Free Republic

The University of Missouri is expanding its Big Brother-like phone-tracking program Tuesday: Now, all new students on campus will be “required” to use an app that surveils their movements, the Kansas City Star reports. The app, called SpotterEDU, was developed by former Mizzou basketball coach Rick Carter and uses the campus’ Wi-Fi networks and short-range phone sensors to ensure students don’t cut class. Previously, the app was only required for freshman athletes and jocks who were struggling academically.

New students at the University of Missouri will be required to participate in a tracking program designed to measure and enforce class attendance, according to a new report from The Kansas City Star. Despite privacy concerns, officials defended the decision as one to the benefit of students, as the school's athletics department has already been using the same app, SpotterEdu, to track certain student-athletes.

A professor at the University of Kansas has been charged wth fraud for surreptitious collaboration with the Chinese government. Feng Tao allegedly ran a "scheme" wherein he allegedly planned to transfer "intellectual property."

Billionaire George Soros said he will commit $1 billion to start a global university to fight authoritarian governments and climate change, calling them twin challenges that threaten the survival of our civilization. The Open Society University Network will offer an international platform for teaching and research, the 89-year-old said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The university will be launched through a partnership of the Soros-backed Central European University and Bard College. “As a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating...

Is college worth it? As the cost of American higher education soars, inequality widens, and wages stagnate, millions of Millennials and Gen Zers have asked themselves that question. The answer, at least from economists, has remained a resounding yes. One study found that college graduates earn nearly twice as much as their peers without a college degree. But what if those earnings are no longer translating into financial security and long-term prosperity? A new study by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that might be the case. College still boosts graduates’ earnings, but it does little...

To achieve the American Dream, it helps to be filthy rich. That's the upshot of a new survey that found nearly three-quarters of the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. think they've reached that classic, if somewhat hazy, benchmark of economic success and independence. By contrast, only 37% of those in the middle class believe they're living the dream. The top 1% - who earn at least $500,000 annually - are living "dramatically different life experiences" than middle- and low-income Americans, according to a poll from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation...

Discard brick and mortar universities! 1) Free or nearly free education exists **NOW**! The missing ingredient is private systems of certified testing. Should it cost a quarter of a million to become a doctor or engineer? The more reasonable cost is a tenth of that. Most of the material needed to be mastered in the STEM fields is**ROTE** and changes little from year to year. It can be learned at home through the Internet and used textbooks. Yes, some fields require laboratory and clinical rotations. These need a brick and mortar setting....BUT... these experiences can be found or created outside...

he “sustainability director” at a Virginia university has some novel advice for students heading home for Christmas: consider not actually purchasing a gift for someone in order to lessen your greenhouse gas emissions. “We’re trying to keep in mind that our carbon footprint is something that can expand during the holidays,” Calandra Waters Lake, Director of Sustainability at the College of William & Mary, told the school’s news service. Waters Lake offered students several tips for how to “be wise…through our purchases, through food that we eat, through the activities that we’re doing” over the winter break. Among those? Consider...

Officials at Philadelphia’s Temple University are reviewing a video which features a white student and references to the campus neighborhood as a “ghetto.” According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the video shows the student “in front of images of rowhouses, some with boarded-up windows” along with the caption “going to a city school and walking two blocks off campus for a party.”

This is the shocking moment a Texas State University student was left with brain damage after allegedly being attacked by Pi Kappa Phi fraternity members who 'thought he belonged to a different social club'. Senior Nikolas Panagiotopoulos, 22, and a friend allege they were set upon by at least half a dozen members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity as they walked past one of the buildings belonging to their Eta Rho chapter on the night of October 27 this year. A group of frat members fractured his skull and caused him brain damage after pummeling him outside the Pi...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has arrested 90 additional foreign-born students in recent months in a sting operation at a fake Michigan university designed to draw in students who are trying to stay in the U.S. illegally, according to a new report. The University of Farmington advertised a "dynamic business administration and STEM curriculum” program, but the students, mostly from India, "knew that they would not attend any actual classes, earn credits or make academic progress towards an actual degree,” according to a January indictment. A total of about 250 students have been arrested since the school opened in...

You remember The Evergreen State College, right? It became fodder for national headlines in 2017 as a result of the massive fallout over its Day of Absence observance in which white people were asked to stay off campus for a day. Soon after, its enrollment began to take a nosedive. Two years later, it’s still tanking. The latest figures posted on its website show that this school year, 2019-20, the college has enrolled 2,854 students — that’s down from 4,089 in 2016. (The graph was calculated by the college on October 28. The top line is the student headcount and...

Syracuse University's chancellor says reports that a white supremacist manifesto was sent to some students' cellphones at a campus library "was probably a hoax." Kent Syverud told the University Senate Wednesday authorities haven't found anyone who directly received the screed, which had seemed to further a series of racist episodes on the central New York campus.

A free-speech advocacy organization has sent Ohio University a letter urging the public institution to suspend rules imposed on fraternities and sororities following hazing allegations. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that more than a dozen fraternities and sororities have been ordered not to "meet in any capacity, officially or unofficially," as well as to "reduce conversations to personal topics as opposed to sorority/fraternity operations and updates."FIRE says that affected groups were sent an “FAQ” about the ban, which conceded that there is "no magic number" when it comes to knowing how many students are allowed to convene...

Both Princeton University and Brown University have announced that many graduate and doctoral programs will no longer require applicants to submit the traditionally required GRE standardized test scores.Reasoning for the change focuses around increasing the "diversity" of the student body and the “biased” nature of standardized testing. Two Ivy League universities have announced that many graduate programs will no longer require the traditional standardized Graduate Records Examination testing requirements for applications, citing reasons pertaining to "diversity" and concerns that such tests are "biased" against minority and low-income students.Both Princeton University and Brown University recently announced that they are moving...

There is no more insufferable authoritarian lout in the world than a woke college student. I feel the same way about them that I felt about some of the politically active hippies when I was in college: you want to grab them by the shoulders and try to shake some sense into them.It wouldn't do any good. They're woke and you're not and that makes them oblivious to reason and the truth. At the University of Florida, the sins of the father can apparently be visited upon the son. The student body president is being threatened with impeachment for...

Diversity and inclusion isn’t going so well at Syracuse University. In response to anti-black and anti-Asian graffiti found in a bathroom and bulletin board in a campus dorm last week, students are holding a sit-in and making several demands of the administration, according to The Daily Orange. One of those demands: the ability to deny roommates based on their race.

San Diego State University has suspended 14 fraternities amid allegations that “possible misconduct” at one of them may have been linked to the death of a 19-year-old student over the weekend, the authorities said. The student, Dylan Hernandez, was found without a pulse by his dormitory roommate and was hospitalized Thursday after reportedly attending a fraternity event the night before, according to the San Diego County medical examiner’s office. On Friday, the San Diego State University Police Department opened an investigation and the university president, Adela de la Torre, suspended the Interfraternity Council and its 14 affiliated fraternity chapters.

Students at Williams College have launched a boycott of the entire English Department, claiming the curriculum is “whitewashed” and its scholars “racist.” Joined by alumni and others, the “Boycott English” effort calls “on the students of Williams College to boycott the entire English Department,” according to the activists’ lengthy online missive.

At a time when the humanities are struggling to draw in students and departmental budgets are at risk, you’d think a college would jump at the chance to get outside money for a new program. But when the potential donor is the Charles Koch Foundation*, which has funded programs at colleges across the country – including a massive gift to historically black schools – all bets are off.