Posts Tagged ‘university’
Thanks to The Denver Post
Major, major changes are coming to the University of Denver’s Penrose Library…they’re getting rid of the books!
Wait…is it really that shocking?
Like most libraries, Penrose has been increasing the digital content offered in the catalog. Today, the library’s customers have access to 1.7 million digital links — 686,442 of which lead to electronic books that can be checked out to computers or readers, such as the iPad, Kindle or Nook.”
To contend with the digital revolution UD plans to transform the library into what they call the “Academic Commons.” The renovation, which is scheduled to be finished in December of 2012, will include expanded seating, support for multimedia software, an increased amount of outlets, among other things.
While some have been upset at the decision, the university has defended its plans.
We are not alone in this trend of increasing central campus space for study, services and student learning and decreasing central campus space for legacy collections.”
Will this become a model for other universities?
This isn’t the first post we’ve done on the downfall of books. Take a look at “Bye Bye Bookstores?“
Thanks to Wikicommons
We all know College is expensive for students…
But spending on campuses may be even more painful for the state governments that fund public universities.
For this reason, global tuitions have been on the rise during this recession.
Students in the United Kingdom have shown the most outrage to these hikes, but American scholars are also feeling the pinch.
Despite the out-cry of students (who are seeing more than their pizza funds at risk) rises in tuition may be the right thing to do.
At least this is what Nobel laureate Gary Becker and author Richard Posner argue:
Charging low tuition to everyone, as public colleges do for residents of the state in which the college or university is located), does not make economic sense; it merely as I said provides windfalls to families willing and able to pay the full tuition. …
This situation presents a case for a virtuous tax increase (raising a fee for a public service is the equivalent of a tax): the increase helps to close the state’s fiscal gap; the burden of the increased tax is borne entirely by the well-to-do; and some of the higher revenue can be used to subsidize students unable to afford the higher tuition.
In other words, the wealthy will go to college whether it is cheap or not, and as most of those in college are better off than the average American why not use tuition as a “tax”.
Posner and Becker note that one section of academia does follow this system as private universities
charge very high tuition (though not high enough to cover all their costs—but they have other sources of funds, such as alumni donations), but grant scholarships or loans to students whose families can’t afford the tuition.
Over at Economix, David Leonhardt agrees but warns that it is important to remember that
there is typically no guarantee that financial aid will keep pace with tuition. If public colleges raise tuition, they will probably have a hard time increasing financial aid to keep pace, given the current troubles with state finances.
So what is to be done? Take our Poll below:
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The world's strongest beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin
This is one in a series of dispatches from our Foreign Correspondent currently on location in Scotland:
On exchange in Scotland, one of the biggest differences I’ve noticed between the UK and America is the drinking culture. (and we’re not talking about tea here…)
In the United Kingdom, the legal age of drinking alcohol is 18, three whole years before young people in the States.
Surprising to most Yanks, school social outings in the UK (and even academic ones) largely revolve around the local pub. Student societies are likely to organize their own pub crawls and professors are known to take students out for a drink and conversation. Because virtually anyone at the university is of legal drinking age, this is no problem. …read more.
