Colleges strive to create welcoming, inclusive communities for students from every background. But a new effort at George Washington University has scores of critics and supporters abuzz with heated comments that continue to pour in on various blogs and news articles. At the request of the university’s Muslim Students’ Association, George Washington began offering a once-weekly, female-only swim hour in March. But it only recently turned into an online debate over issues of religious and sexual discrimination and — though not always explicitly — racism, spurred by an article in the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet . The Lerner Health and Wellness Center pool closes to men for one of the 20 hours it’s open each week, with a tarp blocking the view through the glass door and a female lifeguard on duty. The university declined to comment for this article beyond a two-sentence statement that said its officials are reviewing the closure while they establish a formal recreational swim policy. ON THE WEB: Islam case still simmers MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Muslim college opens doors A few highlights from Internet comments on The Washington Post ‘s and TBD’s recent coverage of the swim hour: “Should a minuscule minority force the overwhelming majority [to] abide by their rules or should it be the other way around?” “Western society should not accommodate to Islam on this point; it is Islam that should change.” And in rebuttal: “Come on, folks. An hour a week — what’s the big deal?” “It’s not an unreasonable request. ‘Women’ is like half the population.” Many comments not quoted here could easily be considered racially offensive. Despite the naysayers, Sisters’ Splash, as it’s called, is not the only special accommodation that a college has made for Muslim students. George Washington already has foot baths for pre-prayer rituals, and a handful of other institutions — including the University of Michigan-Dearborn and George Mason University — have them as well. In 2008, at the request of female Muslim students, Harvard University ran a one-semester pilot program that reserved six hours a week for female students only at one of its lesser-used gyms, though the program was discontinued after that semester. There’s also Gamma Gamma Chi Sorority Inc., an Islamic-based sorority that has five regional chapters, though not all are active. Shelley Mountjoy, a doctoral student at George Mason who briefly attended George Washington as an undergraduate, doesn’t much care what goes on at private colleges. But she takes issue with the foot baths at George Mason and with other religious accommodations at public universities. She is afraid that policies like the female-only swim hour will have a domino effect and spread to other colleges. “I don’t want my tuition dollars paying to accommodate somebody’s religion,” she said. “It’s not the entire campus’s religion. We don’t all have to subscribe to Islamic law.” Because George Washington is a private university, there are no constitutional issues with the swim hour, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Should a similar program start up at a public university, the presence of church-state issues would depend on the many facts of the situation, such as whether access is religion-specific, Khan said. Mountjoy, who serves on the boards of Atheist Alliance International and the national Secular Student Alliance, is also the founder and president of the Secular Student Alliance chapter at George Mason. She said that although some criticism of the swim hour and other services might stem from a bias against Muslim people, she takes issue with any type of religious accommodation. “I actually think that it’s in everybody’s best interest to keep religion out of our public schools,” she said. “I would react the same if this was a Christian-only swimming hour.” Students say the criticism is mostly coming from off-campus. Shaeera Tariq, a sophomore at George Washington and vice president of the Muslim Students’ Association, helped initiate the swim hour. She said nobody really knew about it until the Hatchet article came out — and as it happens, she is a reporter at the paper and she pitched the article to her editor. “It definitely sparked a lot of debate amongst people, but it seems to me there is a definite positive sentiment on campus and people are in favor of it,” she said. “We’re not closing down the mall or something for an hour. We’re just closing down a pool that wasn’t used very often in the first place.” John L. Esposito , an Islamic studies professor and founding director of Georgetown University ‘s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said many of the negative reactions undoubtedly stem from an “Islamophobia.” “It’s very clear that there’s a good chance many of them have a real problem accepting Muslims or Islam, and we’ve got to deal with that. In a pluralistic society, that form of bigotry and racism — we’ve dealt with it before and we’ve got to deal with it now,” Esposito said, referring to civil rights struggles. “It seems to me this is a perfectly understandable thing that we should be doing. All of these members of the community pay tuition and so faculty and administrators have to always be open to responding to and accommodating the needs of people.” Esposito cited numerous other ways institutions serve different groups: parking for people with disabilities, campus chapels for various religions, and excusing attendance for students celebrating religious holidays other than the traditionally recognized Christmas or Easter. “If there’s a segment of the community that can benefit from an accommodation, you make it when you can,” he said. “The fact is, they have rights and you have to accept it.” Zahin Hasan, president of the Muslim Students’ Association, said the number of women — Muslim and non-Muslim — who attend the swim hour varies. But the point is that the college is serving more students, better. “What I can’t understand is how utilizing an underused service, such as a gym pool, is a bad thing,” Hasan said in an e-mail. “Very few people know about the pool, and even fewer use it. The benefits of Sisters’ Splash far outweigh the few inconveniences it may present.” But, he added, a “great majority” of George Washington students have shown support for the swim hour. According to a 2005 Gallup report, gender inequality is one of American women’s top concerns about “the Muslim or Islamic world.” (Notably, many Muslim women perceive the promiscuity, pornography and public indecency portrayed in Hollywood images as mistreatment of women in the Western world, the report says.) It’s an issue that is mentioned frequently in online comments about the swim hour. One person wrote, “If Muslim women are too modest to wear ordinary swimsuits when they swim, then maybe they should stop swimming and go see a psychiatrist. Teaching sexual repression is wrong; making women feel that they are bad and wicked merely for having female bodies is wrong.” Another wrote, “If because of religious convictions they chose not to exercise that freedom, the rest of society should not validate it by accommodating it.” But the swim hour’s proponents — and there seem to be many — point out that about half of the student population can participate. And accusations of racism are not difficult to come by. “We’ve seen a number of these kinds of programs around the country. I think it goes way beyond Muslim women; I think there are enough women who would be more comfortable swimming in a same-sex environment that it would be of interest to women of all faiths in America,” said Ibrahim Hooper , a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There is a cottage industry of Muslim-bashers that look for any opportunity to marginalize American Muslims or to demonize Islam, and any denomination of Islam in our society is going to be targeted by these people.” There is more to the issue than religion, though. Erin E. Buzuvis, an associate professor of law at Western New England College and co-founder and contributor to The Title IX Blog, said it’s unclear whether barring men from the pool constitutes a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law requiring gender equity in educational programs at federally funded schools and colleges. Men can still swim 95% of the time, so they’re not completely excluded. And if the program’s purpose is to accommodate a religious group, rather than women in general, that could work in the university’s favor. “The university might have a plausible defense that while this would technically be a form of gender discrimination, that they’re doing it to accommodate a student’s religion,” Buzuvis said. “If that weren’t an issue, I would say a female-only swim hour would be highly questionable under Title IX.