Graduate schools are seeing steady growth as both recent college graduates and people already in the workforce seek to boost their job prospects in a still-dragging economy. “We see an increase in graduate school applications and enrollments whenever the economy really turns south,” says Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis for the Council of Graduate Schools. In its report last month, it said the number of applications to U.S. graduate schools grew 8.3% from 2008 to 2009. The council has tracked grad school enrollments annually since 1986 and surveyed 699 schools in 2009. Total enrollments increased 4.7% in 2009, compared to 3% the previous year. Last year more students than ever took the GRE, the exam required for many graduate programs, and this year may set record highs again, says David Payne, vice president of Educational Testing Service , the non-profit that develops, administers, and scores the GRE. Concern about the job market — and wanting to put off paying back student loans — were major factors for University of California-Davis senior Daniel Yeshiwas, who says he changed his plans to work for a few years before attending graduate school. He plans to apply for fall 2011. “I don’t really know exactly what I want to do yet, but going to graduate school, it’s still moving me towards a career, and it’s something to further put off that question of what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life,” says Yeshiwas. Danielle McManus, a pre-professional and pre-graduate program advisor at the UC-Davis, says reasoning like Yeshiwas’ is not uncommon; she adds that many students apply to grad school as a backup plan, in case they can’t find a job. “Graduate school seems better than the specter of aimless unemployment. If these students do manage to find a job, however, they might prefer to start making money right away,” she says. In just the past two years, “students have become so hyper-focused on career opportunities that these programs can provide for them,” says Rob Franek, publisher of The Princeton Review test prep and research company. “They are thinking about the value of professional experience through a recession lens.” The Princeton Review’s new guidebooks, The Best 172 Law Schools , The Best 300 Business Schools , and The Best 168 Medical Schools , can help students evaluate whether a graduate program’s value is worth the investment, says Franek; a “career prospects” rating, is included in both the law and business school guides. That rating combines several employment statistics, such as how many students are employed upon graduation, average starting salaries, career services offered, and the number of students employed a year after graduation. Advice for those considering grad school: •Leave at least six weeks to study before any qualifying exams like the GRE or the LSAT, says The Princeton Review’s Rob Franek, and consider different schools’ admissions criteria, (includeded in the company’s guides). •Trying to decide which program to pursue? “Think about which classes you’ve done best in and what you are most interested in, particularly because graduate school is so targeted and so specific,” says UC-Davis adviser Danielle McManus. She also recommends that students ask professors for advice. •Get free practice GRE questions through the ETS website; many MBA programs now accept the GRE, not just the GMAT, says ETS’ David Payne. “With employers, the undergraduate degree is becoming pretty much a required certificate or credential for entry level positions. To advance, a masters degree is becoming more the preferred,” he adds. “Best Career Prospects” Law schools 1. University of Pennsylvania 2. Northwestern University 3. New York University 4. Vanderbilt University 5. Harvard University 6. University of Chicago 7. University of Virginia 8. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 9. Boston College 10. Boston University Business Schools 1. Harvard University 2. Stanford University 3. Northwestern University 4. Georgetown University 5. University of Pennsylvania 6. University of Virginia 7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 8. Duke University 9. University of California-Berkeley 10. Carnegie Mellon University Source: The Princeton Review’s Best 172 Law Schools and Best 300 Business Schools 2011 Editions (Based on institutional data on graduates’ employment and average starting salaries, and student survey data on how much practical experience and career services support their law and b-schools offered.) More details on the rankings at The Princeton Review .

