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All 24 Russell Group universities have reviewed their academic conduct policies and guidance
UK universities have drawn up a set of guiding principles to ensure that students and staff are AI literate, as the sector struggles to adapt teaching and assessment methods to deal with the growing use of generative artificial intelligence.
Vice-chancellors at the 24 Russell Group research-intensive universities have signed up to the code. They say this will help universities to capitalise on the opportunities of AI while simultaneously protecting academic rigour and integrity in higher education.
Continue reading...70% of Harvard’s donor-related and legacy applicants are white, and being a legacy student makes an applicant roughly six times more likely to be admitted.
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After the death of affirmative action as (per SCOTUS) unfair preference, the complex business of legacy admits seems also to be circling the drain.
The word “legacy” covers not merely people admitted to selective schools because close relatives attended; it also can involve super-rich people donating (or likely to donate) multiple millions to buy a seat at these schools for their children. And it can have to do with talented athletes (most of them from expensive private secondary schools) admitted for their athletic rather than academic skill. It usually exhibits a mix of some of these elements.
Let’s look at a notorious case that in fact contains every one of these elements.
George Huguely, currently rotting in jail for killing his ex-girlfriend, was a legacy admit to the University of Virginia. “George III, George V’s grandfather, went to Sidwell Friends and the University of Virginia.” A friend of Huguely’s at the expensive, prestigious prep school he attended comments: “He was not a great student, but he didn’t care.” He was a great lacrosse player.
A hopeless alcoholic from a young age (Huguely’s father showed him how), Huguely boasted several booze-related arrests, including a quite serious one in Lexington, Virginia while he was a UVa student:
Officer Rebecca Moss discovered Huguely wobbling drunk into traffic near a fraternity at Washington and Lee University. She told him to find a ride home or face arrest. He began screaming obscenities and making threats. [Apparently he said “I’ll kill all you bitches.“]
“Stop resisting,” Moss said. “You’re only making matters worse.”
Moss and another female officer tried to subdue Huguely. He became “combative,” the police chief reported. Moss stunned him with a Taser, put him in a squad car, and took him to the police station.
At his court hearing a month later, Huguely said he didn’t remember much about the night and apologized. He pleaded guilty to public swearing, intoxication, and resisting arrest. He was fined $100 and given a 60-day suspended sentence.
Huguely bragged about the incident to [UVa] friends…
Some of these friends were, like Huguely, part of a drunk, entitled, obnoxious sometimes to the point of violence, rich lacrosse player culture where you don’t rat out buddies even if you know they’re really really dangerous and out of control. One assumes most of these friends laughed drunkenly along with Huguely as he detailed the latest incident in which he got away with… not murder. Not yet. But things were escalating, and some of his friends certainly knew he was threatening his ex-girlfriend and assaulting people he thought she was dating and just being a really scary violent crazy piece of shit.
It’s certainly worth asking what sort of subculture sees all of this and does nothing. It’s certainly worth asking how a non-academic, violent, total alcoholic with a criminal record was rewarded with an extremely competitive seat at one of the nation’s greatest universities. What did his prep school teachers and coaches, many of whom must have known or guessed how incredibly dangerous he was, write in their letters of recommendation about him? (Think also about poor drunk well-connected short-lived Paul Murdaugh, still a student in good standing at the University of South Carolina despite having recently killed a young woman and injured others while drunkenly at the helm of a family boat. Like Huguely, he already had a bunch of booze-related run-ins with police.
Two months after he was sprung from jail, a judge removed the only condition of his release — allowing him to travel outside the 14th Judicial Circuit, according to the news outlet.
Although he faced BUI charges, the state did not restrict him from drinking alcohol or driving a boat, the report said.
Another entitled rich kid given one free pass after another until… Well, one can’t help feeling for Paul Murdaugh. His own father murdered him.)
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“I was drinking a lot all the time, all the way from my freshman year to my senior year,” Huguely said at his trial. “I was drinking all the time. It was out of control.”
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Look. My point isn’t that legacy admits are murderers and degenerates. Most of them are pleasant well-meaning non-Ivy League material. But there’s a really anti-social pathology underlying the culture of lifelong consequence-free unearned social rewards of which some (not all) legacy admits are Exhibit A. The Varsity Blues criminal syndicate, and whatever current bogus athletics conspiracy has replaced it, is merely the crude extension of the basic legacy M.O. The socially acceptable con game of legacy admits makes the world safe for the scandal of Varsity Blues.
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And can you think of anything more morally corrosive than knowing that your corrupt parents and a corrupt institution engineered your sorry ass into a seat at Harvard? Knowing that you’re little more than a cold hard cash epiphenomenon to the institution – does that bother you at all? Does it feel like a prefiguration of your entire entitled life? Here’s a bunch of nice people getting me into Harvard; here’s a bunch of nice people showing me how to evade taxes. And so it goes.
