The Minaret is testing this new news feature, which will focus on relevant news from campuses around the country, maybe even the globe. It will include news briefs from wire copy and other sources, including ‘Inside Higher Education.’ This test to determine popularity is based on content from ‘Inside Higher Education’ only and is reprinted with permission. We look forward to expanding this exciting new feature. Your feedback is welcomed.
‘Inside Higher Education’ (http://insidehighered.com) reported this week:
- *California prosecutors have charged 34 current and former Diablo Valley College students with fraud and other felonies for paying to change grades, The Contra Costa Times reported. Court documents indicated that unauthorized grade changes started in 2000, with hundreds of dollars paid for each change.
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- *Some colleges are expanding orientation to add programs for younger siblings, The Boston Globe reported. The idea is to free parents up ‘mdash; and to get a head start at recruiting the younger brothers and sisters to apply a few years later.
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- *High school girls who are obese are half as likely to go on to college as non-obese girls, according to new research in the journal Sociology of Education.
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- *The Educational Testing Service has announced that there will be some new types of questions on the verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning sections of the computer-based Graduate Record Examination, starting in November. The new verbal question type requires the test taker to fill in two or three blanks within a passage from separate multiple-choice lists. Sample questions are available on the ETS Web site. ETS had been planning a major overhaul of the GRE, but called off that plan in April, opting to phase in changes gradually.
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- * A freshman at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville was charged Tuesday with making a terrorist threat after authorities found a message threatening a ‘murderous rampage’ comparable to the killings at Virginia Tech, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Olutosin Oduwole is accused of writing a note demanding payment of $50,000 to avoid the rampage. Police also said that they had found a gun in his dormitory room and that he had recently purchased four other guns on the Internet, but they had yet to arrive.
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- *Goucher College has ended a requirement that applicants submit SAT scores. Applicants seeking merit scholarships will still be required to submit scores, and all new students will need to do so prior to enrollment, so the college can use the scores for research purposes. According to FairTest: The National Center for Fair ‘amp; Open Testing, Goucher’s decision brings to 30 the number of highly ranked liberal arts colleges that have gone SAT-optional.
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- *Brief ‘motivational interviews’ appear to have a long-term impact on college students found in violation of campus alcohol rules, and perhaps more of an impact than other punishments, according to new research published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical ‘amp; Experimental Research.
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- *Federal and local authorities are offering a $110,000 reward for information in the attempted firebombing in June of the car of Arthur Rosenbaum, chief of pediatric ophthalmology at the University of California at Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported. A group called the Animal Liberation Brigade has claimed responsibility for the attack.
‘ For more news and information, the Web site for ‘Inside Higher Education’ is http://insidehighered.com.