SCUP Links Magazine: The inbox for SCUP’s weekly environmental scanning

After the dot-com crash in 2001, the tech world needed a few years to regroup. But starting around 2004, the year Facebook was founded and Google went publ

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Students who heard the same lecture on cats from two instructors scored equally well on a test, even though students with the better lecturer thought they'd learned more.

A significant milestone was passed last August when Amazon announced that sales of books on its Kindle e-reader platform outstripped print sales for the first time. There's no question that e-readers are convenient - you can load a single device with thousands of titles. But some commentators have started to question whether digital reading has adverse effects on memory and comprehension compared with reading from print.

In 2010, a reassuring study in fact found no difference in recall after reading material electronically versus paper. Now Sara Margolin and her colleagues have looked at reading comprehension and again found no deficits in understanding of material consumed on a Kindle or a computer versus paper. 

ACUHO-I is excited to announce the release of a new book series that provides the most comprehensive picture of what it means to work in campus housing. 

Campus Housing Management is a six-volume set of titles edited by Norbert W. Dunkel and James A. Baumann. Based on categories of work established in the ACUHO-I Core Competencies, each volume explores a different aspect of the profession. All together, more than 80 authors collaborated to write 53 chapters that span 1,500 pages rich with information and resources. 

There are ultimately only two levers to reduce energy usage: capital investments (better equipment) and operating adjustments (changing how energy is used). Capital investments have proven returns but often require a capital outlay for which educational institutions can lack budget. But the good news is there are significant savings that can be recouped simply by making low- or no-cost adjustments to existing operating processes.

Here’s a look at the five most common, no-cost energy efficiency measures that can immediately help educational institutions save money and dramatically improve operational efficiency, without sacrificing occupant comfort:

Students at the U. of Oregon, acting as consultants, test ways to help nearby cities. The idea is spreading.

The details behind Georgia Tech's new deal with Udacity: big dollars and new types of instructional aides -- including some who work for the outside company.

Editors’ note: The following is an excerpt from The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design (Island Press).In iconic nature scenes, one shape is ubiquitous: the tree.

As developers try to outdo the amenities that their competitors offer in college towns, concern is growing about the academic and social consequences of upscale off-campus student housing.

New research suggests LEED-ND projects can dramatically cut down on driving rates.

n the short term, the federal government should support research on how much more it costs to adequately educate low-income college students compared with their middle-class peers, an analysis that has been widely conducted at the K-12 level. Likewise, the panel calls for greater transparency in public subsidies of wealthy four-year colleges through tax breaks. In the longer term, the task force seeks the creation of state and federal fund streams for higher education, coupled with accountability for outcomes, similar to those at the K-12 level that support institutions with greater numbers of low-income students.

To reduce stratification, the task force backs policies to attract more middle-class students to community colleges (funds for honors programs, guaranteed transfer to four-year institutions, the ability to grant bachelor’s degrees in certain disciplines). For their part, four-year colleges should agree to accept community-college transfers for 5 percent of their junior class and should get public incentives to recruit low-income students out of high school.

The Texas House gave tentative approval to billions of dollars in bonds for campus construction projects on Monday.

We are surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do. Soon we'll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, and even save our lives.

While perhaps not a direct rebuke to Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the blockbuster 2011 book that documented what its authors argued was meager learning on campuses, the studies, by the Council for Aid to Education, do offer a sunnier counternarrative.

"It's probably a more nuanced story," said Roger Benjamin, the council's president, in an interview on Friday. The results described in reports on the studies, "Does College Matter? Measuring Critical-Thinking Outcomes Using the CLA" and "Three Principle Questions About Critical-Thinking Tests," were presented in an off-the-record session here at the American Enterprise Institute.

In "Does College Matter?," the council found that, at a typical college, students' scores on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA, rose 108 points, on a scale that ranges from about 400 to 1600, between freshman and senior years.