Vietnam's closed-door policy meant its students were restricted to the former Soviet-bloc countries. Today they study all over the world--about 6,000 are in the United States alone. In many cases, their tuition and living expenses are paid by foreign governments and private charitable organizations. Fulbright, the Ford…

This spring, academic journals may turn the anti-plagiarism software that professors have been using against their students on the professors themselves. CrossRef, a publishing industry association, and the software company iParadigms announced a deal last week to create CrossCheck, an anti-plagiarism program for academic journals. The software…

In a student production of "Dracula" at Texas A&M University some years ago, the final scene was exceptionally dramatic. One actor stabbed another, who was playing the vampire, in the chest with a real knife. A volunteer director from the community, who was assisting the drama club, had decided that the scene required the actual weapon, not the…

College trustees are stepping up their oversight as institutions seek new revenue sources and as government scrutiny of higher education continues to increase, a panel of management experts said last week at the annual conference of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Across the country, board members are hiring…