MIT lags in hiring, promoting black, Hispanic faculty, internal report says
MIT must do a better job recruiting and retaining black and Hispanic faculty, who have a significantly more difficult time getting promoted than white and Asian colleagues, according to a frank internal study released today by the university. The Boston Globe reports that in some departments, such as chemistry, mathematics, and nuclear science and engineering, no minorities have been hired in the last two decades, according to the report, which was more than two years in the making.
Report details coming trends in campus technology
Open scholarly content will become more commonplace in higher education in the next year as online universities and textbook companies organize and harness the internet’s mass of educational material, according to a report that predicts campus technology advances within the next five years.
An antitrust complaint for Google in Germany
Google said on Monday that it faced antitrust complaints in Germany from newspaper and magazine publishers who want the company to pay for using article snippets in its Web news service and search results, reports The New York Times.
Grand Rapids textbook rental program expands
Grand Rapids Community College students were among the first in the nation to be able to rent their textbooks from their Follett’s campus bookstore, but now the company is expanding the program to colleges across the country, the Grand Rapids Press reports.
Microsoft to cut time it holds internet search data
Software giant Microsoft said it would slash by two thirds the time it holds internet users’ personal data gathered from search queries, according to AFP.
Has Google developed the next wave of online education?
Combining text, audio, and video chat with features like drag-and-drop documents and interactive polls, Google Wave is a free web program that could add unprecedented depth to student interaction, many educators say.
DROID-buddies Verizon and Google offer net neutrality truce
Amidst all the rancor that we’ve seen during the last few weeks over the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed net neutrality rules comes a joint filing by Verizon and Google that…
Opinion: Virtual schools are a critical piece of education’s future
Technological innovations might be categorized along a continuum from sustaining to disruptive. In education, a sustaining technology might be a SMART Board, which in most applications is a way to present information dynamically and efficiently–a sustaining upgrade to the chalkboard and overhead projector–while a disruptive technology would be a virtual school.
Conficker Worm hasn’t gone away, Akamai says
PC World reports that variants of the Conficker worm were still active and spreading during the third quarter, accounting for much of attack traffic on the internet, according to Akamai Technologies.
Technology gives engineering programs a real-world impact
Drexel University engineering student Jeffrey Dowgala says real-time information recorded by electronic sensors has helped him and his classmates understand the many environmental factors that can affect a bridge–an impact impossible to explore in standard textbooks.