Pixar’s best films have captured the real emotion in decidedly unreal things, the Atlantic Wire reports. Toy Story 3 gave us toys that made us consider our own childhood nostalgia. Wall-E gave us robots that made us think about human love. Now, for their upcoming prequel to Monsters, Inc. the animation gurus seem to be trying to get something else right: college. During the Rose Bowl, Pixar launched a viral marketing campaign that expertly imitated all the clichés of college websites. Now, with the branch of Disney dropping two new looks at Monsters University, it appears that Pixar is trying to make their characters’ college experience actually mimic something like reality. That is, if reality involved googly-eyed monsters. In a video released on YouTube (via io9) at the end of last week, director Dan Scanlon explains: “We wanted to explore as much as we can, the monsterization of the college and the college character.”
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
College students can make more money studying mining than going to Harvard
Harvard may have the fancy name, but people who go to the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology made more money after graduation this year, with a media starting salary of $56,700 compared to the Cantab median of $54,100, the Atlantic Wire reports. The data comes from the via , who explains there is a labor shortage in the mining industry and fewer schools are offering mining-engineering degrees. Almost no Harvard grads go into the field. In South Dakota, Richter writes, “those scheduled to leave the campus in Rapid City, South Dakota, in May are already getting offers, at a time when about one in 10 recent U.S. college graduates is out of work.”
…Read MoreThis group of 8 black college students has been frisked 92 times by the NYPD
Sure, it’s an informal survey, but a New York Times reporter’s finding that eight black college students he spoke to have been stopped by police a collective 92 times is still a disturbing reminder of how the NYPD wields its stop-and-frisk tactics too heavily against the city’s minorities, the Atlantic Wire reports. In The Times article on New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s aboutface on the efficacy of stop-and-frisk, Michael Powell talked to group of eight black men currently attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “Cumulatively, they said they had been stopped 92 times.” That 11.5 friskings per-person, on average, is shocking, although it’s anecdotal evidence, but it’s the stories of these these kids being frisked for seemingly doing nothing other than driving or riding the subway while black that are alarming…
…Read MoreIs Ralph Nader right about Apple’s Texas campus?
Activist Ralph Nader has written an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook urging the company to refuse the nearly $30 million in Texan taxpayer money already pledged to lure the company to build a $304 million campus in Austin, says Elspeth Reeve for the Atlantic Wire. The money is nothing compared to Apple’s enormous profits, Nader says, but would mean a lot to Texas public schools. Nader writes:
“Already Texas public schools have laid off 32,000 workers, including 12,000 teachers. Another round of $2 billion in funding cuts from the state government is coming this September. Who needs $21 million (plus another $14.5 million) more: the bulging corporate treasury of Apple or the school children of Texas?”
Date My School identifies the nation’s ‘hottest’ colleges
Date My School is a website founded in November 2010 by two Columbia University MBA classmates, Balazs Aexa and Jean Meyer, to help students of universities meet both within and outside of their own schools, the Atlantic Wire reports. As Hannah Miet wrote in the New York Times last year, “Date My School offers a highly selective shortcut to love for students who are fluent in social media but too entrenched in their studies for much of an actual social life.”
It seems that the site has been a success. Date My School is now “the largest college dating website ever,” according to Shreshth Dugar, marketing director of the site, which counts its lifetime users as numbering nearly 100,000. “On any given night, there are more than 50,000 active users,” he says. They hail from more than 1,000 schools, but as Dugar explains, the site’s most solid presence comes from 80 schools, particularly in New York, where the site began, as well as the Ivy Leagues. “But we are doubling in size every month,” he adds…
East Coast universities freaking out over the hurricane
As pretty much the entire Eastern Seaboard declared states of emergency in advance of Hurricane Irene, universities have also started changing around their plans as the storm chugs up from the Bahamas, the Atlantic Wire reports. This weekend was to be the move-in date for colleges up and down the coast, but it’s hard to carry that mini-fridge up the stairs with category-four winds whipping glass shards into your face. So a lot of universities are delaying move-in day or, in a move that will not bode well for last-minute types, bringing it forward a day or two…
…Read MoreCollege students are doing a lot of sexting
A new study out today from a pair of researchers at the University of Rhode Island shows that college-age kids may be as promiscuous electronically as they are in real life, reports the Atlantic Wire. A survey of 204 college students reveals that 67 percent of college students have sent out sexually explicit text messages. An even greater portion, 78 percent, report receiving sexts–i.e. simply sexually explicit texts–at one point, and 56 percent report being sent sexually explicit images on their phones from others…
…Read MoreThe unexpectedly lucrative career of cleaning up after Ivy Leaguers
At least one woman is making a smooth six-figure salary cleaning up after Penn frat boys, reports the Atlantic Wire. This Cadillac-driving, toilet-scrubbing 51 year-old named Kia Grasty loves her work picking up after some of the Ivy League university’s wealthiest and most privileged students, including the son of NYPD Blue’s Kim Delaney. According to a Daily Beast profile: More than a cleaner, many students view Grasty as something of a surrogate mother (Kim Delaney is far from the only parent with Grasty on speed-dial), who goes so far as to help coordinate moves and stock up apartments in advance of the new academic year. “To me it’s more than just cleaning,” she says. “I’m counting on my students to be the best that they can be. The smile on my face is when I ask my kids what’s your grade point average. That’s what inspires me.”
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