Just in case you don’t know what anonymity is, JuicyCampus tells us all about it on its blog.
If you don’t want to watch the video, then just know the basics of the message: 1) It’s really, really hard for someone to find out who you are on JuicyCampus … 2) unless the Feds are after you… or maybe just the local cops… 3) or an organized crime organization.
Oh, and if you do watch the video, enjoy Mike and this internet expert, Candy, try to distract you from the fact that there’s no such thing as real anonymity — if someone wants to find you, they will using whatever dirty tricks there are out there.
Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program is always making some cool gadgets that keep you occupied for a few hours. For example, there was the wooden mirror, the solar bikini and, now, a girlfriend.
Every year, the ITP department creates something to draw headlines, but this year’s big draw is truly stimulating — or not, since this gal pal is 2-D.
(via Gizmodo via NY Mag | ITP solar bikini | ITP wooden mirror)
(Ken Langone, John Sexton and Billie Tisch)
Ken Langone recently donated $100 million to the NYU Med Center ($200 million total) so NYU named the Med Center after him and his wife — the Langone Medical Center.
But guess what else this man did?
According to Politics1, he helped fund an 18-month investigation into former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s Florida escort service exploits. Why? Because, apparently, he was a target of Spitzer’s investigations when he was attorney general.
Here’s an excerpt:
Reliable sources informed Politics1 that DC super-lobbyist Wayne Berman — a longtime confidant of insurance executive Maurice Hank Greenberg — authorized a private Investigation that discovered the links between Spitzer and a Florida escort service ring. Operating under the alias code-name “Wallace C. Bernheim,” Berman directed an 18-month effort that cost an estimated $2.2 million. The investigation was allegedly paid for by a highly-secretive shadow committee Berman directed, informally nicknamed “The Group.” Sources tell Politics1 that The Group included Greenberg, Home Depot founder Ken Langone and former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Ken Grasso — all high-profile targets of Spitzer when he was Attorney General.
(The Daily Pulp | Picture from NYU)
Right now, it costs 1.7 cents to make a penny and 10 cents to make a nickel.
I’m no expert, but that’s… dumb.
Luckily, the House voted to change this a few days ago. Now our pennies will be made of steel — yay.
For those of you kids flying for the summer, there’s been a change in baggage policy recently.
Now, you may only be allowed one free check-in bag. So before you go with your life packed up in two bags, check your airline’s baggage policy. (Some airlines do a great job of hiding this from you.)
Just to help you out, the following airlines will charge a $25 fee for a second bag:
-Continental
-Delta
-Northwest
-United
-US Airways
-AirTran ($10)
(IHT | Dallas Morning News | Picture from Road and Travel Magazine)
The Ivies — Harvard, Princeton, Penn — are dipping deeper into their wait list, the NYT reports. So what does that mean for NYU?
I see two possibilities:
1) Some Ivy League-caliber students, who would’ve otherwise gone to an Ivy, are at NYU, which is why this wait list phenomenon is happening. So NYU is getting better students on the first try.
2) Students accepted to NYU are on the Ivies’ wait lists, so once they get into Harvard, they’re gone from NYU.
Keep in mind that these other schools are tiny compared to this one. And these Ivies aren’t dipping deeper than a 200 students into the wait list, which means only a few potential NYU kids are going to get plucked up in this second round of admissions. There will definitely be an affect on NYU, but it’s tough to figure out what — I guess we’ll know once we get the SAT scores for this class, if we ever do.
(NYT)
Two NYU scientists — Helmut Hofer of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Anthony Movshon, director of the university’s Center for Neural Science — have been named to the National Academy of Sciences.
From a past WSN story yours truly wrote:
NAS is part of the larger National Academies group, are nonprofit research organizations devoted to providing “unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor,’ according to the National Academies website. To be elected into a National Academy, one must be nominated by a current member of the respective academy. The process is secret until the final announcement of winners.
Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Joanna Connors wrote an incredible five-part series about her experience as a rape victim, from the day of her attack to now. These are personal, raw stories and they are accompanied by tips on how to stay safe.
