According to the Huffington Post, for-profit colleges devote less than a third of what public universities spend on educating students, even though the for-profit institutions charge nearly twice as much as their public counterparts for tuition, according to new federal government data released Thursday…
…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.
Peter Thiel awards $100,000 to entrepreneurs under 20
Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, created the Thiel Foundation, reports the Huffington Post. Last fall, it announced a new fellowship program: It would give 20 people under the age of 20 $100,000 to drop out of school and become world-changing visionaries. More than 400 young people applied. Earlier today, the 24 winners were announced…
…Read MoreThe seven best colleges for free speech
When I first started at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), I wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t just aggressively police violations of freedom of speech–we also would credit universities that protected the First Amendment despite calls for censorship, says Greg Lukianoff for the Huffington Post. Unfortunately, I soon learned that a school could be very good at defending the speech of one speaker while censoring a different student or faculty member the school disagreed with or simply disliked. Finding the best and most consistent schools hasn’t been easy. Nonetheless, it is crucial to give credit where credit is due, so FIRE has decided, for the first time ever, to name its top colleges for free speech…
…Read MoreYale suspends Bush family’s fraternity for sexist chants
A prestigious Yale fraternity that counts both Bush presidents among its alumni is being banned from recruiting and activities on campus for five years after pledges were ordered to chant obscenities against women, reports the Huffington Post. Yale says it has also disciplined several Delta Kappa Epsilon members and asked the fraternity’s national office to suspend the chapter for five years…
…Read MoreUniversity of Phoenix parent company discloses probe
The nation’s largest for-profit college says it is being investigated by the Massachusetts attorney general for possible deceptive practices in its student recruiting and financing, reports the Huffington Post. Phoenix-based Apollo Group disclosed the probe of its University of Phoenix subsidiary in a Monday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission…
…Read MoreImmigration issues pose growing difficulty for American schools
Pressure is mounting across the country against illegal immigrants in American schools, reports the Huffington Post. In some areas, schools are responding to shrinking budgets and growing student populations by trying to root out non-citizen students. While federal law restricts this practice, the issue points to the increasing difficulty of managing immigration and education policy in America…
…Read MoreNearly half of Detroit’s adults are functionally illiterate, report finds
According to the Huffington Post, Detroit’s population fell by 25 percent in the last decade. And of those that stuck around, nearly half of them are functionally illiterate, a new report finds. According to estimates by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 percent of adults in Detroit, Michigan — 200,000 total — are “functionally illiterate,” meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills. Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce finds half of that illiterate population has obtained a high school degree…
…Read MoreHow policy makers are scaring the public into gutting public education
In “The Shock Doctrine,” Naomi Klein pushes the concept of how the public can be manipulated during times of catastrophe or perceived crisis. That’s exactly what policy makers are doing to undermine support for public education, argues Timothy D. Slekar in an article for The Huffington Post…
…Read MoreTeenagers now look favorably on torture because the media taught them it was morally acceptable
Over at the Daily Beast, Daniel Stone dives into a study on torture conducted by the American Red Cross, reports the Huffington Post. “Americans’ opinions on torture seem to have fractured,” the report said, “largely on generational lines.”
So, who are the biggest supporters of torture? “A surprising majority — almost 60 percent — of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable,” the study found. Overall, teens are “significantly more in favor of torture than older adults.”
Arizona defies public opinion, passes guns on campus bill
Two days after the Jan. 8 Tucson shootings, as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lay in a medically induced coma, Arizona’s House of Representatives introduced the session’s very first piece of legislation: a bill allowing college professors to carry concealed weapons on campus, the Huffington Post reports. A similar bill, SB 1467, which would allow anyone to carry a gun on the sidewalks and roads of public universities, sailed through the House last Thursday, despite the fact that the majority of Arizonans oppose sending guns to college…
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