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The tragedy of wealth-based admissions is that wealthy students are taking up seats from the poor, unconnected students who need them most. This is not a victimless crime.
… [C]ollege leaders … sell access while squatting on multibillion-dollar endowments and spending vast sums of money on palatial campus buildings, leadership compensation, and administrative bloat.
And you’re paying for it:
… If a donor earns seven figures a year and lives in California, taxpayers can wind up subsidizing more than 52 cents of every dollar used to buy his child’s way into college. Even in states with less exorbitant tax rates, taxpayers routinely pick up more than 40% of the tab. That’s because these kinds of donations are wholly tax deductible: As long as there’s no explicit quid pro quo agreement, the IRS allows parents to write off their influence-peddling donations in full.
… Offering a special admissions track to the wealthy on the taxpayer’s dime impedes equal opportunity, rewards influence peddling, and robs the public. It’s time for a change. Colleges and universities should be places of opportunity, not institutions where background or wealth determine success. Wealthy applicants should have to earn their place in a university by the same rules as everyone else.
… We should press college officials to mean what they say about opportunity and equity, and to spend less time strong-arming wealthy donors. But at a bare minimum, we should get taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing campus shakedown artists.
And when I say pathology: Harvard is currently squatting on 53 billion dollars. It has yet more from other sources. And because the government, risibly, continues to consider it a non-profit institution, it enjoys amazing tax breaks. What sort of fucked up institution is still trading its integrity for more money under these circumstances?
Harvard students and supporters marched through Harvard Square during a rally on Saturday to oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmation action.
Pay cuts are just one factor: working conditions are also getting worse and that’s bad for both staff and students
Since late April, staff at 145 UK universities have been refusing to mark students’ work. The marking and assessment boycott is the most recent action by the University and College Union (UCU), which represents academics and other university staff. With graduation ceremonies now upon us, the boycott is causing significant havoc. Just how significant is a matter of some dispute. But what is indisputable is that many students have had their marks delayed, and some will be unable to graduate as normal this summer.
Industrial action by (mainly) academic staff is always a hard sell. Lecturers are seen as relatively privileged people. The students being hit by their latest action have already had their studies disrupted by a pandemic and a series of strikes. Seen this way, the current marking boycott can look like a selfish step too far.
Lorna Finlayson is a philosophy lecturer at the University of Essex
Continue reading...They’ve already gotten a jump on things in Baltimore, city of UD‘s birth; but you gotta figure there will be more Independence Day public slaughter as we approach the actual date.
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A whole lotta bullshit gets said about mass killings in this country, and UD might as well scroll through the latest crapola statements outta Balto.
And why should she do this? Because as long as everyone lies about the way legions of public events in this country are getting shot up, we’ll never get anywhere.
So let’s see what’s being said. Start with the headline in USA Today‘s reporting: VICTIMS OF BALTIMORE MASS SHOOTING etc. Since this was almost certainly a gang revenge event, we can expect that some of the dead/injured are perpetrators – an important distinction no one ever seems to make. It’s like calling Eric Harris a victim of Columbine.
A lot of what we feel in the wake of these routine large-scale murders needs to be disgust at the assholes who commit them. If we’re not allowed to cast a cold eye at the people who start the shooting, and the people they’re fighting with who continue the shooting and turn it into a massacre, the event dissolves into an emotional puddle.
The killing “marred the holiday weekend.” Marred? “Spoiled to a certain extent; made less perfect, attractive.”? Other than your MARRED evening, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
Let us start describing these pathetic, terrifying events honestly. The killing destroyed not only a holiday weekend, but was one more nail in the coffin of many communities ever being able to gather in celebration, mourning, commemoration, graduation, etc. Ever. The killing once again graphically demonstrated the absence of police personnel in a city far too dangerous to attract enough applicants to the force. The killing is a humiliating admission of the failure of a once-significant American city to live a normal communal life.
The violence in Baltimore comes as federal prosecutors there this week touted their efforts to reduce violent crime in the city.
Where’s the word “ironically”? Why does the writer not insert “even” between comes and as?
“I want those who are responsible to hear me, and hear me very clearly,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at the scene. “We will not stop until we find you, and we will find you. Until then, I hope that every single breath you take, that you think about the lives that you took, think about the lives that you impacted here tonight.”
If I were the killers, who I assume successfully accomplished their mission of killing some of their rivals, I’d be giggling at the would-be tough-guy mayor of a city that can’t stop everyone from killing everyone. “Lives you impacted” – wow. Impacted. Strong stuff.
