A record 39 percent of undergraduate students enrolling in the University of California system this fall come from low-income families, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. This year's figure constitutes the largest percentage of low-income students in the University's history and represents an increase of 8 percentage points from the 2008-2009 school year. On average, 18 percent of students on the flagship campuses of the United States' 39 best-endowed universities came from low-income households, according to a study from The Chronicle. The percentage from this year's report was based on the 70,000 Pell Grant recipients those who receive federal need-based grants for their education enrolled in University of California schools.
Criminal Internet gangs are recruiting computer-savvy college students to write viruses, commit identity theft and launder money, according to the The New Zealand Herald. Virus writing and computer hacking are part of a billion-dollar industry more profitable than the drug trade, attracting young adults plagued by high unemployment rates and low wages, particularly from eastern Europe, The Herald reported. Computer hackers often surf social networking sites to identify victims for "phishing" attacks, in which spam-like e-mails con recipients into revealing their credit card numbers. Information concerning these activities was published by the Internet security firm McAfee, in a report based on FBI and European intelligence.
The ongoing debate concerning the legitimacy and fairness of for-profit colleges was further politicized during a hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in Washington on Thursday, according to The New York Times. Committee chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, released a report at the meeting, which found that about 95 percent of students enrolled at for-profit colleges take out loans, compared to just 16 percent of community college students. More than half of for-profit college students in the 2008-2009 school year had dropped out by August 2010, according to the report. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., defended for-profit schools at the hearing, expressing disapproval of the committee's current agenda before walking out of the hearing, according to The Times. The debate stems from the Department of Education's proposal of a "gainful employment" rule, which would effectively end federal student aid to programs whose graduates are in debt and unable to get jobs that would repay those debts.