The difference between the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Applied Engineering and Technology Library and other science-focused libraries is not that its on-site collection is also available electronically. It is that its on-site collection is only available electronically. The idea of a libraries with no bound books has been a recurring theme in conversations about the future of academe for a long time, and it has become common practice for academic libraries to store rarely used volumes in off-campus facilities. But there are few, if any, examples of libraries that actually have zero bound books in them. UNTESTED: Can college students learn as well on iPads, e-books? Some libraries, such as the main one at the University of California at Merced, and the engineering library at Stanford University , have drastically reduced the number of print volumes they keep in the actual library building, choosing to focus on beefing up their electronic resources. In fact, some overenthusiastic headline writers at one point dubbed Stanford’s library “bookless.” But that is “a vision statement, not a point of fact,” says Andrew Herkovic, the director of communications for Stanford’s libraries. San Antonio says it now has the first actual bookless library. Students who stretch out in the library’s ample study spaces — which dominate the floor plan of the new building — and log on to the its resource network using their laptops or the library’s 10 public computers will be able to access 425,000 e-books and 18,000 electronic journal articles. Librarians will have offices there and will be available for consultations. ON THE WEB: Is a campus library valuable? INSIDE HIGHER ED: The joy of stacks Students used to get their engineering and technology books from a collection at the campus’s main library. That collection is still there, and books from it are available upon request. But at the new library dedicated to that specialty, the only dead trees are in the beams and furniture. The fact that San Antonio has actually built a literal version of what many in the industry hold up as symbol of the inevitability of electronic as the prevailing medium in academe may be commendable, but it is not “earth-moving,” says Roger Schonfeld, the managing director of Ithaka S+R, a nonprofit that promotes innovation in libraries and elsewhere. Many libraries, especially science and engineering ones, have started moving their print volumes out of the building and into remote storage. Lisa Hinchliffe, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and head of the undergraduate library at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, says that her institution, along with several others, has embedded librarians in various department buildings. Their offices in those building, it could be argued, constitute bookless libraries inasmuch as they are places where students and professors go to learn about how to use campus collections that can be accessed from anywhere. More interesting than the fact that San Antonio’s newest library has no printed books in it is the fact that more and more libraries are devoting less space to printed books, and are thus reimagining the physical space of the library, Hinchliffe says. Whether the building houses half of its former print collection or none of it, the evolution of the library as a physical hub is something nearly every library is dealing with. As a shared space for discovery, socializing, and studying, the library is still very much relevant and in demand, says Krisellen Maloney, dean of libraries at San Antonio. That is why the university invested $82.5 million in a new library building instead of just putting librarians in offices around campus, Maloney says. “You study and work in the library,” she says. “That’s how libraries have always been. When people come to the library with books, they’re not necessarily using the books. They’re also there for the services — to consult, get instruction, find content, and use the content.”

Want to feed squirrels, transform into a zombie or use science to whip up bacon-flavored cotton candy? Forget chess club. College students today are attracted to clubs with activities that are more innovative — maybe even downright wacky. College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom. Students who participate in co-curricular activities study more, have higher GPAs and are more satisfied with their social lives, says Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. DISTANCE EDUCATION: Students form clubs online STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Survey measures it using five categories The average student participates in two campus activities, according to a 2009 NASPA report, which surveyed more than 14,000 students from 35 U.S. colleges and universities. Students who attend smaller colleges tend to become involved in more organizations, the report says. Joining clubs is one of many ways students network and develop lasting friendships, says John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and author of Your College Experience: Strategies for Success . Students interact, learn more David Bebeau, 20, founded the Humans vs. Zombies club at the University of Wisconsin in 2009. Bebeau describes Humans vs. Zombies, which has become popular on campuses across the country, as a “massive game of tag.” Players are split into two groups; humans who are tagged by zombies become zombies themselves, and the game ends when the last human is tagged. As many as 300 students play the week-long game that goes on 24/7. Bebeau says the club brings together a diverse group of students who wouldn’t otherwise interact. “We get athletes with the hardest of the hard-core nerds, and people who would never actually play together have become very good friends,” he says. Though the main purpose of some clubs is just to have fun, others extend the learning experience. At the Culinary Institute of America , students may sit in a wine class for several hours a day and then attend a wine-tasting sponsored by the Bacchus Wine Society later that night, says David Whalen, associate dean for student activities, recreation and athletics. “They’re back there lining up at the door because they want to learn more about wine.” Students also flock to cooking demonstrations by the Avant-Garde Cuisine Society, which has taught aspiring chefs how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen. Students who had a handful of clubs at their high school are often overwhelmed by the hundreds of organizations they can join once they step onto large campuses. Officials have different views on whether they should dive in right away or wait a few weeks until they’ve adjusted to their new courses and environment. The answer depends on the student, says Tina Samuel Powellson, associate director in the Office of Student Involvement at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, which offers about 345 student organizations. She says there is no “cookie-cutter” plan — “I would encourage students to take their time, to get to know what’s the best fit for them,” she says. In the NASPA survey, 65% of students said participating in campus activities helps them learn to balance their social and academic lives; 14% said their commitment to clubs caused their grades to drop, but 25% said their grades increased. Gardner says it’s good for students to “jump in” and join clubs right away because clubs can make a large campus feel smaller, and students can immediately make friends. “Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students,” he says. “If you don’t make friends, you’re lonely, you’re anxious, you feel sort of adrift.” But he adds that students should be careful not to join too many organizations at once, so they’re not distracted from other activities such as studying and going to class. “It’s a question of balance and not overdoing it,” he says. R?sum?-building While some campuses boast hundreds of clubs — the University of Michigan has more than 1,200 — students attending smaller schools don’t lack opportunities to get involved. Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina sponsors about 40 student organizations. Because it’s a two-year college with about 9,000 full-time students, clubs experience a high turnover. This can present a challenge for less popular clubs, says Chris Libert, student activities coordinator. “Most likely, the club advisers are here, but the participants might not be,” he says. But Libert says it’s important for students to partake in activities — even at community colleges — if they want their r?sum?s to stand out. Employers look for “well-rounded people” and students who did more than one activity, he says. Even if clubs like the University of Minnesota’s Campus People Watchers or Princeton University’s Muggle Quidditch Team (based on the Harry Potter stories) seem to have no apparent benefit, college experts say they provide a way for students with similar interests to “connect” and “engender creativity.” They also offer an alternative to the party scene. “They’re a very healthy form of stress relief,” Gardner says. “It’s better to spend time in this kind of group, rather than drink excessively.”