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors fled for-profit college stocks on Thursday after the sector’s bellwether predicted a 40-percent drop in student enrollment next quarter and withdrew its forecast for next year. The news chilled an industry facing increased government scrutiny over concerns about soaring student loan defaults. Enrollments at for-profit schools surged during the recession. Big advertising budgets drew students trying to bolster their resumes as a hedge against high unemployment. But critics claim the schools are not helping students find better jobs and say enrollment counselors sign up many students who are unprepared for higher education. When they drop out, they are still stuck paying back their student loans. CLOSER LOOK: For-profit colleges under fire over value, accreditation Apollo Group Inc ., which runs the University of Phoenix , attributes its expected enrollment decline to changing practices aimed at satisfying new government regulations. Apollo will no longer pay its counselors bonuses based on how many students they enroll. It also will provide new students with a free three-week trial program to see if they are ready for school, weeding out those at risk of leaving school before earning degrees. Meanwhile, the industry is facing a proposed new rule from the Department of Education that could limit schools’ access to federal financial aid — the bulk of their revenue — if graduates’ debt levels are too high or too few students repay loans. And, many schools are close to maxing out how much revenue they can receive from federal financial aid resources. Federal regulations cap that amount at 90%. The industry averages 83%, largely because they focus on recruiting lower-income students who qualify for federal Pell Grants . “Now, they have to slow down enrollment and be less active in targeting these students. They have to go back to the more traditional students who are working adults,” said Matt Snowling, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. In afternoon trading, shares of Apollo tumbled $12.64, or 26%, to $36.86. The rest of the sector followed suit. Education Management Corp. shares lost $2.70, or 20%, to $10.57. DeVry Inc . fell $8.67, or 17%, to $41.90; Corinthian Colleges Inc . decreased $1.16, or 19%, to $4.86; ITT Educational Services Inc. dropped $10.58, or 16%, to $55.34; Career Education fell $3.29, or 16%, to $16.898; Strayer Education Inc. declined $21.21, or 14%, to $135.84. Shares of newspaper publisher Washington Post Co., which owns the Kaplan school chain, slumped $34.61, or 8.1%, to $394. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — In her senior year, when Joanne Johnson-Shaw was named Miss Football at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, she envisioned wearing a ball gown fit for a princess. Her hopes were dashed, though, when her classmates voted for a ceremony featuring traditional African dress. Johnson-Shaw ended up wearing a long, patterned skirt and matching head wrap, and her football-player escort, instead of a suit and tie, wore a loin cloth. “I look back at the queens in ball gowns, and I’m still envious,” Johnson-Shaw says now. She graduated from college in 1972 and lives in Ahoskie , N.C., where she retired following a career with the Internal Revenue Service . In the past week, Johnson-Shaw has been reliving her collegiate memories because she can now access a digital archive of the Hawk yearbook back to 1959, the inaugural edition. THE HAWK: Browse issues online Scanned images are available for free online and let readers browse through a yearbook cover to cover or search by name. The grainy images from the yearbooks are full of period hairdos and clothes. They also show the school’s evolution from a tiny, historically black college into an institution that now offers doctoral programs and enrolls 4,500 students. “It’s fascinating when you look back, not just at the changing hairstyles but also at who was in the classrooms, the activities people were involved in and the new buildings,” said Jennifer Neumyer, the college’s special collections and outreach librarian. The 1960 yearbook includes a picture of Martin Luther King Jr . He spoke at commencement and is pictured in a cap and gown with a procession of soon-to-be graduates strolling behind him. Nationwide movement Colleges across the United States have been making digital copies of old yearbooks, student newspapers and course catalogues, said Laurie Gemmill, program manager of the Mass Digitization Collaborative at LYRASIS. The Atlanta-based group for libraries and information professionals has helped 100 colleges and universities create digital archives of materials that include yearbooks. Preserving the documents is only part of the benefit, she said. “Institutions are more interested in sharing their materials. So many materials are hidden from people. You have to go in and request it. The special collections are there for people to use, but it can be intimidating to some,” Gemmill said. Among the colleges that have created digital archives of yearbooks: Penn State University in State College, Pa.; Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte; St. Mary’s College of Maryland in St. Mary’s City, Md.; and the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. Penn State’s yearbook, La Vie , goes back to 1890. Kimberly Conway Dumpson, director of alumni affairs and planned giving at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said digital yearbooks are another way for her to connect with alumni and raise money for the school. This week while meeting with alumni in Florida, she pulled out her laptop and showed one man his yearbook photo from 45 years ago. “He was just blown away, so excited. He couldn’t stop reminiscing about friends and alumni,” Dumpson said. Sandra Odoms Hawkins, a 1976 graduate, said she checked out her old yearbook online and isn’t the least bit embarrassed by her clothing choices. The 56-year-old lives in Edgewater, Md., and works in the information technology department for the U.S. Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper. “Some of the styles have started coming back around. You should have kept those platform shoes,” Hawkins said. Horatio William “Bill” Jones III graduated in 1978 and is now an employee of CBS News in Charlotte He finds it neat that one photographer, Thomas Wiles, took almost all of the yearbook pictures from 1959 to 1989. The 60-year-old Jones said he grew up in Princess Anne and remembers when jazz greats Lionel Hampton , Count Basie and Duke Ellington played at the college. He said he’s been so busy clicking through the yearbook online to see how the college has changed and to see old friends and faculty members, that he hasn’t looked at his own picture. “I don’t need to. I know what I look like,” he said.

