Category Archives: Students

Inside Higher Ed: Voltaire Wasn’t Cut Out to Be an Iowa State TA

At the best of all possible universities, teaching assistants feel appreciated by their superiors and cherish all of their students, and everyone works in harmony. Not, apparently, at Iowa State University.

There, the English department has been debating two satirical videos by teaching assistants — posted on YouTube and now removed, but available on Facebook — that portray TA duties teaching composition. (The videos may be found here and here.) In a series of faux interviews, TA’s talk about their working conditions, their students and the curriculum. Some of the talk is crude and mocking, although in the era of Harold and Kumar, the videos hardly push the envelope in that category.

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The Olympian: Evergreen suspends student organization

Democratic society violated on-campus ban of concerts

The Evergreen State College has suspended Olympia Students for a Democratic Society for the remainder of the school year and placed the organization on probation until January 2009 for violating the on-campus concert ban imposed by the administration after a Feb. 15 riot following an on-campus concert.

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International Herald Tribune: Iraqis free 42 students abducted at checkpoint

BAGHDAD: At least 40 students kidnapped by gunmen on Sunday near the northern city of Mosul have been freed by the Iraqi security forces, the police said.

Meanwhile, clashes overnight in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City left five dead and more than a dozen wounded, the police said.

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Telegraph: Student suspended after criticising Anglia Ruskin University course on YouTube

Naomi Sugai, a masters student at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge, posted a minute-and-a-half video on the popular website, complaining about shortcomings on her £4,750- a-year business course.

It has since been viewed more than 1,800 times and has prompted comments from a number of fellow students raising similar concerns. But the 24-year-old postgraduate has now been told by officials at the former polytechnic that she has been suspend from her MA in management.

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Detroit News: Police use tear gas to disperse 4,000 in riot near MSU; 52 arrested, others ticketed

EAST LANSING — Police used tear gas, smoke grenades and other devices that make loud noises and emit bright flashes of light to break up a huge crowd of 4,000 people near Michigan State University that erupted into a riot early Sunday.

People began partying at the privately owned Cedar Village apartments across the street from the campus’ northeast border about 1 p.m. Saturday and the crowd steadily swelled into the evening. East Lansing and campus police on Friday started warning people to stay away from the area after learning that an effort on the social networking site Facebook.com to resurrect Cedar Fest — a wild street party that often ended up in heavy drinking and burning couches — after a 20-year absence was under way.

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The Guardian: NUS drops free education doctrine

Students today voted to get rid of the principle that the National Union of Students will only argue for free education.

The newly-elected president, Wes Streeting, said the union would propose alternatives to the current higher education fees system, which is to be reviewed next year.

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Houston Chronicle: UH students march for workers’ rights
Group wants school not to sell sweatshop clothes

Outfitted in homemade masks of the likeness of the new University of Houston president, about two dozen students carried a mock casket through campus Monday before presenting it and a fake gravestone reading “Worker’s Rights R.I.P.” to college officials.

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Digital Chosunilbo: The Fall of a Radical Student Union

The Korea Federation of University Students Council, or Hanchongnyeon, cancelled its presidential election Saturday after no candidate applied for the post. The student council president of one university withdrew his candidacy at the last minute after his parents talked him out of it. It was the first time since the establishment of the group in 1993 that it has been unable to choose a leader.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: To woo academic recruits, college makes them stars

Justin Chung knew Wilkes University wanted him when he got one of its first acceptance letters in February. But he didn’t know how badly until he saw the mall kiosk with his name on it.

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Globe and Mail: Ryerson won’t expel student over study group
Members collaborated on Facebook

Chris Avenir, the Ryerson University student whose involvement in a Facebook study group set off an international debate about the difference between online collaboration and old-fashion cheating, will not be expelled.

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Inside Higher Ed: U.S. Proposes New Rules on Student Privacy

The federal law designed to protect the privacy of students’ educational records has been under scrutiny and stress from a variety of angles in recent years, most recently from those concerned (in the wake of last year’s shootings at Virginia Tech) about whether the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act gives college officials sufficient latitude to report their fears about mentally ill students.

Responding to the issues raised by Virginia Tech, by laws like the Patriot Act, and by several recent court decisions, the U.S. Education Department today proposed new regulations to govern the educational privacy law known as FERPA, which restricts disclosures by educational institutions from a student’s records.

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Toronto Star: Student faces Facebook consequences

Ryerson student Chris Avenir is facing expulsion for taking part in a Facebook study group for one of his engineering courses.

Study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower – but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University.

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

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The Boston Globe: MIT announces need-based financial aid plan
Nearly 30% will not have to pay tuition

Nearly 30 percent of MIT undergraduates will not pay tuition next academic year under a far-reaching financial aid initiative announced yesterday, the latest in a host of expanded need-based programs at elite colleges and universities.

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Toronto Star: Colleges make splash with Obay ad campaign

Colleges Ontario has revealed that it is the author of the innovative ‘Obay’ ad campaign that chastises parents for pushing their kids into universities in favour of Ontario colleges.

In a $2 million attack on Baby Boomers’ snobby obsession with university, Ontario’s community colleges have launched a fake ad campaign to get parents to let their kids consider more hands-on higher learning.

The bold publicity drive started with mystery ads on buses and radio across Ontario touting a mock new drug called “Obay” that makes children obey their parents rather than think for themselves – a jab at parents who push their kids to university even when the students would prefer college.

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Deseret Morning News:
Higher ed bill for illegals is labeled a compromise

A North Ogden lawmaker says the “C word” — compassion — is a key reason why he’s abandoning his plans to bar illegal higher education students from paying the in-state tuition rate.

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