Details emerged Tuesday about allegations that tests prepared for use at Florida International University were being stolen and sold. The university announced Monday that three people -- two of them students -- had been arrested in such a scheme, but released few details. Officials said Tuesday that the case involved hacking into a professor's email account, stealing four tests, and then selling them to students for $150 each, The Sun Sentinel reported.
Higher Education Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 4:25am
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Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
Graduation rates among Division II athletes dropped by an unusually high three percentage points this year, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced Tuesday, but officials say it’s likely due to a technical glitch. The Academic Success Rate – similar to Division I’s Graduation Success Rate, except that it includes non-scholarship athletes -- measures the number of players who graduate within six years or leave in good academic standing. The ASR for cohort entering college in 2006 is 69 percent this year, compared to 72 percent for the six-year cohort that enrolled in 2005.
The division's Federal Graduation Rate, which counts transfers and other departures as dropouts, held steady at 54 percent.
An NCAA researcher, Gregg Summers, said the “very rare” large ASR decline is probably a result of the new reporting system Division II programs used this year. Instead of entering data manually, student by student, the staff transferred the data en masse electronically, and probably let some errors pass through in the process, Summers said. Specifically, because the number of athletes in the tracking system fell short of the number counted in the ASR by about 10 percent, and because the number of students recorded as leaving while eligible was unusually low, officials suspect that many athletes who left their teams while eligible were incorrectly marked as dropouts. (Typically, about a quarter of Division II players leave their sport voluntarily at some point.) Also, after asking a couple institutions whose data seemed off to review their numbers to address this question, their ASRs improved.
Still, NCAA officials acknowledged they would like to see the rate go up. At January’s NCAA convention, Division II members will vote on a new academic rules package similar to one that NCAA President Mark Emmert pushed through Division I in October 2011, which Division II Director Maritza Jones said should help improve the ASR. (This year’s Division I GSR tied an all-time record of 82 percent.) Rates for individual colleges and sports can be viewed in the NCAA's searchable database.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
Zhang Xuezhong, a law professor at East China University of Political Science and Law, said Tuesday he had been fired after refusing to apologize for publications championing constitutional law in China, The New York Times reported.
Officials at the Shanghai-based university did not respond to the Times’s requests for comment. However, Zhang obtained and circulated an internal university memo that accuses him of breaking university rules by “forcibly disseminating his political views among the faculty and using his status as a teacher to spread his political views among students.”
The memo cites an e-book he authored, New Common Sense: The Nature and Consequences of One-Party Dictatorship.
The dismissal of Zhang, who had been banned from the classroom earlier this year, comes amid concerns regarding increasing restrictions on political speech in China and in the aftermath of the controversial dismissal of Xia Yeliang, an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, from the economics faculty at Peking University. Peking maintains that Xia was fired for his poor teaching and research record, but many believe his criticism of one-party rule was the real reason.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 4:26am
Activists are questioning proposed new rules on protests at Cooper Union and the City University of New York, The New York Times reported. In both cases, the institutions have in the past faced long-term protests. University officials say that the proposed rules allow for the orderly functioning of campuses, without diminishing the ability of students and others to express critical views. Critics say that the rules go too far.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
More evidence that all that texting you see isn't about academics? Researchers at Kent State University tracked how much time students spend on their phones, and their grades. More use of phones is negatively related to grades, but positively related to anxiety. The research appears in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
Students in courses hosted by Coursera, the massive open online course provider, can now access lessons on the go -- as long as they have an iPhone. The MOOC provider launched an official mobile app on Tuesday, allowing iPhone users to browse courses, receive notifications from the courses they are enrolled in, and stream and download lectures.
Additional features such as in-video quizzes and private courses are not yet available. The official app is in development for other platforms, according to Coursera's website, but for now, Android users have to make do with several unofficial options. Coursera is the first of the larger MOOC providers to create an app, but competitors such as edX may soon follow. "We are working on a mobile solution for a global audience -- we think of mobile from the [inexpensive Android tablet] Akash to the iPhone," an edX spokesman said in an email.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
Nearly 140 ineligible Southeastern Louisiana University athletes in all 16 sports were allowed to practice, compete and receive scholarships because of the institution’s failure to monitor its eligibility certification process, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced Tuesday. The NCAA cited Southern Louisiana with a lack of control over its athletics department and issued penalties including a $25,000 fine, scholarship reductions and vacation of wins from 2005-9 for teams that played ineligible athletes. The mistake stemmed from a compliance coordinator’s misunderstanding of NCAA progress-toward-degree requirements and failure to verify those rules, the public infractions report says, and the subsequent failure of other staff to step in and correct the system.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - 3:00am
In today’s Academic Minute, Martin Hasselmann of the University of Cologne discusses the genetic process that determines the sex of honey bees. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - 4:10am
Florida International University announced Monday night that university police "have arrested three individuals, including two current students," on charges that "range from dealing in stolen property to theft and burglary." The charges relate to an effort "to gain unauthorized access to exams and sell them to students." An investigation "has revealed that one class in the current semester is impacted with a limited number of students involved," the university said. Florida International's statement said that because the investigation is ongoing, few details can be released at this time. The statement said that "FIU will pursue all avenues to ensure that everyone who is involved is held accountable."
Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - 4:18am
The University of Texas Board of Regents has scheduled a closed-door discussion Thursday of the employment status of Bill Powers as president of the flagship campus at Austin, The Texas Tribune reported. What the discussion means is unclear. Regents with close ties to Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, have been pushing for the ouster of Powers, but he has strong support among many students, alumni and faculty members.
