No Dartmouth students were among the 32 American men and women who were announced as Rhodes Scholars on Saturday. Five Ivy League institutions Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, Princeton University and Brown University had Rhodes Scholars this year, according to the Rhodes Trust web site. Recipients of the award receive full scholarships for two to four years of study at the University of Oxford in England. This year, 805 students applied to be Rhodes Scholars, with only 216 applicants reaching the final stage of the competition, according to a Rhodes Trust press release. Dartmouth has had 72 Rhodes winners since the first American Rhodes were granted in 1904, according to a College press release.
Academic institutions in the United States awarded 48,802 doctoral degrees in 2008 the highest number ever reported by the Survey of Earned Doctorates according to a National Science Foundation brief published on Thursday. This figure represents a 1.4-percent increase from the number of doctoral degrees awarded in 2007, the smallest annual increase in six years. The proportion of doctorates awarded to women in the fields of science and engineering rose from 37.7 percent in 2003 to 39.5 percent in 2008, according to the NSF brief. The study defines science and engineering as including economics and other social sciences. The number of minority recipients of doctoral degrees in science and engineering also rose. Women in general also received a larger number of doctorates in 2008, as 699 more women were awarded doctoral degrees in 2008 than in 2007, according to the brief.
Approximately 40 protesters staged a sit-in at the University of California, Berkeley on Friday to protest tuition increases, The Daily Californian reported. Students barricaded themselves inside an academic building following the Board of Regents' Thursday announcement of a 32-percent tuition increase, according to The Daily Californian. The protesters, including both undergraduate and graduate students, demanded public negotiations on the budget. They were confronted by 25 special response officers from the U.C. Police Department in riot gear, The Daily Californian reported. Students at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus have staged similar protests over the tuition increase, according The Chronicle of Higher Education.
