College loans getting to be too much? Why bother trying to pay them back when you can just sue your school?
That’s what Trina Thompson did. After taking out $70,000 worth of loans in order to earn a bachelor’s degree from Monroe College, Thompson graduated this April only to find she had no job. Four months later, and the 27-year-old is still jobless, but now she’s too busy filing a lawsuit against her alma mater to bother sending out resumes.
In her lawsuit, Thompson complains, “They have not tried hard enough to help me [get a job].”
It’s a subjective claim that experts say will likely hold no weigh in court. After all, while Monroe College may have touted its ability to get grads hired and promised to help via their Office of Career Advancement, it’s doubtful they explicitly stated how much they would help or even guaranteed that they would land every graduate a job.
You may be tempted to brush off Thompson’s lawsuit as a frivolous news item — it certainly seems to be — but the truth is that it could have far-reaching effects. Other schools may see her actions and, out of concern that unsatisfied students will launch similar lawsuits, decide not to offer career services anymore. Or, at the very least, they will heavily review the claims they’re making in regard to job placement. While it is certainly sad that Thompson is facing mounting bills without a job, we have to face a fact: Despite the recession, there are plenty of jobs out there and Thompson may just not want to settle.
Perhaps she had in mind a cushy IT job at Google after she had graduated. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s no reason why, while she sends out resumes and looks for a full-time position, she can’t supplement her income by working a part-time job in another industry. Instead, Thompson has chosen this attention-seeking move in a bid to somehow either win, or guilt her college into forgiving part of her loans.
It’s a lazy move. But hey, maybe she has a career in law now?
Think about your average college cafeteria and the tons of waste it produces each year — whether in terms of leftover food, waste products, or cooking oil. While some students may accept it as the status quo, a small group of students from the University of Rochester in New York decided to at least put all that excess cooking oil to good use with a green initiative dubbed UR Biodiesel.
David Borrelli, Dan Fink, and Eric Weissmann are the students behind the UR Biodiesel project, which is now responsible for the school’s only biodiesel bus. Running on 80 percent diesel fuel, the bus relies upon the students’ very own UR Biodiesel lab to convert the remaining 20 percent of biodiesel fuel from vegetable oil. As to why there aren’t more biodiesel buses, the answer may surprise you: the cafeteria simply doesn’t produce enough leftover oil to run more than one at the moment.
To add to the green nature of this program, the students report that many of the tools and materials used to create the biodiesel converter were repurposed from various items across the campus.
Said Weismann, “This initiative is good in terms of the green movement. Even the bus will serve as a billboard for the university’s commitment to sustainability.”
For more on UR Biodiesel, you can check out the project’s home on the Web, www.urbiodiesel.com, or Inside Higher Ed’s article about this initiative and others like it.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when schools overlook a student’s basic — even constitutional — rights with the excuse that their school rules dictate otherwise.
The latest school to do so is John Liechty Middle School, located in Los Angeles, California. After the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board decided to go forth with teacher layoffs and other cutbacks, a group of Liechty students engaged in a silent protest, turning their backs on Monica Garcia, president of the LAUSD, while she was speaking at their graduation.
But rather than commend or support these young students, the principal of Leighty Middle School, Jeanette Stevens, has decided to withhold their diplomas. Considering that the students have completed all of their graduation requirements, there’s no reason to deny them what they’ve worked so hard to achieve — especially for exercising their right to protest.
While a school will argue that this kind of protest is disruptive and goes against their school’s code of conduct — arguments I’ve often heard during my student years — this is a clear case of bullying if I’ve ever seen one. To hold a student’s diploma because they don’t agree with a school board policy, and choose to make it known at a public venue through civil disobedience, is not only disheartening, it goes against what students are supposed to learn at school: how to be respectful, intelligent members of society who stand up for what they believe in.
Do you agree with the principal’s decision to withhold these students’ diplomas? Chime in below.
Let’s face it. This year’s graduating class at Arizona State University had one of the best commencement speakers possible: the President of the United States. With approximately 60,000 audience members gathered in the university’s football stadium – named Sun Devil Stadium – Obama asked graduates to eschew materialistic endeavors in favor of a leading a life of commitment and service to the community.
“It is clear that we need to build a new foundation – a stronger foundation – for our economy and our prosperity, rethinking how we educate our children, and care for our sick, and treat our environment,” said the president.
But unlike most commencement speakers, Obama didn’t receive an honorary degree from the school at which he was speaking. In deference to a tradition of not honoring elected officials, Arizona State University announced prior to the ceremony, that they would not be bestowing a degree upon the president.
Obama understood, even joking about the matter.
“Now, before I begin, I’d just like to clear the air about that little controversy everyone was talking about a few weeks back,” he said. “I have to tell you, I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. It won’t happen again.”
It’s official: the latest victim of the recession, is the higher education system – specifically, college sports teams. From cross-country to skiing, schools have been forced to halt scholarships and cut some teams entirely or face troubling budget deficits.
Here is a small sampling of the colleges affected: Stanford University’s fencing team will have to find some non-Ivy funding fast or be forced to put away their swords; the University of Cincinnati will no longer offer scholarships for men in cross-country, track, or swimming; and the University of Washington is cutting all of its swimming teams in order to cut back on $1.2 million in spending.
