Short Subjects

CALENDAR BOYS: A group of Italian physicians bared almost all to raise money for tumor research.

IDLING TIMES: More and more college bookstores are offering drive-through services to cater to students on the go.

BAGGED DOWN: Eight students at Clarkson University hauled their trash around with them for five days to better understand how much garbage they produce.

MOCK 'N' ROLL: Christopher Guest was an iconoclastic choice to get an honorary degree at the Berklee College of Music.

Notes From Academe

A college comedy contest in New Jersey offers a peek inside the undergraduate mind. It isn't pretty in there.

The Faculty

Touro Law Center, adjacent to a federal and state courthouse in New York, gives students a hands-on education in courtroom wrangling.

• REROUTING THE PAPER CHASE: Law-school deans and others join forces to try to change a system of legal education they say is outdated.

NO ENTRY: A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government's denial of a visa to Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar, was legal.

Research & Books

A roundup of subjects seen and heard at the Modern Language Association's annual convention.

• PROVING THEIR WORTH: Implicit in the theme of December's MLA meeting is a notion that the humanities' useful work is in need of better articulation and demonstration.
• HOT TYPE: A discussion at the MLA conference takes publishing beyond electronic, all the way to posthuman.

VERBATIM: The chair of Australian studies at Harvard University talks about what the election of a Labor Party government in Australia will mean for the country.

'PROFESSOR'S LITTLE HELPER': Two researchers' contention that scholars are using cognitive-enhancing drugs to compete in the rough-and-tumble world of academe stirs controversy.

DOSES OF HYPOCRISY: Drug samples meant for the poor often go to wealthy patients instead, a study has found.

Money & Management

Growing post-Katrina enrollments at some New Orleans colleges send a hopeful message.

Many college information-technology officials embrace free e-mail services from companies including Google and Microsoft, but some people worry about privacy.

With the president of West Virginia University facing increased discontent on the campus, an independent audit has begun to determine whether campus officials altered the transcript of the governor's daughter.

STYMIED BY CORN DOGS: The University of Nebraska at Lincoln wants to build a research park adjacent to its campus, on land where the state fair has been held since 1899.

POLICING THEMSELVES: A professional organization of campus-safety department administrators has developed an accreditation process for college police forces.

NICE AT NACIQI: A meeting of the federal agency that oversees college accreditors left them free of tougher scrutiny, for now.

BUCKEYE AND BIG BUCKS: E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, which has the nation's largest collegiate athletics budget, speaks out about his concerns over such spending.

TEXAS TECH PUT ON PROBATION: A regional accreditor says the university failed to turn in curriculum data on time.

IN BRIEF: A roundup of higher-education news.

Government & Politics

NEGOTIATIONS TO COME: When Congress returns from winter recess, lawmakers will face some thorny issues as they work on renewing the Higher Education Act.

$555-BILLION PACKAGE: President Bush has signed a budget bill with less for academe than previous versions of the legislation.

'INCREASINGLY IRRELEVANT': A panel appointed by the U.S. Commerce Department has found widespread fault with government restrictions on academic research laboratories in the name of protecting military secrets.

FUELING THE STUDENT-LOAN DEBATE: A Treasury Department report says the federal direct-loan program is not only cheaper than the bank-based guaranteed-student-loan program but also returns money to the federal government.

CARROTS, NOT STICKS: Recommendations by the New York governor's commission on higher education include state-aid guarantees to colleges in exchange for limits on tuition hikes.

PRIMING THE PUMP: The governor of Virginia has proposed a $1.65-billion bond issue for campus construction that will further work-force development.

Information Technology

Many college information-technology officials embrace free e-mail services from companies including Google and Microsoft, but some people worry about privacy.

THERAPEUTIC AVATARS: Academic mental-health clinicians are using online worlds to provide patients with a mild form of autism with low-stress opportunities to learn new ways to behave in social settings.

THE WIRED CAMPUS: A student at Brown University lived in the library for a week during final exams.

TECH THERAPY: How do professors learn what is legal to put online for their courses?

Athletics

American universities in the NCAA's Division I gain competitive advantages with gifted young athletes from overseas.

