From the issue dated September 20, 2002
CRUMBLING FOUNDATIONS: A SPECIAL REPORT
INTELLECTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE ERODES
Budget cuts for libraries, university presses, journals, and culture combine to threaten the infrastructure on which professors and students depend.
- GAPS IN THE STACKS: To close a budget shortfall, the library at Appalachian State University is canceling hundreds of journal subscriptions and buying many fewer books.
- PRESSES ARE PRESSED: Tighter budgets, increased costs, and falling sales are prompting some university publishers to cut back on their lists.
- ILLS IN IOWA: Budget cuts have forced one history department to pack more students into classes, to reduce travel funds and teaching assistants, and to not replace all professors who leave.
THE FACULTY
PROFITS WITH HONOR?
When business schools and professors cozy up to corporations for money and "real-world experience," critics say, students learn that ethics don't count.
- RATHER SWITCH THAN FIGHT: A study says M.B.A. students have learned that it would be easier to leave a company than to face stressful conflicts.
INTELLECTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE ERODES
Budget cuts for libraries, university presses, journals, and culture combine to threaten the infrastructure on which professors and students depend.
SWEDEN'S STRUGGLE
The Scandinavian country tries to increase the proportion of female faculty members without violating the rights of male candidates.
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- TURMOIL IN BATON ROUGE: Louisiana State University has fired two officials at a biomedical-research center financed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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- FALLOUT FROM 9/11: The American Association of University Professors will examine how the attacks have affected academic freedom.
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- PEER REVIEW: Penn's campus is surprised by the appointment of a two-star general as chief operating officer. ... The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign snags a prominent legal couple. ... A Washington Post Magazine columnist will teach nonfiction writing at Pitt.
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- SYLLABUS: A mutual fund selects its holdings based on students' research in a finance course at Tulane University.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
A DELL OF DATA
In the carefully monitored Duke Forest, researchers are finding that people, not trees, will have to save the world from the effects of global warming.
LIT SNIT
In their self-perceived role as moral tutors, English professors are the last bitter combatants in the culture wars, writes Mark Krupnick, a professor of literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.
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- VERBATIM: Kieran Egan, author of Getting It Wrong From the Beginning, describes the fundamental errors of "progressivism" in education.
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- HOT TYPE: A new book on the invention of the Moog synthesizer evokes the early days of electronic music.
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- NOTA BENE: Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools highlights the similarities of two very different movements vying for a place in education.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
UNDER SCRUTINY
A suggestion by the Bush administration that colleges be held accountable for their effectiveness in retaining students has some college leaders worried.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
The University of Utah has reached a standoff with the state government over whether guns can be banned from the campus.
SADDAM, AND THEN WHAT?
The Bush administration must consider not just the feasibility of attacking Iraq, but whether such an attack ultimately would further the national interest, writes Richard H. Kohn, a professor of military history and chairman of the curriculum in peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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- TURMOIL IN BATON ROUGE: Louisiana State University has fired two officials at a biomedical-research center financed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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- NO, THANKS, WE'RE FULL: Citing its sufficient monetary reserves, the North Harris Montgomery Community College District, near Houston, reduced the rate that local taxpayers pay to support its operating budget.
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- LOBBYIST WATCH: Princeton University chose Diane A. Jones, acting staff director of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, to head its Washington office.
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- SCREENED OUT: Students' visas to the United States are delayed in 26 countries that are considered potential threats.
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- SERVING SEVIS: PeopleSoft and other providers of student-information systems are scrambling to create software to help colleges meet a deadline for reporting information about foreign students to a new federal database.
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- END OF A TREND: The default rate on student loans has risen slightly for the first time since 1990.
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- JEB BUSH'S PROMISE: The proportion of minority students at Florida's public universities has remained largely unchanged, figures show, despite a ban on affirmative action in admissions.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
TAKING ON BIG PHARMA
The University of Rochester is suing corporate drug manufacturers in what could be a precedent-setting case for researchers at colleges.
MORTARBOARDS AND MORTAR
After 150 Maine winters, the granite blocks of Bowdoin College's chapel towers need the human touch -- and plenty of it -- to stay safely in place.
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- PADDLE-WHEELING FOR PLEASURE: The University of Minnesota is a partner in the reopening of a showboat on the Mississippi River.
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- LITERARY CHOICE: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation chose the poet Edward Hirsch as its new president.
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- BIG SETTLEMENT: A former employee of Georgetown University has won more than $1-million in a sexual-harassment suit against her onetime boss, now the college's top business officer.
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- CAMPUS CHECKS IN: California State University-Channel Islands just opened its doors, yet it already has alumni.
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- HERE HE IS: The University of Hawaii System's president is a judge in this week's Miss America pageant.
