A recent study examining the effects of college's athletic programs performances on alumni donations found significant gender differences in the giving patterns of former athletes. The study, authored by economics researchers at Princeton University and Stanford University for the National Bureau of Economic Research, was conducted at a selective research university identified as "Anon U." The researchers found that male alumni who played on sports teams as undergraduates are more likely to donate more to their alma mater -- both to athletics and the institution in general -- when their teams win conference championships. The finding did not hold true for female athletes. Similarly, the study reported that male -- but not female -- alumni athletes donate more if the teams they played on won conference championships while they were in college. Though college leaders might suspect that winning teams lead to higher alumni donations in general, the research findings did not support such a claim. The performance of the football and men's basketball teams at the studied university had a statistically insignificant impact on giving by non-athlete alumni. For both men and women, the study found that alumni often interpret strong athletic performance to mean that the institution is spending too much on athletics, and thus give less money -- producing the opposite effect from what might be expected.
In the wake of an economic downturn that has already cost the financial sector over 100,000 jobs, Bear Sterns cut 40 percent of accepted interns, according to USA Today. Bear Sterns was recently absorbed by JPMorgan after the bank went bankrupt as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis. Bear Sterns cut internships from areas that overlap with its new owner. JP Morgan has taken steps to land the interns jobs at non-profit organizations in strategy, finance, marketing and other business-related fields, and will pay them an equivalent salary to what they would have received working on Wall Street. The cut interns, however, not have the opportunity to receive a job offer after the internship has ended.
All 40 students in the first class of the University of Central Florida College of Medicine will receive a four-year scholarship that will cover their tuition, fees, and living expenses, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. This is the first medical school in the nation to offer full scholarships to every student, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The new medical school was approved by the Board of Governors of Florida's public universities in 2006 in response to a predicted shortage of physicians as the baby boomer generation ages. This shortage is especially worrisome because many debt-saddled students choose to become higher-paid specialists instead of general practitioners, Deborah C. German, the school's dean, told USA Today. German said the scholarship would attract strong students without forcing them to pursue a specific area of medicine in order to pay off their debts.
