Universities with Division I sports teams are seeing an increase in graduation rates for student-athletes, The Washington Post reported. According to a study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, 79 percent of student-athletes who matriculated in 2003 to Division I schools graduated, a five-point increase since the start of the NCAA's nine-year study. Colgate University led the division with a graduation rate of 100 percent, with Notre Dame University and Loyola University close behind with 99 percent and 97 percent respectively. The NCAA reported that female athletes, with an overall 87 percent graduation rate, graduated at a significantly higher rate than male athletes, whose graduation rate is 72 percent, according to The Washington Post.
Taiwanese academics have developed technology that can predict how an institute of higher education will fare on world rankings based on various factors, Times Higher Education reported. Professor Han-Lin Li of the National Chiao Tun University, a developer of the program, described it as "a rank simulation system for world universities," according to THE. The tool can calculate the expected change to a university's ranking if it, for example, hires one more Nobel Prize-winner or publishes more studies in prestigious publications. Li told THE the simulator will help a university "better allocate its resources" to increase its ranking, although he admitted it could encourage universities to focus solely on raising its ranking at the expense of overall quality.
Harvard University has begun commissioning more portraits that depict women and people from varied racial backgrounds in order to better reflect the diversity of the school's community, The Boston Globe reported. Of the 750 portraits displayed in the University's libraries, dining facilities and residence halls, 690 feature white men. Only two paintings commissioned prior to 2000 portray racial minorities, and of the remaining pieces, most are of white women, according to The Globe. In 2000, a group of minority students voiced their concerns about the lack of diversity to former curator Sandra Grindlay, which led the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations to begin commissioning portraits of more diverse faculty members. Nine portraits of people from racial minority backgrounds have been added over the past few years, The Boston Globe reported.
