A new report released by the American Council of Education on Thursday presented contradictory data regarding minority involvement in American higher education, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Despite recent increases in minority enrollment at American colleges and universities, stagnation in the percentage of students earning associate degrees is cause for alarm, according to the report. The report shows a significant racial and ethnic gap in degree earning. For the first time in the report's 23-year history, the percentage of black adults, ages 25-29, earning an associate degree or higher remained stagnant, and the percentage of Hispanic adults earning an AD declined. Asian-Americans and Caucasians continued to earn degrees at a higher rate than the previous generation. The report also states that total minority enrollment increased 50 percent between 1995 and 2005, with the increase in Hispanic enrollment leading all racial and ethnic groups. ACE president Molly Corbett Broad warned that "the alarm bells should be going off" over these findings, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Dartmouth is now part of a multi-institutional alliance that will research the effectiveness of using video games in the classroom to teach math, science and engineering, The New York Times reported. The Games for Learning Institute, a $3 million research effort at New York University funded by the Microsoft Corporation and several American universities, will focus on the potential of video games as tools for middle-school students. "Technology has the potential to help reinvent the education process, and excite and inspire young learners to embrace science, math and technology," Craig Mundie, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer, said in a press release. Currently, a game called Dimension M is used in more than 300 schools across the country. G4LI will test prototypes, such as Dimension M, and share the research with game developers and others, The New York Times reported.
Dartmouth dropped from number 48 to 54 on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2008. Harvard University topped the list for the second year in a row, and Yale University retained its second-place ranking. Thirty-seven American universities made the top 100, and the Times Higher Education noted that several British institutions slipped to lower positions this year. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the rankings are based on the opinions of academics and corporate recruiters, as well as statistical measurements of faculty-to-student ratios and publication rates of faculty members. Dartmouth had the lowest rank of the eight Ivy League schools, landing 27 spaces behind Brown University, the second-lowest ranked Ivy.