A couple million sets of U.S. parents just realized a dream: They sent sons and daughters off to colleges. Most immediately set their sights on a new dream: attending graduation ceremonies at those colleges. But right about now, some are getting the first clues that might not happen. A few know it won’t — because their kids have already dropped out. “I had a student leave the first week,” says Marcus Hotaling, a psychologist who directs the counseling center at Union College in Schenectady , N.Y. FRESHMEN YEAR: May be harder on parents than students THE TURKEY DROP: Some want to call college quits by Thanksgiving LAST PARENTING, PART II: Sweet 16 even sweeter without a car “It does happen,” says Marjorie Savage, parent program director at the University of Minnesota -Twin Cities. In fact, surveys by ACT (the non-profit company behind the ACT test) show one-third of freshman do not become sophomores at the colleges where they started. ACT doesn’t track how many students drop out in less than a year, transfer to another school or return later. But just under half get degrees from the colleges where they first enrolled (within three years for associate degrees or five years for bachelor’s degrees). “The numbers are dreadful, and the freshman year is key,” says James Boyle, president of College Parents of America in Arlington, Va. That might strike panic into parents already getting distress signals: •A drumbeat of negativity , via calls, e-mail, online status updates and other communications. A little homesickness is normal. But a student calling home “multiple times a day, crying or angry, overreacting to little things” is in trouble, Hotaling says. Savage says struggling freshmen say things like: “I can’t sleep. I hate the food here. I don’t like the people. It’s not what I expected.” •No communication. “There’s a lot of pressure to succeed,” Hotaling says. So when things don’t go well, students often don’t want parents to know. •Bad grades. Those are almost a rite of passage, “a reality check that typically comes in the first four weeks,” Savage says. But if the bad news is still coming four weeks after that, she says, “you might start to worry more.” College students who live at home can show many of the same signs, Savage notes — and are at high risk for dropout due to the competing demands of school, home and, often, a job. Also at high risk: students who came to school with a disability or a mental illness such as depression. Hotaling recalls one bright young man with a form of autism who came 3,000 miles and “didn’t last the semester because he couldn’t handle the social aspects.” And sometimes leaving is the right thing, he says. But, often, parents can help students stay put, without jumping in and taking over. “Stay in touch and provide coaching,” Boyle says. Remind students that academic advisers, counselors and others are there to help, he says. Encourage students to get involved in campus clubs, teams and activities, Savage says. “Typically, if you give them a few weeks, they are going to adjust,” Hotaling says. But, he adds, if you are concerned about safety — and, especially, suicide — don’t hesitate to call the campus counseling center and ask for help.

BERKELEY, California — Amid the uproar over the proposed mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, a new Islamic college recently opened its doors in California with plans to educate a new generation of Muslim-American leaders. Founded by three prominent Islamic scholars, Zaytuna College in Berkeley is a small school with just five faculty members and 15 students in its inaugural freshman class. The school wants to become the first fully accredited Muslim academic institution in the United States. QURAN: Florida pastor steps back from plans to burn Muslim holy book Zaytuna College is opening at a time when fierce opposition to the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near the former World Trade Center has left many American Muslims feeling under siege. Many mosques are boosting security this week ahead of the Sept. 11 anniversary that some fear could bring trouble to Muslim communities. Zaytuna has generated little controversy in this famously liberal college town, but some conservatives question the founders’ motives. Frank Gaffney , president of the Center for Security Policy , a conservative think tank, accuses the school of seeking to indoctrinate students and spread Islam in America. “This is stealth jihad in the sense that it is about promoting in the United States incubators for sharia,” the religious law of Islam, said Gaffney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. Zaytuna’s founders dismiss such criticism, saying it represents the views of a small minority of Americans who don’t understand Islam. “I think Zaytuna College over time can help contribute to a healthier understanding of Islam by removing ignorance,” said co-founder Zaid Shakir , an Air Force veteran and California native. The college is seeking to “prepare morally committed human beings that can go out and make a difference in the world as Muslims.” Zaytuna, which means “olive tree” in Arabic, offers an education that combines training in Arabic language and Islamic scholarship with courses in the humanities and social sciences. There have been other attempts to start Muslim colleges in the U.S., but those schools have closed or remained obscure. Students of all faiths are welcome at Zaytuna, but its first freshman class is made up of an ethnically diverse group of nine women and six men who are all Muslims. Most students wear head scarves or skull caps and participate in afternoon prayer. Zaytuna is housed in rented classrooms at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, just a few blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus. “Religion is the main part of my life. I have religion and then everything else comes around that. So that was definitely the main reason I wanted to come to Zaytuna,” said Sumaya Mehai, 21, who spent two years at community college in Santa Barbara before enrolling at Zaytuna. The college is working toward earning accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of six regional accrediting associations in the U.S., a process that is expected to take four to eight years. The founders hope to build an institution that will train scholars, professionals and religious leaders to serve the country’s fast-growing Muslim population, which now numbers in the millions. With few Islamic seminaries or colleges in the U.S., many American mosques have brought in imams from countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which can lead to a disconnect between religious leaders and their congregations. The three founders of the school are all leading Islamic scholars. Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian-American who teaches Islamic studies at UC Berkeley. Shakir and Hamza Yusuf are American converts who spent years studying Islam overseas before becoming leading Muslim scholars in the U.S. Zaytuna, where tuition is $11,000 a year, offers a bachelor’s degree with two majors: Arabic language and Islamic law and theology. Students take classes in subjects such as Islamic ethics, Islamic finance and Muslims in America, as well as courses one finds at a traditional liberal arts college — sociology, philosophy, linguistics, astronomy. Zaytuna’s opening is “one of the signs that Muslims have come of age in this country” and will be “a unique contribution to higher education,” said Ebrahim Moosa , a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University . But Moosa said the bachelor’s degree curriculum seems more like that of a theological seminary than a liberal arts college because most of the required courses are related to Islam. “From where I’m sitting, it’s heading in the direction of becoming a theological seminary, unless there will be a radical rethinking of the program,” Moosa said. In the years to come, Zaytuna’s founders hope to enroll more students, add more majors, offer graduate programs and have its own campus. The school is raising money from Muslim communities in the U.S. and trying to build an endowment. Freshman Hadeel Al-Hadidi, 24, completed her bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Michigan-Dearborn before enrolling at Zaytuna. She hopes to pursue a career in film. “Zaytuna College is more of a personal thing,” she said, “to make myself a better person, to better myself in my religion.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Washington Monthly has yet again irked some educators, as it did three years ago, by ranking what it calls “America’s Best Community Colleges” using openly available student engagement survey data. Using benchmarking data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and four-year federal graduation rates in an equation of its own making, the magazine attempts to rank the top 50 community colleges in the country in its latest issue. Though the periodical’s editors say they only hope to highlight “what works and what doesn’t” at these institutions by ranking them, CCSSE officials have denounced the use of their data in this way and argue it may do more harm than good. “Community colleges are often underrecognized,” said Kevin Carey, author of the magazine’s community college rankings and policy director at Washington-based think tank Education Sector. “But there’s been a lot of attention paid to them, thanks to the president’s recent effort [with the American Graduation Initiative]. Since he supports investing and improving community colleges, we felt like it was a good time to ask, ‘What do good community colleges look like?’ If we’re going to spend a lot of money, let’s see what reflects best practices out there.” STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Community colleges must expect more, report says PART-TIMERS EXCLUDED: Graduation rate data paint an unfair picture, critics say Carey admitted that such a ranking of community colleges would not be possible without data from CCSSE, a survey run by the University of Texas at Austin that goes out to students at around 650 two-year institutions and uses the results to judge the colleges on broad categories such as “active and collaborative learning,” “student effort,” “academic challenge,” “student-faculty interaction” and “support for learners.” Though every participating college’s survey data are made public, institutional officials are encouraged to compare their benchmark scores only to national averages and those of large peer groups, such as institutions of similar size or in a similar geographic area. Despite warnings from CCSSE officials that its data sets were never meant to be used to generate college rankings, Carey defended the decisions to do so and to have CCSSE data count for 85% of a college’s ranking. “We always equate admissions selectivity with quality,” Carey said. “Well, all community colleges have the same admissions policy, but they aren’t always as good as one another. Part of this was to find a way to talk about excellence in the sector. We’re publicizing information about best practices. We’re talking about it here, and this is an interesting and long-overdue conversation that we need to have at the federal level.” Carey noted that these rankings could encourage some community colleges to seek out the best practices of others, starting something of a domino effect of reform initiatives. He also added that the list could serve as something of a consumer tool for students looking for a community college. “I think there are some people who can’t choose their community college, but some can,” Carey said. “For instance, take our top college, Saint Paul College. Well, there are other community colleges in metropolitan Minneapolis-Saint Paul that aren’t listed. If you’re a student and have no information about which community college is better, you’ll probably go wherever is most convenient. But, if you do have some information, you might drive an additional 20 to 30 minutes to get to another community college. It might be worth it.” Those without much choice in the matter of where to attend a community college, given their location, may also consider taking online courses from those institutions ranked higher in the list, Carey added. Repeating his stance that only the best community colleges ought to be lauded for their good work while encouraging others to essentially replicate their success by taking similar reform measures, Carey noted that he never considered listing the “50 worst” community colleges in the magazine or continuing his list beyond number 50. He mused that some of the worst-performing community colleges may not have even participated in CCSSE, and that listing the bottom-performing institution that did would be an unfair punishment. Still, he did acknowledge that, conversely, some of the best-performing institutions might not have participated in CCSSE, though he considers this less likely. Kay McClenney, CCSSE director, criticized Washington Monthly’s use of CCSSE data in creating a ranking of community colleges, calling it both “inappropriate” and “unauthorized.” She noted that she turned down the publication’s request for a more user-friendly version of the open-source CCSSE data sets, adding that it likely pulled the data in what must have been a very tedious process from CCSSE’s website. CCSSE, McClenney argued, is a tool best used when its results are reviewed internally. She added that it does not make sense to compare one community college directly to another, given the significant differences in missions, socioeconomic status of students, budgets and other factors. She said that using broader benchmarks and peer groups is a better way to judge. “Benchmarking is a process that is entirely different from rankings,” McClenney said. “Our major issue here is that ranking just oversimplifies what’s going on in these colleges. It doesn’t take into comparison major variables. And, from a statistical standpoint, there isn’t that much of a difference between, say, number one and number 15 on the list. It creates a false impression.” Though she disagrees with Carey’s usage of CCSSE data, McClenney did at least find value in his reason for doing so. “I grant that [Carey] has positive purposes here,” McClenney said. “He’s attempting to do something he believes is for the cause of goodness. I sympathize with the idea of institutions learning from one another. That’s something we promote in our work. We just disagree that ranking is the way to go about it.”