The trend is continuing at universities big and small, and teams as popular as soccer and as lesser-known as competitive pistol are feeling the crunch. The NY Times warns that this could “deeply alter the college sports landscape” while also affecting the country’s performance during future Olympic events.
Let’s just hope that the situation doesn’t reach as dire proportions as the Space Olympics did.
How’s this for procrastination? After dropping out of college approximately 15 years ago, Jimmy Fallon is finally going to receive his bachelor’s degree.
As a former player on Saturday Night Live and the current host of Late Night, Fallon’s long been majoring in humor. But back when he attended the College of St. Rose in Albany between 1992 and 1995, Fallon had his eye first on computer science and then on communications. It’s for the latter discipline that he’ll be receiving his degree this month.
Although Fallon had left college with just a semester left to complete, he was able to earn the last few credits he needed by submitting a portfolio of his work from over the years.
With their close quarters and high population density, as well as some students’ rebelliously unhygienic ways, college campuses are popular breeding grounds for disease and viruses. Combine all this with the fact that many students regularly travel abroad – whether for spring break or study abroad programs – and you’ll understand why college administrators sit up and take notice when talk of a global pandemic looms.
The latest cause for concern is H1N1 (swine flu). Originating in Mexico, this virus has a little over 200 confirmed cases across the nation with one incidence of death. College administrators have taken notice, especially considering the amount of schools that have study abroad programs in Mexico, and have begun taking action to inform students about the virus and protect them in whatever ways they can.
If you’re curious about what colleges have had reported H1N1 cases, or how they’re reacting to the virus, you can check out the International Association of Emergency Managers-Universities and Colleges Committee’s online map or this article from Inside Higher Ed.
Some people test well, and some people test exceptionally well — like Willa Chen, for example. Chen, a 17-year-old high school student from Detroit, recently did the unbelievable: she got a perfect score on not only the PSAT, but the SAT and ACT as well.
According to the ACT, the odds of getting a perfect score on their test are one in 14,000. The odds for a perfect score on the SAT? One in 2,400, says the College Board.
With these amazing scores now under her belt, Chen hopes to attend Princeton University. For now she’ll continue spending time with her school’s Math Olympiad and indulging in some of her favorite pastimes: tap, jazz, and ballet dancing.
This past Sunday, The New York Times published an interesting piece that called into question just how exclusive and honorary invitations for scholar programs truly are. These invites, often presented as awards and “great honors,” are mailed out to middle schoolers and high schoolers across the country each year. As The NYTimes points out, the fancy airs and gold lettering on these letters often lure students into believing they’ve been bestowed with a rare opportunity – which may not be the case.
Though the organizations’ names and conference destinations may differ, they seem to follow a standard form. The student is congratulated on their scholastic achievement/being nominated to the position and invited to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime scholastic conference that will not only introduce them to great minds like themselves, but boost their college applications as well.
Now The NYTimes is telling us what we all suspected: these invites are more marketing techniques than marks of honor. One of the companies, the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, decides who to invite based upon recommendations and mailing lists that it pays for. And if you take into account all of the conferences that they run, including the National Young Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C., you’ll find that approximately 50,000 students attend each year – can that really be considered exclusive?
I remember receiving similar invitations in the mail when I was in high school, but I never signed up thanks to slight skepticism as to their validity and their expensive nature. Still, I feared that I was missing out or handicapping myself in the college race by not having something like “Washington Conference Scholar” on my resume. As it turns out, I had nothing to worry about. I got into one of the most sought after universities in the nation and neither my classmates nor I had one of these conferences under our belts.
So are these supposed scholar conferences all they are cracked up to be? I clearly have my opinion but if you want to form your own, and learn more about the companies that run these conferences as well as what goes on at them, head over to The NYTimes.
And really, if it’s an honor, should you be the one paying for it?
According to The New York Times, many of the top colleges and universities in the nation are reporting that they’ve received significantly more applications than last year – despite the recent economic downturn. Although it’s encouraging to see so many high school students going for the gold, this increased turn-out translates to a lower acceptance rate and possibly more challenging admissions race.
Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), for instance, has seen a record-high of 29,112 applications this year but will only admit seven percent of all applicants – a one percent drop from last year. Similar statistics can be seen with other top schools: Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) had 21 percent more applications; Columbia University (New York City), 13 percent; and Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), 14 percent. (Though these colleges did not release their anticipated acceptance rates for this year, students will start to find out as of tomorrow when they start e-mailing decision letters to applicants.)
Stanford University (Palo Alto, California) also experienced a 20 percent increase in applications from last year, and expects to admit an all-time low, although they would not release an exact prediction as of yet.
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College loans getting to be too much? Why bother trying to pay them back when you can just sue your school?
Think about your average college cafeteria and the tons of waste it produces each year — whether in terms of leftover food, waste products, or cooking oil. While some students may accept it as the status quo, a small group of students from the University of Rochester in New York decided to at least put all that excess cooking oil to good use with a green initiative dubbed UR Biodiesel.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when schools overlook a student’s basic — even constitutional — rights with the excuse that their school rules dictate otherwise.
