Higher Education Quick Takes

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is joining Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison in announcing that it will not make the Kindle available to students until the device has improvements to be better enable blind people to use it. "Quite apart from our legal obligations, we at Illinois believe that our technology choices should be shaped by our institutional values and aspirations. We will not embrace technologies that undercut our commitment to accessibility. We will instead apply our ingenuity to technologies that enable everyone to participate more fully in society," said a statement from the university. "Like our colleagues at Wisconsin and Syracuse, we recognize the groundbreaking potential that read-aloud features have for making textbooks accessible to students with disabilities. Sadly, that potential can’t be realized until vendors of e-book readers, like the Kindle, add accessible read-aloud menus and basic navigation to their products."

Although more than half of the athletes in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association are black, leadership positions are overwhelmingly held by white men, according to a new report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. Among the 120 universities in the subdivision, in the 2009 season there are seven African-American coaches, one Latino coach and one Asian coach -- a net increase of one minority coach since 2008. The report also notes that institutional leaders at these universities are overwhelmingly white in the bowl subdivision. White people make up 100 percent of the conference commissioners, 93.3 percent of presidents, 86.7 percent of athletics directors, 92.6 percent of faculty athletics representatives, 92.5 percent of head football coaches, and 82.9 percent of the faculty, the study found.

The University of Michigan on Monday released the results of a July audit showing that the university's football team did not turn in required forms that track the amount of time players spend practicing. The revelation comes as the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the university look into allegations that the Wolverine football program broke NCAA rules limiting the amount of time players participate in athletic activities.

Williams College has fired a visiting professor who pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud last week, The Berkshire Eagle reported. Bernard Moore had been a visiting assistant professor, and he had been the organizer of a political symposium that Williams canceled Friday. The fraud charges largely related to conduct prior to his arrival at the college, and a spokesman said that there was no evidence that he misused Williams funds.