Being a College Athlete Now Means Constant Travel and Missed Classes [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

Playing football this season for the U.C.L.A. Bruins means being a frequent (and distant) flier. The team began the campaign in August with a win at the University of Hawaii. Their next road games sent the Bruins to Louisiana State, then Penn State, and back across the country to Rutgers. Then, a trip to Nebraska on Saturday and a jaunt up to Washington.

Such is the life of the modern-day college athlete, with U.C.L.A. moving into the Big Ten Conference, the erstwhile standard-bearer for Midwest football that now stretches from Piscataway to Puget Sound.

In all, the Bruins will travel 22,226 miles this season — nearly enough to circumnavigate the globe. It is the equivalent of 33 round trips to the Bay Area to play Stanford or U.C. Berkeley, U.C.L.A.’s former rivals that have moved to a newly bicoastal league of their own. . . .

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/us/college-football-conference-realignment.html

Fewer Black men are attending HBCUs | All Things Considered [ NPR ]

tension

Academic Sexual Misconduct Database

https://academic-sexual-misconduct-database.org/

Far-Right Pastor Wants False Sexual Assault Reports to Be Punishable by Death

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/far-pastor-wants-false-sexual-141959467.html

You can fool yourself

You can cheat until you're blind

You can cut your heart

It can happen

Clemson frat opens its arms to student with special needs [ CBS Sunday Morning ]

Must-read books for 1st-year college students [ Good Morning America ]

Tracking college closures [ The Hechinger Report ]

The flava:

College enrollment has been declining for more than a decade, and that means that many institutions are struggling to pay their bills. A growing number of them are making the difficult decision to close.

In the first nine months of 2024, 28 degree-granting institutions closed, compared with 15 in all of 2023, according to an analysis of federal data provided to The Hechinger Report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association or SHEEO.

Earlier this year, our colleague Jon Marcus reported that colleges were closing at a rate of nearly one per week. The Hechinger Report has created a tool to track these changes in the higher education landscape. Readers can search through the archive of colleges that have closed since 2008, and we will update it periodically with the latest shutdowns. . . . 

The article:

https://hechingerreport.org/tracking-college-closures/

Retractions: On the Rise, But Not Enough [ online talk via UC Irvine ]

In 2000, there were about 40 retractions from the scholarly literature. In 2023, there were more than 10,000. That is a dramatic increase, even accounting for the growing number of papers published per year.

In this UCI Libraires sponsored talk, Ivan Oransky, M.D. will explore the reasons for the increase, why it is good news, and why the real number should be even higher. Dr. Oransky will tell the stories of the sleuths who are finding problems in the literature, drawing on more than a decade of experience at Retraction Watch.

The webinar presentation is open to attendees interested in tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process, open access to information about scientific corrections and retractions, and ethics in publishing.

Registration is required. Click link to begin registration:

https://spaces.lib.uci.edu/event/13138327

colleges around the world. . .

California Bans Legacy Admissions [ KQED ]

https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101907480/california-bans-legacy-admissions

Starting next fall, public and private universities in California will no longer be allowed to consider an applicant’s relationship to alumni or donors in admissions decisions. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill last month banning the practice, known as legacy admissions. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we’re opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly,” Newsom said in a statement. We’ll examine what the California ban on legacy admissions could mean for students and for colleges across the country.

Guests:

Nanette Asimov , Higher Education Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle

Jessie Ryan, President, The Campaign for College Opportunity, a non-profit policy and research organization that advocates for Californians to attend and succeed in college.

Phil Ting, Assembly member representing California's 19th district encompassing parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties

Catharine Hill, managing director of the nonprofit Ithaka S+R and a former president of Vassar College

Billionaires Back a New ‘Anti-Woke’ University [ WSJ ]

The flava:

Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students. 

Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX. The new school has raised roughly $200 million so far—including $35 million from Yass—a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap.

Crow, a major GOP donor, was an early backer. “Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” he said. “Many people think that’s a bad idea.” Crow said he expects UATX to encourage ideological diversity. . . . 

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/billionaires-back-a-new-anti-woke-university-fefd0c40

The one regret from high school that I still think about all these years later [ Lawson Wallace ]

Why many college students are forced to spend more on housing than tuition [ PBS NewsHour ]