Harvard University pulled ahead of Ivy League rival Princeton University in the latest edition of the influential U.S. News & World Report university rankings, while a stronger emphasis on graduation rates drove other changes in the Top 10. The nation’s oldest university and traditionally one of its most selective, Harvard has topped the list two of the last three years. Last year, the two elite schools shared the top ranking. HIGHER ED BLOG: How colleges spin rankings news RANKINGS: University of Georgia No. 1 party school Yale University was the No. 3-ranked university this year, followed by Columbia University , and Stanford University and Penn tied at No. 5. Williams College in Massachusetts was ranked the nation’s top liberal arts school, repeating its feat of last year. The most closely watched of a growing number of college rankings, the U.S. News & World Report list is both credited for helping students and families sort through a dizzying college selection process and criticized by those who say it’s too arbitrary and pressures colleges to boost scores at the expense of improving teaching. A change in how rankings are determined led to some shifts in the magazine’s “Best Colleges” rankings, which were released online Tuesday and examine more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools based on 16 factors. How did Harvard edge Princeton by 1 point on an 100-point scale? Robert Morse , director of data research for U.S. News & World Report , credited Harvard’s higher scores on graduation rates, and financial and faculty resources. The rankings take into account factors such as SAT scores, selectivity, graduation and retention rates, alumni giving and peer reputation. This year, high-school guidance counselors’ opinions were added to the mix. Most notably, graduation rate performance was given greater weight, accounting for 7.5% of the final score for national universities and liberal arts colleges, up from 5% last year. The variable is the difference between a school’s actual graduation rate and one predicted by U.S. News based on test scores and schools’ resources. Morse said the shift helped Columbia University rise from eighth to fourth this year and contributed to Cal Tech and MIT falling from a tie for fourth to a tie for seventh. Nationally, graduation rates are getting more policy attention as higher-education leaders and advocates focus increasingly not just on getting students in the door but also out with a degree or certificate. One of the Obama administration’s signature education goals is for the U.S. to regain the world lead in college graduation rates by 2020. The University of California , Berkeley is the highest-ranked public university, at No. 22 overall in the U.S. News report. Despite a severe budget crisis, five schools in the UC system were among the top 10 public universities. More schools were ranked this year, a reflection of both increased consumer demand and improved data collection, Morse said. The survey now displays the rank of the top 75% of schools in each category, up from 50%. The schools in the bottom tier are displayed alphabetically and not given numeric rankings. The magazine also publishes a list of “Up and Comers,” based on a survey of college administrators who were asked to nominate schools they think are making promising and innovative changes. The University of Maryland-Baltimore County was No. 1 among national universities in that category — and ranked No. 159 overall. Earlier this month, Forbes magazine ranked Williams College No. 1 in its third “America’s Best Colleges” rankings — and Harvard No. 8. The business magazine weighs student satisfaction, graduation rates, student debt and other factors. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

On Friday afternoons between work and rugby practice, Brittany Wolfe would rush to the campus library hoping copies of her advanced algebra textbook had not all been checked out by like-minded classmates. It was part of the math major’s routine last quarter at the University of California , Los Angeles: Stand in line at the reserve desk in the library’s closing hours with the goal of borrowing a copy for the weekend. The alternative was to buy a $120 book and sell it back for far less. If she could sell it back at all. “It’s like this terrible game of catch your books when you can,” said Wolfe, a new graduate who estimates she saved $800 a year using books on reserve and who now shares textbook tips as a counselor to incoming UCLA students. “It’s frustrating when you’re already stressed about school. Being stressed about textbooks doesn’t seem right.” Maybe, just maybe, relief is on the way. A new federal law requires publishers to provide textbook price information to professors and calls on colleges to identify course textbooks during registration, giving students more time to shop around. Experts call it a step in the right direction, but not a game-changer. ‘OLD SCHOOL’: Arizona college cuts book costs the old-fashioned way PROFESSORS: Some stopped from cashing in on textbooks At the same time, a robust online marketplace of used books and recent inroads by textbook rental programs give students more options than ever. The prospect of digital books and slow-but-steady growth in free online “open” content loom as developments that could upend the textbook landscape and alleviate the perennial problem of rising prices. “Change is coming, but it’s not going to happen immediately,” said David Lewis , dean of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis University Library and assistant vice president for digital scholarly communications at Indiana University. “If you’re in junior high school, you can be sure it’ll be better. If you’re in high school, there’s a shot. If you’re starting college as a freshman, you might see it as a senior. It’s on more and more people’s agenda.” According to a 2005 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, college textbook prices increased at twice the rate of inflation over the previous two decades, though not as dramatically as tuition. More recent data from the National Association of College Stores show textbooks costs climbed 14% from the 2006-2007 academic year to 2008-2009. A 2010 survey by the group found students spent an average of $667 per year on required course materials including textbooks, although other studies have put the figure at about $900. In 2008, Congress responded by including textbook-affordability provisions in the Higher Education Opportunity Act. Along with the price-disclosure clause meant to push professors toward cheaper options, it requires publishers to offer textbooks separately from extra items like workbooks and CDs. The practice of “bundling” products leads to markups of 10 to 50% and makes books harder to sell, according to the Student Public Interest Research Groups, which pressed for the reforms. “We have more lower cost options than ever before, and professors are going to have more information than ever before,” said Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for the student PIRGs. Like the music and media businesses, the textbook industry has been revolutionized by the Internet. Although used books have long been an option for students, the Web opened up a world of bargain-hunting beyond the campus bookstore. These days, sites such as BIGWORDS and BestBookBuys let students search several online stores at once. The 13th edition of the seminal textbook “Marketing Management,” which lists for $190 new, can be had for as little as $19.99 used. More recently, textbook rental sites such as Chegg, BookRenter and CollegeBookRenter have arrived, offering rentals at roughly half the cost of buying. Their business model — Netflix goes to college — has prompted college bookstores and publishers to play catch up and offer rentals themselves. Textbook publisher Cengage Learning began renting directly to students last spring and has expanded its online rental inventory to 3,000 titles. Campus bookstore operator Follett will introduce rentals at more than 800 bookstores this fall, and Barnes & Noble will do the same on more than 300 campuses. Earlier this summer, BookRenter, which has contracts with Amazon.com and other online