CHICAGO — From continuing education and enrichment classes to graduate school, many of America’s retirees are pursuing their interests at the college level. It’s a trend that is likely to grow as seniors’ ranks swell with baby boomers, who by 2015 will represent some 35% of the U.S. population, looking to either acquire new job skills or simply enjoy new learning experiences. (Baby boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964) Nearly six decades after graduating from college, Pete Shannon still can’t get enough of lectures and homework assignments. The 78-year-old Dallas retiree has taken dozens of classes at his local community college since he stopped working as a certified public accountant in 2004. This summer he studied music composition, and in the fall he plans to tackle philosophy and whatever else piques his interest. Exams can be challenging, but one thing he doesn’t sweat is tuition bills. In one of many such arrangements across the U.S., Dallas County residents age 65 and over get up to six hours’ tuition free at Richland College every semester. “It’s a marvelous opportunity,” Shannon says, calling the college his “candy store.” “It’s a wonderful place to go. The catalog is rich with all kinds of classes.” The prospect of having to pay for even moderately priced college classes might sound daunting to a retiree living on fixed income. But numerous discounts, tuition waivers and other deals make it possible. “There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them,” says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com. Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over. Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., offer free tuition for senior citizens at some or all of their public colleges, according to FinAid.org. The student still must buy textbooks and may have to pay fees. Two relatively new opportunities offer even more help. The Senior Scholarships program, created last year as part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, provides $1,000 education awards for people 55 or older who volunteer 350 or more hours a year. The money may be used for the volunteer’s own education or transferred to a child, foster child or grandchild. And the American Opportunity tax credit can lower taxes for students of any age dollar-for-dollar for the first $2,000 spent on tuition, fees and course materials. The credit also applies to 25% of the second $2,000. Unless extended, the temporary credit expires at year’s end. More seniors might head back to school if they knew about the deep discounts and freebies — or lived near colleges. As it is, education remains an untapped resource for most. According to data released in June by the Bureau of Labor Statistics , Americans from age 65 to 74 say they spend 6.77 hours on leisure and sports on a typical weekday, watch 3.58 hours of TV, spend 0.71 hour reading, 0.59 hour socializing and 0.03 hour on education. That’s less than two minutes, compared to 0.46 hour or about 28 minutes for the population as a whole. Shannon, who got his undergraduate degree in business economics from Rice University in 1953, is happy to stay in school for life. He says he takes college classes to get out of the house, at his wife’s urging, and exercise his brain. The rest of him gets a workout, too, as he often bikes the 4 1/2 miles (6.4 kilometers) to campus. A perfect 4.0 grade-point average through 114 credit hours shows he’s not taking any mental shortcuts. “I like writing the papers and doing the work,” he says. “It’s more complete than Googling a subject. And by the time you finish the semester, you’ve learned something.” Thanks to the tuition deals, he reckons he has spent no more than $1,000 on education expenses since he retired. But he’d dig a little deeper into his retirement savings if he had to. “Frankly, I’d go to college even if I had to pay up to $1,000 a year for it,” he says. “I’d consider it part of my personal entertainment budget.” If retirement-age students decide to borrow to pay for college, loans don’t have to be as burdensome as they might expect. Federal student loans are discharged on the borrower’s death. That means the retiree student’s heirs won’t get shortchanged because of those late-in-life classes in history and Chinese. The senior can also choose the repayment plan with the longest payback period, thus the lowest monthly payment. When finances aren’t an issue, most any educational experience is still possible in retirement. Anne Carter Harrison-Clark of Williamsburg, Virginia, is thriving as a 71-year-old student at the William & Mary Law School. Learning more about the law is something she long aspired to do during a career as a lobbyist and public policy lecturer at Georgetown University , among other roles. Now she has both the time and money to do it, thanks to she and her husband Bob selling property near the top of the market six years ago. Immersed in her third year of law classes, she is thrilled to be studying at the college where her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was educated. She doesn’t at all mind being the only white-haired student or getting constantly asked why she’s there. The short answer to that is she wants to keep the brain cells going with new information and new contacts. And she doesn’t know where this educational “journey” will take her, although she does intend to get her law degree at some point, on her own schedule. “This whole (college) experience has been like dessert, like double fudge icing on a cake. Just a wonderful experience,” says Harrison-Clark, who already has a Ph.D. in politics. “I highly encourage it.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