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- PEER REVIEW: Penn's campus is surprised by the appointment of a two-star general as chief operating officer. ... The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign snags a prominent legal couple. ... A Washington Post Magazine columnist will teach nonfiction writing at Pitt.
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- FOUNDATION GRANTS; GIFTS AND BEQUESTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
CANCELED DEALS?
Librarians are expressing concern over "bundled" collections of electronic journals from Elsevier Science, saying that the terms of the agreements are unreasonable.
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- ALL HUSKERS, ALL THE TIME: Fans of the University of Nebraska's sports teams can now subscribe to a Web site that, among other features, will stream live video of entire competitions.
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- ELECTRONIC WORKHORSE: Researchers at SUNY-Buffalo created a virtual supercomputer by networking more than 2,000 standard servers.
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- JONES KNOWLEDGE'S GIFT: The company announced that it will make its proprietary software for managing courses freely available as it shuts down that side of its business.
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- LEAPING BANDWIDTH: The Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University are collaborating on an Internet2 dance concert in which the performers will be in two cities.
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- SERVING SEVIS: PeopleSoft and other providers of student-information systems are scrambling to create software to help colleges meet a deadline for reporting information about foreign students to a new federal database.
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- LEARNING, 24-7: A new collection of essays examines e-learning's principles, its technological needs, and its financial viability.
STUDENTS
MATCHMAKERS
Colleges are exploring new Web-based strategies for successful roommate pairings.
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- HIGH ENROLLMENT, LOW SUCCESS: More Hispanic students than members of other minority groups go to college, but they don't stay.
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- COLLEGE CHOICE AFTER 9/11: The recession had more impact on students' plans for this fall than did the attacks.
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- DIP AND SIP: A Canadian university is providing cardboard coasters to help its freshmen identify and avoid drinks that have been spiked with the date-rape drug Rohypnol.
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- INDECENT EXPOSURE: Police officers in Pennsylvania arrested a Villanova University student for photographing police cars.
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- PRIME NUMBERS: Undergraduates and graduate students are flocking to courses and programs in accounting.
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- CONDOM INCOMPETENCE: A survey of sexually active male students at Indiana University at Bloomington found that they made frequent errors in using prophylactics.
ATHLETICS
SPLIT DECISION
Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association is considering rule changes that could result in dividing its member colleges into two groups.
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- RISING IN THE RANKS? Black men are ever so slowly winning jobs as college-football coaches, according to a new study.
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- ONE-LIMB WONDER: A football player who lost a leg after a freak accident in a game is bidding to return to the field.
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- PEOPLE IN ATHLETICS
INTERNATIONAL
SWEDEN'S STRUGGLE
The Scandinavian country tries to increase the proportion of female faculty members without violating the rights of male candidates.
- A WEAK SHIELD? Some Swedish women say they are poorly protected from sexual harassment in academe.
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- SCREENED OUT: Students' visas to the United States are delayed in 26 countries that are considered potential threats.
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- WORLD BEAT: An Eritrean student leader, jailed for criticizing the government's treatment of college students, escaped to Ethiopia. ... A woman won a legal battle to be admitted to a teachers college in India, but she will soon be too old to start teaching.
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- FINANCES QUESTIONED: Mexican colleges were ordered to submit audits of how they use federal funds.
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- CLASH OVER DISMISSALS: Faculty members and students were injured at the University of Karachi when the Pakistani paramilitary force was called in to quell a protest.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
SO CLOSE, AND YET ...
Janet Dudley-Eshbach, president of Salisbury University, sends her surfer son off to college -- to a dorm across the street.
THE KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY
Supporting society's intellectual infrastructure is more complicated than ever. How are research universities faring? asks Stanley N. Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
SADDAM, AND THEN WHAT?
The Bush administration must consider not just the feasibility of attacking Iraq, but whether such an attack ultimately would further the national interest, writes Richard H. Kohn, a professor of military history and chairman of the curriculum in peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
PREP RALLY
A magazine's silly list of Ivy-geared high schools raises troubling questions about how we view secondary education, writes Rachel Toor, a former admissions officer and book editor at Duke University.
UNBELIEVABLE
As film plotting gets more baroque, coherence is the casualty, writes Steve Vineberg, a professor of theater and film at the College of the Holy Cross.
AGIT-POP
In his murals, Mike Alewitz looks at capitalism's big picture.
LIT SNIT
In their self-perceived role as moral tutors, English professors are the last bitter combatants in the culture wars, writes Mark Krupnick, a professor of literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.
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- THE SHORT LIST: What's going to be the next big thing in your field? Several scholars tackle the question.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
GAZETTE
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DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS,
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