The House of Representatives approved a new version of the Higher Education Act on February 7th by a vote of 354-58. The new version would make institutions more accountable for tuition increases and would increase federal financial assistance to students. Institutions with the highest tuition increases would be required to account for the difference to the U.S. Secretary of Education, and would also have to notify prospective students of expected future tuition increases. The bill would require states to continue funding higher education and would mandate that institutions investigate ways to make audio-visual files available to students to decrease illegal file sharing.
Developers of add-on applications for the social networking site Facebook.com have access to user profiles and the profiles of all of their friends on the site, according to a study conducted by Adrienne Felt, a student at the University of Virginia. According to the study, only about 9.3 percent of the top Facebook.com applications require personal information from their users, but Facebook.com grants indiscriminate access to every application. Although Facebook.com requires all application developers to sign an agreement promising to protect user privacy, they do not have a system for enforcing these agreements. Any Facebook.com user can develop an application.
A Nevada high school student admitted last Wednesday to faking his recruitment to the University of California, Berkeley football team. Kevin Hart, a senior at Fernley High School, announced in a news conference on Feb. 1 that he had chosen Berkeley from several top schools that were recruiting him. The university later said that it had never contacted Hart. Although Hart originally told police that he had been in contact with a promoter who had led him to believe that he was being recruited, on Feb. 6 he admitted to fabricating the story. In a statement Hart issued through his school district, he said that he made up his recruitment because he had wanted to play Division I football so badly, the Associated Press reported.
