In an effort to reach students even when they are procrastinating on Facebook, the academic management company Blackboard has created a Facebook application to put many of Blackboard's tools on the social networking site, Inside Higher Ed reported on Wednesday. The Facebook application, called Blackboard Sync, allows students to log in and access course materials, announcements and grades while connected to Facebook. Blackboard hopes to take advantage of the "tremendous amount of time" that college students spend on the site, Karen Gage, Blackboard's vice president of product strategy, told Inside Higher Ed.
Congressional aides have generated a list of points to include in a draft bill that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Wednesday. The act allocates funding for universities, loans and scholarships. The bill should be finished by Memorial Day, but it is unclear whether that goal will be reached. The draft version resolved disagreement between the Senate and the House of Representatives on issues such as college-cost watch lists, accreditation and campus piracy. Congress has yet to reach common ground on state higher-education spending, textbooks and a 30-minute emergency-notification rule. Negotiators also edited an original provision to require colleges to report gifts from foreign sources, according to the Chronicle.
Colleges and universities award honorary degrees to dignitaries, celebrities and scholars every year. This tradition has proved problematic, however, when schools face the issue of whether or not to revoke those honors, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. Recently, the University of Massachusetts has been pressured to revoke the honorary doctorate awarded to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1986. The University of Edinburgh decided last year to repeal the honorary degree it awarded Mugabe, but Michigan State University, which gave a degree to Mugabe in 1990, has declined to strip Mugabe of the doctorate. Mugabe, who lost the 2008 general election, has been accused of economic mismanagement, corruption and brutality.