booksellers to fill orders, announced that more than 75 campus bookstores would use its platform to rent textbooks. Chegg keeps its own inventory of nearly 5 million books at a warehouse outside Louisville The start-up aspires to forge direct relationships with students, shipping products in their own packaging, offering a liberal return policy and promising to plant a tree for every order, said CEO Dan Rosensweig , a former Yahoo executive. Behind the scenes, publishers get a share of the rental revenue — something they can’t say about used book sales. Open access textbooks pose a bolder challenge to the status quo. The start-up Flat World Knowledge contracts with authors to write new textbooks and publishes them for free under an open content license, allowing professors to edit the raw material and add their own contributions while giving students access to a Web-based HTML book. Last fall, about 480 professors adopted one of the company’s initial 10 business and economics titles, said co-founder Eric Frank. About 1,200 professors are expected to use 22 titles to teach 95,000 students this fall. The company is betting students will pay a reasonable price for greater convenience. Flat World’s revenue comes from selling everything from $30 black-and-white copies of its books to $3 audio chapters, as well as study aids like digital flash cards. About 55% of students are buying something at this point, Frank said. So far, the main drawback to open access is the dearth of titles, said Albert Greco, a professor at Fordham University ‘s Graduate School of Business Administration and an authority on the textbook publishing industry. Greco and others forecast a major shift in the next five years to digital textbooks, which already cost about half as much as new print editions on CourseMart.com, a kind of textbook iTunes launched in 2007 by the major textbook publishers. That would doom the used book and print rental marketplace, Greco said. As for immediate relief from the new price disclosure law, Greco said it won’t do any good for students unlucky enough to have four courses with brand-new books. “Whether it will help students comes down to, ‘It depends,’” he said. Sophie Stanish, a junior at Fordham University in New York, fumes about paying $200 for a new math textbook she couldn’t sell back and a $10 short-story collection that fetched 75 cents at trade-in. She likes the concept of Fordham’s “E-RES” program — short for “electronic reserve” — in which professors scan sections of textbooks to the extent allowed by copyright law and then put the material online for free. But, she said, “I can’t read off a screen and retain the knowledge as well. It’s a personal thing. I like to highlight.” Other colleges seeking to provide relief have adopted textbook loan programs. At City College of San Francisco, Kathy Gill said she misses class to line up early for a popular loan program for students on financial aid. The limit is two loaned books, so the business major still shops online for used and rental options each semester. “You do get a little bit of a break,” Gill said. “Every little thing helps.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OXFORD, Ohio (AP) — Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of Animal House and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. CAMPUS DRINKING: College’s problem or society’s? FRESHMEN: Study booze more than books The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, and the campus group governing sororities says it will begin teaching new members to speak out when they witness bad behavior. There is little evidence excessive alcohol consumption is any worse at Miami than other colleges, but students are worried the antics will damage the school’s reputation. “It’s embarrassing,” said Christina Zielke, 21, a senior from Cleveland, who doesn’t belong to a sorority. “This kind of thing gives a bad name not just to the Greek system but to the university and students like me who aren’t in the system.” Students also are worried the debauchery could even devalue a Miami diploma, said Heath Ingram, student government president. “They’re angry about the actions of a few damaging Miami’s reputation and the effect that might have on getting into the best graduate programs and job opportunities,” he said. The three sororities’ spring formals took place over the span of about a month. On March 26, Alpha Xi Delta sisters and their dates vomited, dropped drinks on the dance floor and tried to steal booze at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, center officials reported. One male even tried to urinate on the center’s Slave Pen, a slave-holding pen reclaimed from a Kentucky farm, the officials said. Two weeks later at the Pi Beta Phi formal, staff at Lake Lyndsay Lodge in nearby Hamilton found a couple having sex in a closet and two girls “repeatedly trying to urinate into the sinks on the bathroom counter,” the lodge said in a complaint letter to the school. It complained of students vomiting, flipping over an appetizer table and of being so drunk they couldn’t walk. On April 23, about 30 students on the way home from a Zeta Tau Alpha formal trashed a bus and harassed and shouted obscenities at the driver, who tossed them off, the transportation company said. The company had to send another bus. Miami suspended Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi and put Zeta Tau Alpha on probation. Zeta Tau Alpha’s Miami chapter president, Meghan Hughes, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that “while a small percentage of our members behaved inappropriately, we all take responsibility.” Other members or officers of the local chapters did not respond to requests for comment. National leaders of the sororities supported the school’s discipline and put their chapters on probation, though some noted that members told them some of the claims were exaggerated. About one-third of Miami’s 16,000 students belong to one of its more than 50 Greek groups. Larissa Spreng, president of the Miami Panhellenic Association governing campus sororities, said students in fraternities and sororities are disappointed in behavior she says doesn’t represent the Greek community. She called it “an atypical Miami semester.” The association requires new members to take a program on managing alcohol and other risks. Next year, for the first time, it will focus on the need for bystanders to speak out when witnessing bad behavior, Spreng said. A new task force of Greek and non-Greek students, staff and student-group advisers is meeting this summer to review and recommend changes in discipline and education policies on student behavior and alcohol, said student affairs Vice President Barbara Jones. The school already requires freshmen to complete an online alcohol-education program. Miami, which has had to discipline other Greek groups over alcohol, last year invited a national Greek coalition to assess its Greek organizations and programs. The school is implementing the group’s recommendations to improve Greek values, including more alumni and faculty involvement. Some educators and researchers suggest binge drinking among college students has increased over the past decade — and that women are catching up to men in terms of the percentage who binge — but statistics from major national studies indicate very little change. Schools are seeing increases in both the number and severity of alcohol-related incidents, not just among sororities and fraternities, said W. Scott Lewis, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration. The disparity between stable drinking trends and reports of worse behavior may be that “we really don’t have good measures of behavior associated with drinking and parties,” said Robert Saltz, senior scientist at the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. The two- and one-year suspensions for Alpha Xi Delta and Pi Beta Phi mean they lose their campus dorm suites and can’t recruit members or participate as a group in campus activities. Zeta Tau Alpha can’t hold social events with alcohol the first year of its two-year probation. Jenny Hoy, the mother of a Chi Omega sorority member at Miami, thought the discipline was fair. “As a parent, I’m concerned about what is basically roguish behavior, but I don’t believe it will permanently damage the school’s image,” said Hoy, 46, of Reno A member of another Miami sorority doesn’t approve of the conduct but doesn’t think all members misbehaved. “I don’t think it’s fair that people who were innocent are being punished, too,” said Kappa Kappa Gamma member Rachael Fraleigh, 19, of Chicago. Lake Lyndsay Lodge manager Lyndsay Rapier-Phipps, a Miami graduate, acknowledged that about a quarter of the students were the worst troublemakers at Pi Beta Phi’s formal. But she said others “just stood around watching and laughing.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

