Higher Education Quick Takes

When the University of Kansas won the 2008 national title in men’s basketball, classes were called off for a day of revelry. Same thing happened when the Jayhawks won the 1988 championship. But this time, as Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little made clear last week in an e-mail to campus, that Tuesday-morning anthropology lecture was happening whether Kansas won or lost its Monday night game against the University of Kentucky. “I believe that our first mission as a university is to foster academic success and that is accomplished in part by setting high expectations for our students,” she wrote. “A national title would be worthy of celebration, but we are confident those celebrations can take place without disrupting KU's academic mission.” She also encouraged students to celebrate safely, and offered the campus arena as a venue to watch the game.

Kentucky President Eli Capilouto expressed similar sentiments in a message to his campus. A spokeswoman said a big game has never been cause to call off classes -- students were in lecture halls the day after national titles in 1996 and 1998.

Elsewhere, the practice of canceling class time to celebrate athletics has drawn criticism. When the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa canceled classes after winning the football championship this year, the Faculty Senate protested. But perhaps a protest is inevitable. In 1952, the Lawrence Journal-World reports, Kansas students marched on the chancellor's house demanding a day off after the college's first basketball championship. (He said no.) Following in those footsteps, an online petition by Kansas students calls celebratory off days a “university tradition” and had more than 725 signatures Monday afternoon.

One student told the campus newspaper he supported the chancellor's decision, but wasn't sure he'd be attending class Tuesday. "I will make a game-time decision," he said.

An administrative judge has overturned a U.S. Education Department fine of $55,000 against Virginia Tech for failing to more speedily notify the campus of a threat on the tragic day in 2007 when 33 people died, The Washington Post reported. Some have faulted the university for not immediately notifying everyone on campus, once the first reports of a shooting came in. Virginia Tech officials have said that, after the first report, they had reason to believe that the shooter had left the campus. The judge's decision late Thursday said that the two-hour period before a warning went out  "was not an unreasonable amount of time in which to issue a warning.... If the later shootings at Norris Hall had not occurred, it is doubtful that the timing of the e-mail would have been perceived as too late."

In a statement, Virginia Tech officials said they were "satisfied" with the judge's ruling, but that "there is no glee" given the events of five years ago. "Because of what happened here, we know that higher education changed on April 16, 2007. New laws, protocols, practices, policies, and technologies grew from our tragedy. We hope that lessons from this unforeseeable crime will continue to inform the practices affecting campus safety throughout the nation and the world."

Research and development expenditures at Johns Hopkins University topped $2 billion in the 2010 fiscal year, according to data released last week by the National Science Foundation. Hopkins has led the list for decades because of federal support of its Applied Physics Laboratory. Of the $61.2 billion in R&D expenditures at universities, $21.5 billion in spending takes place at the top 25 universities, and just over $60 billion in activity takes place at doctoral institutions. Public institutions account for $41.2 billion in spending. Following Hopkins are: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor ($1.2 billion), University of Wisconsin at Madison ($1 billion), University of Washington at Seattle ($1 billion), and Duke University ($983 million).

Trustees of the State College of Florida said Friday that they do not have any plans to end the system of continuing contracts that acts as an equivalent of tenure, The Herald Tribune reported. Some trustees had called for a review of the system, expressing fears that it encourages mediocre work. But trustees said Friday that their study revealed that there are appropriate measures in place to deal with any faculty members on continuing contracts who do not perform well.