IRVINE, Calif. — If campus activism still brings to mind peace signs, a sea of white faces and liberal strongholds like Berkeley , meet Jesse Cheng. Cheng is a third-year Asian-American studies major at the University of California , Irvine, a campus less than five decades old in the middle of Orange County , a place of strip malls and subdivisions that gave birth to the ultraconservative John Birch Society . Comfortable talking with both administrators and anarchists, Cheng is a presence at protests but avoids getting arrested. He doesn’t want to put his graduation at risk or upset his mother, who worked hard to get him here and worries for his safety because she witnessed what happened to dissidents in her native China . Cheng is part of a growing movement of minority students rallying around a new cause — fighting a budget crisis that’s undermining access to higher education at a time when students of color have become a stronger demographic force. “For a lot of students of color, this is our dream and our hope — to get to college,” said Cheng, who is about to start a one-year term representing students from all 10 University of California campuses on the system’s board of regents. “We never thought we’d make it and we’re here. And we’re not going to give it up so easily.” While talk about a rebirth of student activism surfaces every few years whenever sweatshop labor or some other cause draws a decent crowd, some observers believe organizing around threats to higher education has the potential to grow into something big, maybe even a national movement. But a visit to a developing activist hotspot like UC-Irvine — where tensions have run high this year over everything from student tuition hikes to gender-neutral bathrooms and Middle East politics — illustrate the challenges involved. The increased diversity of students, many of them the first in their families to attend college, is both a strength and a liability. Splits have emerged over tactics and agendas, making coalition-building more challenging than ever. “It’s a very diverse group, a lot of students of color, which makes it more difficult to organize,” said Alejandra Ocasio, a fourth-year student from San Diego active in a Hispanic campus student association. “We all have our own interests. It can be difficult to reconcile those things.” At 27,000-student UC-Irvine, the scene includes a Pakistani-American working behind the scenes on budget issues as her own financial aid disappears, a Filipino-American struggling to shake fellow Asian students from political apathy and a gay African-American activist who thinks the focus on student fees obscures larger problems like the evils of capitalism. The fact that students of color are at the forefront of campus protests marks a significant shift, said Arthur Levine, a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York who has studied student activism. “In the past, minorities have tended to provide leadership for the minority protests,” Levine said. “Now they’ve moved to center stage. They’re leading the protests.” On a recent morning, Cheng led a quick tour of activism at UC-Irvine. Here, he explained, is the designated “free-speech zone” in front of the administration building. About 1,000 people, a big crowd for a campus often maligned as apathetic, crowded onto the steps and filled an area between two flagpoles on March 4, a national day of college student demonstrations against tuition hikes and program cuts. “Everyone was silent,” Cheng recalled. “It felt more like a lecture. I mean, it was a great moment — a teaching moment. But it wasn’t a punch-you-in-the-face kind of deal.” Therein lies one challenge to organizing a movement around budget issues: a massive fee increase like the one UC students are facing this year is painful and personal. But it’s not as visceral as, say, the Vietnam War , which was a matter of life and death for students of the 60s and 70s facing the draft. “Our crisis is different — and our demographics are very different,” Cheng said. The March 4 Day of Action for Public Education began as a California-only event, a sequel to fall demonstrations against the state Board of Regents’ decision to boost UC undergraduate fees, the equivalent of tuition this fall by 32% for in-state students. The $2,500 fee hike brings UC education fees to about $10,300, plus about another $1,000 for campus-based charges. Despite no real organization, the protest spread nationwide. Most demonstrations were peaceful, although protesters threw punches and ice chunks in Milwaukee and shut down a major freeway in Oakland, during rush-hour traffic. It’s no accident that California, with its ethnic diversity and severe budget problems, is the epicenter of revived activism, said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism who teaches at the City University of New York. The momentum building over budget problems, Johnston said, “speaks to the demographic transformation of the student body. In the 1960s, the average student was coming from a family of means, someone who was white, male, with a history of academic achievement in the family. In 2010, none of those things are as likely.” Johnston said the combination of students of lesser means taking on greater loans and American public higher education buckling under diminished state support and recession is a recipe for greater student engagement. In California, Cheng is joined in the cause by first-generation minority college students such as Victor Sanchez, who attends the University of California, Santa Cruz and leads the University of California Student