NYU scientist Jeff Han, a great contributor to the invention of the multi-touch screen, was named one of Time Magazine top-100 most influential people in the world. WSN wrote a story about him about a year ago as his technology was getting introduced to the general public in the form of the iPhone. From Time:
Now his work is coveted by clients ranging from the CIA to CNN, all of which realize that the era of the single-touch screen (think ATMs) is over and the multi-touch screen (imagine a piano keyboard on a screen) is upon us. (Read More)
Also in the top 100 are Mark Zuckerman, founder of Facebook, and Miley Cyrus. I mention Zuckerman because it’s amazing how one can gain influence from in front of his or her computer. I mention Cyrus because I think Time needs to keep her off this list until she does something, uh, influential.
(Time 100 | Photo by James Pyun/WSN)
This post from Kotaku talks to residents in New York City about Grand Theft Auto IV, a video game where the gameplay allows users to go around “Liberty City” (an NYC knock-off) and do whatever they feel — punch, shoot, steal, run, buy a hooker, etc.
But an interesting part of this story shows that some residents are using this game to express anger they can’t do in real life, especially after the Sean Bell not guilty verdict.
(Kotaku)
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. (READ MORE)
In the midst of what John Sexton has been saying — that we are, for the better, a research institution — it looks like NYU might depending on its undergrads to fund the research part of its brand.
I see it this way: If an NYU diploma is worth more because of these research institutions, we really need to rethink higher education. Sadly, reputation matters in the job market — maybe more than it should — so, often time, universities can get away with pushing money toward research instead of education.
Educational institutions should focus on education, not branding their education. Yes, it’s part of the game, but this culture is not helping anyone — especially the students.
Now this is somewhat horrifying (from the Daily Texan):
Later in the meeting, Evans threw darts at a pledge’s hand after telling the pledge to put his hand against a dart board. Several darts struck the pledge. Sherrill also picked up a hot clothes iron and burned the faces of two pledges in the room. The two were instructed to not attend classes until the minor burns healed, the affidavit said.
But on the Daily Texan’s feedback board, some people are arguing that these pledges were never forced to join the frat. And it said that they could leave at any time.
Valid arguments, I suppose. But does it excuse throwing darts at someone else’s hand?
Here are the latest numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Every paper in the top 25 lost circulation except the top two: USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
But there’s an interesting tidbit buried in this Editor and Publisher article: “Daily and Sunday circulation at the Chicago Tribune both dropped 4.4% to 541,663 and 898,703, respectively. In a statement released this morning, the paper noted that it increased its readership with its other products like the free Redeye and its Web site.”
The big question is: Are people reading the newspapers less or are people reading it in places other than print? And when will newspapers start cashing in on this? The perception is that newspapers are dying, but I want to see how the online readerships stacks up to previous years.
(via Romenesko)
John Sexton sent out an e-mail memo today about NYU’s financial state.
These 1,600 word e-mail have a ton of “blah blah blah” in them. It’s just the nature of all these e-mails. So I’ve gone through and highlighted some portions of the e-mail I feel are important to students. And I’ve added some commentary—some very thoughtful, others just rants after finding out about this inevitable round of tuition hikes.
The 2007-08 academic year will be seen as an especially remarkable year.
The acquisition of Polytech, the engineering school, and the finalization of the Abu Dhabi campus is what we’re talking about here.
The NYU budget is sound.
Oh, is it? Let’s read on.
Although NYU is in a sound financial position, it will be a great challenge to produce the resources we need to sustain the drive for academic excellence that has brought us to this point, to enhance our financial aid program, and to meet our space needs.
OK, so the word “sound” might be ambiguous. It’s like saying America’s national security is sound because the mainland isn’t being attacked, but how can we feel comfortable knowing George Bush has his finger on the big red button? Fine, it’s not that bad. But still, our “drive for academic excellence” has made my budget not-so-sound.