One quick way to tell what kind of year colleges are having as far as the admissions “yield” — the percentage of accepted applicants who put down deposits — is to see how forgiving they are of the U.S. Postal Service . Those that are having a good year assume that everything postmarked through May 1 — the standard date to accept admissions offers — should have arrived by now. Others are convinced that one more clump of deposits is about to arrive — and aren’t willing to declare final numbers just yet. Yield tends to be most crucial these days for private colleges that are not in the uppermost stratosphere of endowment and prestige. Many public colleges are bulging and not particularly worried about filling their seats. The Ivies are still the Ivies when it comes to attracting students — and having generous aid packages to help them out. But for most private institutions, including many at which admission is highly competitive, this is the make-or-break time when they find out if their incoming class is likely to be consistent with their academic and budget plans for the year. While many of those still waiting on the next postal delivery are likely to be disappointed with their yields and aren’t providing details yet, a few trends are emerging among those colleges that are having successful years. Generally, these shifts in thinking about yield go beyond just making sure that accepted applicants have a good experience on a campus visit (although that is of course still part of it and continues to be refined). What are some of the key issues influencing yield this year? EARLY DECISION: Many regret choice COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: 30-point SAT bump can pay off big TO FRIEND OR NOT TO FRIEND? Admissions in the age of Facebook • More discussion (and strategies) based on the idea that many colleges don’t have one yield, but in fact have several, for particular groups of students — by where they live or the programs that are attracting them. • More student interest (and tuition-paying parent interest) in career prospects. • More of an emphasis on identifying in the admissions process students who really want to enroll — and a willingness to reject some outstanding applicants rather than let them reject the college (bringing down the yield). • More of an emphasis on attracting groups of students — whether Latinos from the United States or Chinese students from overseas — to the application and deposit pool. • More of an emphasis on using techniques other than money to attract students to some campuses — while money is still the favored tool at other campuses (especially those that had an off year last year). ON THE WEB: Another increase for early decision AT INSIDE HIGHER ED: The real costs of merit aid Careers and cost Here is how yield is looking at some campuses that are pleased this year. Misericordia University, in Pennsylvania, has as one of its tools to attract students a billboard that says: “Nursing: the recession-proof career.” The message isn’t subtle, but it is part of how the institution has been attracting students to its health professions programs, which in the last year went from representing 49% of incoming students to 56%. Yield is about 35%, up 2 points from last year. But Glenn Bozinski, director of admissions, said he’s really dealing with a range of different yields because some of his programs can grow and others can’t. In all of the health professions programs, he said, the university is maxed out on clinical spots it can provide in clinics and hospitals for training that is required by various accreditors. He easily could have enrolled 100 freshmen in the physical therapy program based on their academic credentials, but he only admitted toward a target of 66 because that’s the number the university can provide with clinical spots. In business (in which student interest is dropping) and liberal arts fields, he said, he could easily admit more students because the university has the faculty members and classrooms it needs — and doesn’t have to find clinical rotations. Career prospects are a big deal for more students, he said. “We hear parents say, ‘I will send my son to a state school for the ubiquity of many majors there. They can get their history degree or psychology degree there.’ But you don’t hear that with the health sciences.” Across the state, Mike Frantz, vice president of enrollment at Robert Morris University, is also looking at vastly different yields for different programs. For those undecided on majors, the yield this year is 12.5% — up a few percentage points from last year. But in mechanical engineering, the yield is nearly 25%. In actuarial sciences, the yield is 36.9%. Over all, the university is thrilled “beyond our wildest dreams” because those numbers for the year — in which overall yield is 17.6%, down less than a point — come from a much larger applicant pool and more admittances. Applications were up 40%. The key, Frantz said, was that the college bought names of prospective students at the beginning of their senior year in high school. In the past, Robert Morris stopped buying new names when students reached their junior year, a common practice, feeling that potential students would be identified by then. “But the vast majority of our new applicants, and many of our new students, came from these pools, whose names aren’t being purchased traditionally,” he said. At the University of Vermont — a public university that, due to its unusually large out-of-state enrollment, has an admissions operation that competes with the privates — officials noticed the impact of economic uncertainty not by applicants’ intended majors but by the differing patterns of those from Vermont and those outside the state (who pay more). Yield is typically higher for those from within Vermont, and that didn’t change. But state residents committed very quickly after being admitted, while those from out of state took their time and sent in their deposits only in the final days before the deadline. Over all, the in-state yield increased to 42% from 38%, while the out-of-state rate increased to 17% from 16%. Christopher Lucier, vice president for enrollment management at Vermont, said he saw a combination of interests in discussions with prospective students and families. “It was a combination of what we were able to do with financial aid packages and the quality of the institution. The issue of value is continuing to emerge,” he said. Based on the higher yields, the university doesn’t plan to admit anyone off the waiting list. Last year, it let in more than 300 students that way. At the City University of New York (which doesn’t hold to the May 1 deadline used by private colleges), applications are continuing to go up at such a fast rate that the system has decided that those who don’t apply by Friday will be placed on a waiting list — a first in recent years. Applications are running more than 25% ahead of just two years ago. Judging applicant interest For some years now, many colleges have paid attention not just to the quality of applicants, but to how interested they really seem to be. No one, after all, wants to be treated like a safety school. And so many colleges pay attention to factors such as whether an applicant visits the campus to measure such interest. This year — as part of strategies to increase yield — some colleges are taking that approach to new levels. Augustana College is looking at a yield of 27% this year, up from 23%, and part of that is attributed to new ways to measure applicant interest, said W. Kent