The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education board of directors voted to increase work standards for medical students serving their residencies, Modern Healthcare reported. The reforms aim to curb the medical community's concerns about the well-being of patients under the care of sleep-deprived residents. Starting July 1, 2011, residents will not be able to work more than an average of 80 hours per week, and first-year residents will not be able to work more than 16 hours per day, according to Modern Healthcare. Under the new standards, "moonlighting," or working a clinical job on the side, will be prohibited for first-year students. The standards are more lax for second-year students, Modern Healthcare reported.
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, which certifies institutions of higher education, recently revised its recognition standards and procedures, according to the organization's website. The new policy emphasizes transparency, instructing institutions to publicly disclose their attempts to seek accreditation from CHEA regardless of the results. CHEA also expects educational institutions to achieve financial independence. The policy revisions begin a policy of "scrutiny of international activity" and call for accreditors to be wary of "degree mills and accreditation mills," according to the organization's website. The CHEA Committee on Recognition will begin using the new standards in June 2011.
Doctorate-granting educational institutions have significantly more cyber-infrastructure resources including computing and network capacity than institutions that do not grant doctoral degrees, according to data from the biennial Survey of Science and Engineering Research Facilities reported by the National Science Foundation. The doctorate-granting institutions tend to outperform other schools in the "number, type and characteristics of the computing systems," and network speed or bandwidth. Researchers found that the gap between public and private schools was not as significant, according to the NSF website. The report also notes that universities with larger resources typically share them with their surrounding communities, meaning Internet capabilities have effects beyond the students and faculty at universities.