Association. “It’s more than just fighting for what’s morally right,” said Sanchez, who has a Mexican father and Costa Rican mother and describes fighting for access to honors programs and Advanced Placement courses in high school. “It’s righting the wrongs of our own experiences, the stuff we’ve gone through, for our brothers and sisters and generations after.” Like much contemporary student activism, Sanchez and Cheng combine direct action and lobbying. Their pragmatism leads them to meet with administrators to press causes such as preserving the Cal Grant program for low-income students and boosting financial aid for their undocumented peers. But Sanchez also sees value in standing apart when the moment is right — like when he was kicked out of the state Capitol after staging a “study-in.” The point was to call attention to diminishing state support that has led to fee increases, staff furloughs and program cuts at a system considered the jewel of American public higher education. “For me, it’s most effective to have one foot in and one foot out,” Sanchez said. “What’s the point of addressing the powers that be if you don’t meet with them? We have to be a thorn in their sides and strong enough to advocate without losing our position.” At UC-Irvine, capturing students’ attention is another challenge shaped by cultural currents. Many Asian and Asian-American students, who are by far the largest racial group on campus at 47% of the student body, come from more moderate to conservative families and shy from political action, said Justine Calma, who became involved in campus activism by co-chairing a Filipino student organization. “Who isn’t opposed to a 32% fee increase?” Calma said one recent afternoon at the university’s Cross-Cultural Center, or “The Cross,” a gathering spot for minority student activists. “It’s not really a contentious issue. To see just a few of us come out … I fight for every handful.” UC-Irvine’s year of tumult is catalogued in messages scrawled in chalk on campus sidewalks and stairwells. “Free Gaza,” reads one. “Funeral for Education” says another. Then there is the more benign, “Good luck on your midterms.” The university has long been a hotbed of Muslim-Jewish tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the latest flare-up, 11 students, afterward known as the “Irvine 11″ were arrested in February for repeatedly interrupting a talk by Michael Oren , Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Next came the “Irvine 17,” a group staging a sit-in with a list of a dozen demands ranging from gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to disarming police officers of Tasers. Restoring budget cuts was on the list, too. A group that included members of the Radical Student Union, a group of self-described anarchists and Marxists, occupied the library to protest reduced hours. Then, on May 4, students dressed in black staged a mock “Funeral for Education” complete with a wooden coffin. Some longtime activists, minority students among them, are wary of focusing too narrowly on the higher-education budget crisis. Ryan Davis, a gay African-American student and one of the Irvine 17, said rising student fees are just a symptom of the larger problem of a “racist, hetero-normative, capitalist structure we want to take down by any means necessary.” To Davis, that flawed structure allows for curriculum that glosses over minority contributions, campus workers not extended job protections and student bodies that don’t reflect the state’s diversity well enough. “We’re just trying to make sure that’s highlighted and we’re not just washing over that in all the rhetoric over fee hikes,” said Davis, of San Diego. Yet Davis said he doesn’t see student activists who work with administrators and elected officials on the budget crisis as enemies. And work-within-the-system students like Sarah Bana say they need students like Davis. “If Ryan doesn’t yell at people and tell them what is wrong, I can’t say, ‘Here is one little way you can fix it,’” said Bana, executive vice president of Associated Students of UC-Irvine, the undergraduate student government. A Pakistani-American whose father is a wholesale jeweler in downtown Los Angeles, Bana said the budget crisis drew her into activism. She receives both Pell and Cal Grants for low-income students. Over the last three years her financial aid was cut in half. An extra roommate recently moved into her apartment to save another $100 a month in rent. Manuel Gomez, UC-Irvine’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said the efforts of student leaders such as Cheng and Bana have already made a difference. He pointed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘s recent promise to veto any state budget that does not include more money for higher education as a gesture that might not have happened without student protests. “There’s traction here, real traction,” Gomez said. “This affects children. It affects children’s futures … My question is, ‘Is the vision compelling enough to sustain itself beyond reducing fees?’ Is has to go beyond anger.” With the mass actions from two months ago fading from memory, attention now shifts to a high-stakes California budget revision this month. Higher education’s share hangs in the balance. The next student regent for the UC system, the friend to radicals and administrators alike, has three simple goals moving forward: to get students into college, make them feel safe there and get them out with a degree. “I definitely think this is the birth of something,” Cheng said. “I’m not sure what the something is yet.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.