FLOSS In School - Open Source Software in the Education System

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered the rehiring of and back pay for three janitors who worked at Nova Southeastern University, The Miami Herald reported. The janitors were involved in a union organizing drive just before the university decided to hire an outside contractor to handle custodial work. Most of the university's janitors were hired, but not these three -- an act the NLRB found was retaliatory. The university declined to comment, saying that the matter was one for the contractor, not Nova Southeastern.

Joe Peek, a finance professor who has been elected as faculty trustee at the University of Kentucky, is trying to make points with humor, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported. He has mocked the university's goal of being among the top 20 universities nationally as unrealistic, while pushing for improvements he says are feasible. He has noted that coaches are fired when they don't meet their goals and asked why the university doesn't act the same way with regard to those in charge of academics. "As a citizen of Kentucky, why are you not pissed off that they don't feel the same way about the academic vision?" And he's even joked about the divide between board members and faculty members. After being elected, he sent out an e-mail saying: "Now that you have foolishly elected me as your faculty trustee, I have lost all respect for you, thereby fully qualifying me to be a UK trustee." His first board meeting is this month.

UCLA business school wants to forgo any more money from California -- and gain the right to raise out-of-state tuition to private levels.

Two of California's higher education system leaders -- the president of the University of California and the chancellor of the California Community Colleges -- have quit the board of the California Chamber of Commerce following its endorsement of Meg Whitman, a Republican, for governor, the Los Angeles Times reported. The two leaders didn't cite Whitman's policies, but the move by the chamber into partisan activities. Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University System, also sits on the chamber's board. A spokesman said that Reed remains on the board, but skipped Friday's board meeting because it involved the endorsement of Whitman.

National Collegiate Athletic Association panels punished Pennsylvania's Lincoln University and the University of Missouri at St. Louis late last week for major violations in their sports programs. The NCAA's Division III Committee on Infractions, in a case processed through the association's summary disposition process, concluded that Lincoln had let ineligible athletes compete in a wide range of sports, including men’s track and field, men’s cross country, men’s soccer, women’s volleyball and men’s basketball, and that the former men's and women's track coach -- who also was athletics director -- had engaged in unethical conduct. All of Lincoln's teams are banned from postseason play in the 2010-11 academic year, and the men's basketball and track and field programs are barred from playing on television. The NCAA's Division II Committee on Infractions, meanwhile, punished Missouri-St. Louis because of gambling-related violations in its men's golf program. The panel found that the university's former golf coach had not only wagered himself, through participation in fantasy football and baseball leagues, but had a former volunteer assistant coach and athletes from the university help him run a fantasy football business that he owned. The university is on two years' probation, and the former golf coach faces restrictions if he seeks to work at an NCAA member college through 2013.

The Indian Institutes of Technology, India's elite technology universities, are seeking changes in the law that would allow them to hire foreign faculty members on a permanent basis, The Hindustan Times reported. Currently, foreign hires are permitted only on a contract basis, for a maximum of five years. The institutes face severe faculty shortages, varying from 15 to 40 percent of slots at various campuses.

Two bills headed for gubernatorial OK or veto in California would allow the California State University System to start offering doctorates in nursing practice and physical therapy, and the bills have renewed debates over the state's master plan for higher education and the role of doctorates in health fields, The Sacramento Bee reported. Historically, doctorates have been offered by the University of California, not Cal State, but lawmakers approved a bill in 2005 to allow Cal State to offer doctorates in education. Advocates for the new doctorates say that they would fill key needs in the health-care system, but critics charge that the bills reflect the push for credential inflation.

The state financial aid program in Texas is becoming overwhelmed with applicants who meet both the academic and income eligibility requirements, The Dallas Morning News reported. Despite state moves in recent years to tighten eligibility, about 24,000 eligible students could be left out of the program by next year. The shortfall comes at a time when state leaders have made it a goal to increase the share of Texans who enroll in and complete college programs.

College students who drink before and during their final exams show a "statistically and economically meaningful reduction in academic performance" -- "of approximately the same magnitude as being assigned to a professor whose quality is one standard deviation below average," say the authors of a new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, by economists at the University of California at Davis, the University of Pittsburgh, and the U.S. Air Force Academy, take advantage of the Air Force Academy's vigorous enforcement of the drinking age to compare the performance on exams of students who turn 21 before the exam period begins with the performance of those under 21, to "distinguish the effects of drinking from confounding factors." The lowering of performance they discover is "largely driven by the highest-performing students," the authors write.

Professor punished by Saint Vincent College for allegedly downloading pornography sues, amid evidence that officials ignored another employee's confession.

The University of Massachusetts has long sought to be seen as a leading flagship university, but an article in The Boston Globe examines the way that vision hasn't been achieved. While the admission rate has fallen to 67 percent from 80 percent five years ago, only 22 percent of those admitted enroll, down from 31 percent a decade ago. The article noted that the best high school students in Massachusetts go not only to private colleges, but to other publics in the region. In the last decade, the Massachusetts undergraduate population at the University of Connecticut has increased 70 percent, to 1,100, while the Connecticut population at UMass has dropped by 5.5 percent, to 600.

Salve Regina University on Friday announced that it will no longer require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. The college said that it has long viewed high school grades as the best tool to determine whether applicants can succeed. The testing requirement will continue, however, for nursing and education majors, since those programs lead to standardized certification exams.

The University of Georgia is not having a great year in public relations. In August, it was named the top "party school" by the Princeton Review. Then, as the university was trying to suggest that there is more than social life at the university, an orientation video went viral to much mocking, suggesting a less than intellectual environment in Athens. Athletics have also been taking hits, with the resignation this summer of Damon Evans as athletics director after his arrest for driving under the influence. Now, with the start of football season, comes word that Georgia is the 2010 winner of the Fulmer Cup, awarded annually by the blog Every Day Should be Saturday to the football team with the most arrests for the year prior to the start of the season. Georgia came in first with 21 points, followed by the University of Missouri with 18. (Scoring is on a formula based on the type of criminal activity alleged.) While Georgia is champion, the blog did award Oregon State University a special prize for "flair" in its arrests, including a recent case in which a football player (subsequently dismissed from the team) was found naked in the home office of a woman who called police, and on whom police used a taser when he allegedly lunged at them.

Authorities in Duluth invoked local ordinances to get students to remove racy signs that were placed in an off-campus neighborhood to "welcome" new students to the University of Minnesota at Duluth, The Duluth News Tribune reported. The newspaper quoted police as admitting that they don't always enforce the rules about such yard signs, but that they do so when there are complaints. Some citizens and students are questioning the inconsistent enforcement, while others say that the signs were offensive. While the News Tribune didn't go into details on what the signs said, the local Fox News show did, offering as examples signs that said “I like the taste of Freshmeat,” “Dads, she’s in our hands now,” and “Free breast exams here.”