Three students at the University of Texas at Austin were rescued last week after getting lost in a 12,000-foot-long cave several miles from campus, The Daily Texan reported.
Flunking at Spelunking
The students had told a friend to notify the authorities if they hadn’t returned by the end of the day. They were found by rescue workers about 32 hours after they entered the cave and about 12 hours after a friend reported the students missing.
The students, who are experienced cavers, said they didn’t return on time because they became disoriented in a side passage about three hours from the cave’s entrance.
Admitting Mistakes
Due to a computer error, 233 applicants to 15 graduate programs at the University of Missouri-Columbia were sent e-mails in late September notifying them that they had been admitted, only to receive the next day another e-mail explaining that the acceptance letters had been sent by mistake and had been withdrawn.
University officials said the students affected by the glitch will not be given special treatment in the admissions process, prompting some applicants to cry foul.
“Once a university makes a decision, they should not cancel it easily, like if you buy a stock or a house or a car,” said Hirotsugu Mizuno, an applicant to the university’s graduate journalism program, to the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Banking on Reputation
A panel in Germany announced Friday that six more German colleges will be considered “elite universities” when it comes to funding.
The country’s nine “elite” institutions will each receive an additional $60 million per year for the next five years, Der Spiegel reported.
The German higher education funding system is similar to an approach advocated by the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University. Those schools have asked Michigan legislators to consider them separately from the state’s other public universities during the appropriations process because of the money large research universities bring to the state.
Some university administrators in both Germany and Michigan have said this type of system marginalizes other colleges.
Required Viewing
According to a survey by Michael Wesch, an assistant cultural anthropology professor at Kansas State University, students in his classes do just under half of assigned readers and consider a little more than a quarter of their readings relevant to their lives.
Wesch has posted a video on youtube.com based on the findings of his class.
To view the video, go to michigandaily.com/thewire.