• TRANS-ATLANTIC RUN: The University of Texas at El Paso's cross-country team has a distinctly Kenyan composition.
• CITIZEN OF THE WORLD: A field-hockey player at Harvard University who has lived in many countries believes that American players would benefit from more international exposure.
• MIXED RESULTS: Ever since the NCAA took over regulating the eligibility of foreign athletes, controversies have ensued.
• GOOD MATCH: The soccer coach at the University of Illinois at Chicago got Jovan Bubonja's name only by chance. But the fit between the Serbian player and the team is an excellent one.

BUCKEYE AND BIG BUCKS: E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, which has the nation's largest collegiate athletics budget, speaks out about his concerns over such spending.

Students

A college comedy contest in New Jersey offers a peek inside the undergraduate mind. It isn't pretty in there.

$357,500 PENALTY: The Education Department imposed on Eastern Michigan University its biggest fine ever for violations of the campus crime-reporting law.

IDLING TIMES: More and more college bookstores are offering drive-through services to cater to students on the go.

BAGGED DOWN: Eight students at Clarkson University hauled their trash around with them for five days to better understand how much garbage they produce.

International

More and more foreign students are relying on local agents to help them navigate the process of applying to American colleges and universities.

American universities in the NCAA's Division I gain competitive advantages with gifted young athletes from overseas.

DISCIPLINARY ACTION THREATENED: An inquiry into alleged plagiarism at Australia's University of New England has exonerated the students involved but exposed staff members to penalties.

UNWELCOME MAT: The U.S. State Department is about to impose new rules for foreign visitors, and the organizations that will be affected are not happy.

EASTERN PROSPECTS: Western Canada's oldest vocational college has been bought by a company that manages educational programs between China and other countries.

Commentary

Many of our best and brightest high-school students found out last month whether they had been accepted by early decision to the colleges of their choice. But most of those decisions, argues a sociologist at New York University, were more or less preordained by social class.

WHOSE CHECK IS IT? Should Congress demand more state support for higher education? No, says a North Dakota state legislator. Yes, says a congressman from Massachusetts.

KEEP THE LOVE: Higher education is well thought of in the public's mind, but colleges must do more to maintain that good will, say a scholar of public policy and an academic philosopher.

The Chronicle Review

In her new book, Drew Gilpin Faust confronts the grisly realities of tallying, tidying, and mourning the Civil War fallen, writes Edward L. Ayers.

• A TIME TO WRITE: Harvard's president describes the process of writing her book.

Twenty years ago, Russell Jacoby chided his peers for their academic insularity. They roared in outrage. Of course, no one heard them.

After a formative encounter with the paranormal, one philosopher embraced the study of it, writes Scott Carlson.

SDS's speech ballooned into action. In a new history, its action balloons into speech, writes Paul Buhle.

In the Gilded Age, a Czech visionary saw America's musical future in "negro melodies," writes Joseph Horowitz.

Writing fiction has helped Henk Rossouw free his mind of the demons he encountered as a foreign correspondent for The Chronicle.

CRITICAL MASS: In taking pills to improve cognitive functioning, are academics doing more than the equivalent of hefting a few extra cups of coffee?

NOTA BENE: Larry Diamond on democracy promotion, Hugh Wilford on the CIA, and Randall Kennedy on racial sellouts.

MY SPACE: Shelley Fisher Fishkin discovered a forgotten, unperformed play by Mark Twain and saw it produced it on Broadway.

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS

Letters to the Editor

• What an Educational Community Can and Cannot Do
• No Crystal Ball for Science Employment
• The Future of Reading in the Electronic Age
• Tenure at DePaul U. and Ben Gurion U.
• Illegal File Sharing Is a Hard Problem to Solve
• Lies, Damned Lies, and Photographs
• White, Black, Multiracial

Chronicle Careers

Even the most experienced search committees and consultants are destined to be misled.

For young scholars, the "revise and resubmit" stage of publishing and article is as critical as the initial writing.

An administrator wonders if he has reached the tipping point, where remaining in academe seems worse than leaving it.