Court dismisses two counts, upholds others, in professor’s child-porn viewing case

Viewing child pornography online isn’t a crime, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images in its web cache, U.S. News reports. The court dismissed one of the two counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child and one of the dozens of counts of possession of child pornography on which James D. Kent was convicted. The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Kent—who said at his sentencing that he “abhorred” child pornography and argued that someone else at Marist must have placed the images on his computer—was sentenced to one to three years in state prison in August 2009. The decision rests on whether accessing and viewing something on the Internet is the same as possessing it, and whether possessing it means you had to procure it. In essence, the court said no to the first question and yes to the second…

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Community colleges welcome older students

Whether it’s older workers needing skills training to qualify for new jobs, baby boomers seeking encore careers, or retired folks pursuing a new hobby, community colleges are worth a serious look, U.S. News reports. Many community colleges have been expanding their offerings to older students, including developing more user-friendly ways for people to re-enter higher education after decades away from the classroom. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) is expanding its national “Plus 50” learning program with nearly 50 community colleges. Participating schools are developing more expertise in meeting the needs of older students, and then acting as mentors to other community colleges. The group says there are about 1,200 community colleges in the United States, and that about 13 million people take courses each year…

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Declining investment in higher education hurts students

Last week, Rep. Virginia Foxx expressed her lack of tolerance for people with student loans. Having worked her way through school without borrowing a dime, Foxx believes there is no reason students should have large amounts of student debt, U.S. News reports. The Student Loan Ranger knows not everyone understands why most students today must borrow, so we’d like to share some information that may help. We want to begin by saying that many students are attuned to the effects of student debt, and often their unwillingness to borrow can be detrimental to success. Students are also dealing with the constantly imperiled Pell Grant program and a dynamic shift in financial aid policies that prices lower- and middle-income students out of higher education…

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Students divided on whether applicants should weigh colleges’ partnerships

Research institution and school collaborations can benefit students, but details may be hard to find, U.S. News reports. As acceptance letters roll in, college applicants may be tempted to focus on the light at the end of the ivory tunnel, but whittling a short list of schools down can be dizzying. Prospective students must consider location, cost, academic reputation, campus culture, and countless other factors. And, according to admissions consultants and students, there’s another part of the college experience that may not even be on applicants’ radars: schools’ partnerships with cultural and research institutions and for-profit companies…

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Graduate school applicants use social media to bypass admissions offices

With the proliferation of social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, graduate school applicants can gain unfiltered insights on graduate school life, U.S. News reports. With that ease of access through free and increasingly sophisticated technological tools, graduate students say they’ve charted new routes to understanding the culture and academic merits of prospective institutions without the aid of admissions offices.

“If you really want to learn about individual programs, aside from the university as a whole, I think you have to go straight to the current students and alumni,” says Rheanne Wirkkala, a client executive at the global public relations company Burson-Marsteller and a 2011 alumna of Yale University’s graduate international relations program.

“I might use Facebook or LinkedIn to meet alumni. At the end of the day, I’d be more concerned about what those people have to say about the program than how the university portrays itself as a whole.”…Read More

Study: Students at for-profit colleges earn less

Prospective students who are considering nonprofit schools–whether public or private–and institutions such as University of Phoenix and DeVry University that operate as for-profit businesses may be discouraged from enrolling at the latter type of schools, according to a recent study from the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment at Teachers College, Columbia University, U.S. News reports.  The report–titled “The For-Profit Postsecondary School Sector: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators”–suggests that alumni of for-profit colleges tend to get lower salaries and are less enthusiastic about their degrees six months after enrolling than are their peers at nonprofit schools.

“I think one of the messages of the paper is that there’s a lot more variation in for-profit colleges. It’s more of a ‘buyer beware’ kind of sector than community colleges,” says David Deming, a coauthor of the report and assistant professor of education and economics at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. “There are schools that are doing really well, and there are schools that have shockingly high rates of loan default.”

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Smart phone use among college students concerns some professors

Pam Walsh does not own a smart phone. Walsh, a senior at Bryant University in Rhode Island, is a commuter student and says she uses the money that would go toward phone payments for gas instead. But, she notes, there have been situations when a smartphone, with its internet capabilities, would have been useful, U.S. News reports.

“As a commuter student, there’s always a chance that weather will be poor and classes will be canceled because of it, but I may not find out about it until I’m on campus,” she says. “The professor might have canceled right before class through an eMail. If I had a smart phone, I would have gotten the eMail and I wouldn’t have had to drive to class in horrible conditions.”

For Walsh, who has never owned a smart phone, the constant urge to stay connected to the world via phone is not an issue. “I don’t really go through it,” she says. “As long as I’m not waiting on a phone call or a text message from someone, I can just leave [the phone] aside.” But for some college students, leaving a phone behind may cause feelings of anxiety and panic, which has brought one phobia to the forefront: nomophobia–the fear of being without your cell phone……Read More

Government initiative tests education graduate schools

After 28 years working at a specialty chemical company, Michael Fowler of Whitestown, Ind., 50, felt the urge to inspire a love of science in teenagers, much as his own high school chemistry teacher had in him. In 2011, he was enticed by a three-year-old master’s degree fellowship program for would-be science and math teachers at the University of Indianapolis, U.S. News reports. The fellowship, which provides Fowler with a $30,000 stipend for the yearlong program, had him doing intensive coursework in summer 2011, then shadowing and studying teachers in action at a local high school all fall, and, since January, teaching several chemistry classes under the supervision of a teacher-mentor. That near immediate on-the-ground time in the classroom (along with ongoing coursework) dramatically improves a traditional trajectory that puts future teachers in a K-12 classroom for only a few months at the end of their training, experts say…

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Graduate students explain why they picked their schools

Graduate school students have myriad reasons for choosing their higher education paths. Here, in their own words, five current students tell U.S. News why they chose to attend their particular graduate schools to pursue their interests:

Why I Picked University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, Meagan Elyse Hanna, third-year J.D. candidate: As I was researching law schools, I became overwhelmed when they all started to look the same. Then I visited the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. I was welcomed into the UDM Law family from the moment I walked in the door. The close-knit community of students, faculty, and administrators provides a learning environment I found unparalleled in support and encouragement. Add to that UDM’s commitment to making its graduates “practice ready” through its clinics, law firm program courses, and writing across the curriculum, and I was sold. Thanks to UDM, I’ll graduate this year with the confidence I need to compete in the legal job market…

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Some teens start college work early via dual enrollment

Senioritis is said to sap the energy, dull the mind, and waste the time of high school students. But some teens have found a cure for the blahs: “Dual” or “concurrent” college classes let them earn high school and college credits for the same course, U.S. News reports. Some students go to a college campus, usually a local community college, while others study at their own high schools. Nationwide, more than a million high school students are taking at least one college class, it’s believed. Unlike Advanced Placement courses, which are geared to high achievers, dual enrollment is usually open to a wide range of students. Some programs target students at risk of dropping out. High achievers are going to college in any case, says Katherine Hughes of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dual enrollment can motivate students who aren’t on the college track, she says. Even those who’ve struggled in high-school classes can rise to the challenge, motivated by the chance to “try on the role of a college student.”

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