I mean, kiddies, the street certainly ran with blood after this, didn’t it? ‘“The shots were just going on and on and on,” [one observer] said.’ The streets must have turned RED after thirty injuries and deaths. Is “impacted lives” the best we can do?
The governor’s statement was even worse. We’re doing everything we can…
But you can’t do anything; you can’t even hire a functional police force.
A police union official said in an email Sunday there were no officers specifically assigned to the gathering.
“There were only three officers assigned to the Brooklyn area of Baltimore City’s Southern District. This is a large area, and to police it safely and effectively you need about seven to eight officers per shift,” said Mike Mancuso, president of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3.
Mancuso said about 2,800 officers are needed to effectively police the city, but staffing is down to about 2,100.
I mean, there’s your lead right there, and instead it’s at the end of your article: no officers assigned… Start with that, and ask why a large gathering in a bloody mess of a city included no police presence.
UD doesn’t claim cold honesty/vivid language about streets dripping with blood will make all the killing go away. But it can certainly help concentrate the collective mind. The vague crap we keep getting is worse than nothing.
Group issues 12-point plan calling for stricter immigration rules for care workers, students and refugees
Rishi Sunak is facing demands from “red wall” Conservative MPs to slash the number of overseas care workers, foreign students and refugees allowed into the UK in time for the next election.
The MPs from the 2017 and 2019 intake, who call themselves the New Conservatives, have issued a 12-point plan to cut net migration to Britain from 606,000 to 226,000 before the end of 2024.
A cap of 20,000 on the number of refugees accepted for resettlement in the UK.
Caps on future humanitarian schemes such as the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong schemes should the predicted 168,000 reductions not be realised.
Implementation of the provisions of the illegal migration bill, which it is claimed would lead to a reduction of at least 35,000 from LTIM.
A raise in the minimum combined income threshold to £26,200 for sponsoring a spouse and raising the minimum language requirement to B1 (intermediate level). This should lead to an estimated 20,000 reduction in LTIM, the MPs claim.
Making the migration advisory committee report on the effect of migration on housing and public services, not just the jobs market, by putting future demand on a par with labour requirements in all studies.
A 5% cap on the amount of social housing that councils can give to non-UK nationals.
Raising the immigration health surcharge to £2,700 per person a year.
Continue reading...… announces James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus.
Here in America in 2023, it’s the millionth plus one time for America’s anti-abortion zealots (14th Amendment Protections for Zygotes Now!) to encounter the reality of experience — as in, strong majorities of Americans value access to abortion, and these majorities are acting and voting accordingly.
A year after the Dobbs decision, the anti-abortion movement is contending with two unexpected results. The first was neatly expressed by the banner headline in a newspaper that abortion rights groups We Testify and INeedanA.com printed to mark the Dobbs anniversary: “We are Still Having Abortions All Across the Country.” Not only did the Society for Family Planning’s survey of reported abortions find less of a decrease than many expected; it doesn’t account for the untold number of people who are accessing abortion medications through overseas or peer-to-peer suppliers, even in states where it is banned. Meanwhile, other states and localities are taking historic steps to ease abortion access. On the day [a prominent anti-abortion speaker addressed an important gathering], New York’s governor signed a law to protect abortion providers in the state who are openly planning to provide telemedicine abortions in states where it is banned.
… Since Dobbs, abortion rights supporters have won all six abortion-related ballot measures, stifled the “red wave” in the 2022 midterms, and cinched a key Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. In [a recent anti-abortion] convention’s host state, Pennsylvania, outrage over Dobbs helped Democrats flip the state House, elect a Democratic governor, and send Democrat John Fetterman to the US Senate.
It’s the reality of experience all over again. What are the anti-abortion people to do?
They could ease up, or they could harden. The problem with easing up (‘Well … maybe we won’t go after rape and incest victims…’) is obvious; you’re allowing some abortions to happen.
The only option is toughening up, which inevitably means you’ll have to, among other things,
revoke enforcement authority from local prosecutors, many of whom have declined to enforce abortion bans, and give it to state attorneys general. [Plus] allow citizens to enforce abortion bans with civil lawsuits, apply RICO laws used to take down the mob to abortion providers, and weaponize anti-trafficking laws to make it harder to leave the state…
The increasingly popular neologism Cathoflucht (okay, well, I like it), an intentional echo of brutal Republikflucht laws used to punish people who tried to flee Communist East Germany, captures the attempted flight from states whose coalitions of anti-abortion-activist Catholics and Evangelicals have begun to restrict free movement out of abortion deserts. Gradually we will be able to trace a Republikflucht-like declension, from civilized, moderate efforts to force people who want out of no abortion states to stay in them, all the way to electronic tracking/threatening, to prisons, and to walls along borders.
FreshRSS 