Our resource challenges, I am certain, are well understood by everyone in the NYU community.
This is the largest misperception in the entire memo. It is not well understood by any means. I was the editor of WSN, and I don’t understand all their resource challenges “well.” This is largely because of the administration’s unwillingness to release its budget and tell us where our money is going. (I don’t want to know about every pen and stapler. But I do want to know that we are paying a few million dollars for this and that.)
This hard truth – that many of the colleges and universities against which we compete to attract faculty and students have endowment resources per student many times larger (5, 10, even 30 times larger than our own) with the attendant financial flexibility — is a constant in our budgetary deliberations, and it leads to more constrained choices for NYU.
OK, now I’m starting to get it. You want to compete with the Ivies, but you don’t have to money to do it. Therefore, we are going to finance this as you climb to the top.
Is this fair? You won’t even let me see the budget or have any say in what direction the school takes?
Are we paying for the future students to have a better education than we did? No wonder people don’t like to give back to the school after they graduate.
In the 2008 – 09 academic year, NYU will devote more than $150 million to undergraduate financial aid.
So about $6,000 per student.
NYU’s priority has been to direct the greatest effort at those with the greatest need, and that will continue to be our focus. We can and should be proud of the fact that we have a higher percentage of the nation’s neediest students than
many of our wealthier peers.
But not quite $6,000 — NYU plans to phase out merit-base scholarships and give money solely based on need.
I applaud the school’s efforts to help not-so-privileged students come to this school, but the middle class shouldn’t have to take out a few mortgages to sent their kids to NYU.
For fully-funded graduate students, there will be an increase of $1,000 in the minimum stipend for doctoral students (bringing the minimum stipend to $22,000
in academic year 2008-09) and $500 for masters students (bringing the minimum
stipend for them to $16,500).
So grad a nice little boost here. But I’m sure GSOC has something to gripe about it.
Each additional dollar of tuition cost is a tax on the resources of our students and their families.
If it’s a “tax,” then does that mean we are entitled to know where the money is going? I’d like to know how much we’re spending on these big projects, and exactly how much of money is going where.
Nevertheless, I’m glad he acknowledges the impact this has on our families.
Any initiative requiring financial resources to be achieved in the end will have an impact on tuition, because nearly two-thirds of our resources come from that source.
In other words, anything NYU wants to do will be done with our tuition. Let’s hope they slow down a bit…
For Academic Year 2008-2009, total undergraduate charges (tuition, fees, room and board) will increase by 5.7 percent; tuition alone will increase by 5.9
percent.
Finally, the big piece of info everyone was looking for. (See previous post)
Since becoming president of this great university, I have thought constantly about a basic question: how far into the leading ranks of higher education can a school go without the power of an enormous per-student endowment? Using entrepreneurship, established momentum, determination, boldness, our Greenwich Village location, and the ability to get the most out of every dollar we spend, how far might NYU go? For me, the answer is straightforward: as far as it
wishes.
No, Mr. President. How far might NYU go? For me, the answer is painful: as far as this school is willing to go to squeeze out more money from us.
Listen, I know we complain about money, but it’s not about the money. It’s about knowing that I’m not getting what I’m paying for. I’m paying for my education. I am not paying for the education of NYU’s class of 2031. However, that’s exactly how I feel.
Our motto, Perstare et Praestare – to persist and to excel – is not only a description of this community of scholars, but an exhortation.
There is no way to say “fork over 3Gs more” while coming off like the nice guy. So keep that in mind when you’re furious over this e-mail. A tuition hike, like Sexton said, is necessary for NYU.
But I think Mr. President owes us more of an explanation about the rising cost of education at NYU. It is rising faster than inflation, and financial aid isn’t about to help the middle class any more. (Right now, financial aid is being directed toward need-based scholarships—I’m OK with that to an extent, but the middle class should also be helped.)
NYU obviously has huge, whimsical plans. But I wish the school knew exactly the huge impact it has on its students when it asks them to finance the long-term plans to become a world-wide new Ivy school.
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