Barnds, vice president of enrollment, communication and planning. The college called the first 1,000 students accepted and ranked them on their interest in the college — and then focused further recruitment efforts and some extra financial aid on students who seemed truly interested. The college was “more aggressive” on putting applicants on a waiting list or asking for more information if there was some sense that they might not really be interested. “We continually qualified the pool to focus our resources and be more efficient,” he said. At the University of Rochester, where yield is up by about 2 percentage points and the discount rate is down a few percentage points, Jonathan Burdick, dean of admissions and financial aid, described the year as “obscenely good” for the institution. And one key was taking a new, hard line with those applicants who weren’t interested. While he doesn’t have numbers, he said that the university made a conscious decision to either place on the waiting list or outright reject those students who — when asked to describe why they are applying — “spend 15 seconds at midnight to take what they wrote about Tufts and then put our name in it.” Burdick said that it was a matter of “having the confidence to say that we don’t care if this kid is 4.0 and has 1500 SATs. We want the students who are interested in us.” He said that he suspected some of those rejected are probably “in disbelief” about the decision, but he would rather focus on recruiting those who really want to come. What are the trends among those who did want to come this year? He noticed — and can’t yet explain — more students interested in several of the social sciences. Most years, he said, the university ends up admitting three or four students each who say they want to major in anthropology or linguistics. This year, those intended majors are in double digits. Some of the increase, he said, is coming from Chinese students who in the past have tended to want to major only in economics or finance, but are branching out to a range of social sciences. But he said that American students are also a key part of the trend. Meredith College, a women’s college in North Carolina, enrolled its largest freshman class ever last year (477) and expects to end up a little lower than that this year. But it has noticed an increase in international applications (and deposits). Generally colleges are reporting more interest from undergraduate international applications this year, not just grad students. The college is also seeing success in efforts to diversify. For the fall class, about 138 applicants (out of 1,553 total) are from Latinas. And while the applicant total over all has been flat, the number of Latina applicants has been rising, from 104 last year and 67 the year before. At a time of concern in Arizona (and at North Carolina’s community colleges) about applicants who may not have legal immigration status, Meredith says simply that its totals include documented and undocumented students, and that the college is proud of the outreach that is attracting the students. (As the application numbers have grown, the admit rate has hovered above 60% for Latinas, and the yield in the 30-40% range.) Case Western Reserve University is also reporting more success on diversity. While yield is holding steady, with an applicant pool that was 20% larger, the commitments to enroll by black, Latino and Native American students are up by 60%. Success with and without more aid One of the big questions facing private colleges and universities is how much aid they need to add to woo students — especially those who may be considering generous offers elsewhere, or less expensive public institutions. Some colleges this year are reporting success without engaging in bidding wars — even as they eye other colleges offering very good packages. Robert J. Massa, vice president for communications at Lafayette College , said yield is up — to 29% from 27% — while the discount rate is down, to 32% from 35.5%. So while the college gives generous aid packages, that reflects a yield that was higher among those who weren’t offered financial aid than for whose who were offered assistance. Massa credited “beefed up” yield activities and also what seemed a slight uptick in family confidence levels about the economy. Steven T. Syverson, vice president for enrollment at Lawrence University, said that his institution introduced some modest (generally $2,000-$4,000) awards for applicants interested in certain themes, such as global perspectives, environmental awareness and community engagement. And Lawrence already has a few merit scholarships — up to a maximum of $15,000. Syverson said he was struck by the number of $25,000-a-year awards applicants were reporting from competing institutions — especially from others in the Midwest. Syverson said he wasn’t sure about the strategy, and how it would work economically or academically (he wasn’t impressed by the quality of some of the recipients of these offers). While refusing to go down that road, Syverson said, Lawrence’s numbers far exceeded expectations. For the first time in his 27 years at the university, Lawrence “made its class” (meaning it had its goal for deposits) based on the mail that had arrived by April 30. At this point, the university has 445 deposits, far more than its target of 370 freshmen. That’s enough so typical “summer melt” — when some students get in off of others’ waiting lists — of 20 or so will still leave the college ahead of its plans. Illinois Wesleyan University is another institution that entered this admission cycle vowing that it would not get in bidding wars — and that it would not let its 42% discount rate grow. Like that of Lawrence, the maximum merit aid it will offer is $15,000. Given that the university’s “overlap” colleges (those with many commonly admitted applicants) include public institutions such as the Universities of Illinois and Iowa and Illinois State University, that means that for most students who don’t qualify for need-based aid, Illinois Wesleyan can only get to being moderately more expensive than the competition, and can’t match. Tony Bankston, dean of admissions, said that the college’s approach this year — in radical contrast to when he started in admissions 18 years ago — was to be upfront about cost, but to shift the conversation. It’s no longer about saying, “We’ll be just as competitive on cost as your other choices,” he said. Rather, the line now is “You will most likely pay more to come here, but here is why we think the investment is worth it.” He said that the university has stressed personal attention, graduation rates, its spending by on undergraduate instruction, and other measures of “value” as opposed to cost. Currently, Illinois Wesleyan is not only running ahead on deposits compared to this time last year (by 18%), but has managed with this approach to attract more minority students and more men. Last year’s entering class was nearly 60% female — a gap typical of many liberal arts colleges these days, but one that worries them. This year, the deposits are setting up a class that would be 53% female. Bankston said that he thinks the idea of getting away from bidding wars is a sound one and that many families are open to such discussions. “Most families just don’t know how the money works in higher education, that a huge scholarship on the front end may very likely detract from the quality of education they receive on the back end,” he said. Colleges should be ready to say that “how a big discount [a student receives] may not be the soundest reason to select a particular college.” Of course, college officials said privately that while they believe in that philosophy, they might be quick to add aid if they had an off year. That’s what happened at Yeshiva University last year, when the freshman class size was 14% smaller than the previous year, following repeated years of growth. Surveys suggested that many of those who didn’t enroll cited financial issues. The trustees then provided an extra $3 million and the university moved up the timing on when financial aid awards went out to early March — a month earlier than normal. Yield and class size are expected to be back to normal.